Saving Face

Well, that's torn it. I was saving this story for being a local councillor and using it that way, but what the hell.

I was once hired by the Chinese Embassy in Wellington for a function. Helen was there. So was Jim, Don and a few others. I helped serve the courses. In between in each course, we presented a bunch of facecloths, which everyone used to ceremoniously wipe their faces. These cloths were taken out back, rinsed in luke-warm water and freshened with aerosol deodorant, before being randomly recycled for the next break in courses. Thankfully, this was in the days before avian flu.

I spotted a cockroach waddling over one of the courses, a bowl of... something, and alerted the supervisor. He reluctantly pulled the dish. From the look on his face, I could tell that he would have served it anyway, if it wasn't for this necessary foreigner.

As Joe Walding said, we do things differently here.