Thursday, October 11, 2001
13:49 by FoxTwo Hi again... welcome to another inane installment of my personal soapbox. For those of you who are new to this, this is the place of my very own where I get to ramble on and on about things that seem trivial, yet they irritate the heck out of most people.
Part 3 here, deals with those seemingly inane and yet rather irritating questions that people ask of you, be it your relatives or your friends/colleagues. For example, when you are carrying your tray of food looking for a table for lunch, and you spied a table and race for it and sit down, a nearby table full of your colleagues will ask you, by way of making small talk, "Eh, eating lunch ah?"
Okay, what can I tell them? Here I am, tray full of food, speeding for a table and plonking myself down with the food... isn't it painfully obvious that I am gonna eat lunch?
Or, how about this example - you are working away furiously at your desk. A head pops around the corner, looks at the empty cubicle next to you and ask you "Eh, James not around ah?". So I look at the empty cubicle, trying to see into other spectrums of light, hoping maybe James had just moved into another dimension where he is visible only to Ultra-Violet or Infra-Red. I tried to reach into the next cubicle to try to feel whether he was actually there. After all in the movie Hollow Man, even though the guy is invisible, he is not "invisible" to the sense of touch.
So, the question is two-fold. One, why do people ask such painfully obvious questions? and Two, what kind of answers they expect us to give them?
There was this one time, where it rained very very heavily during the dawn period. That is when everyone's trying to get to work. So I got myself to work, half-wet after being not very successful at the art of Umbrella Fighting (you gotta Umbrella-Fight with other people who are crossing at the traffic lights with you), and, someone who was already in the office, would see you and say a cheery "Good Morning! Wah outside raining ah?"
For this one time, I decided I have had enough and replied "No lah, outside very sunny. It was so hot that I had to jump into a swimming pool before I came here", to which that said colleague was stunned for a good 3 seconds.
However, nothing beats this other incident which occured some years ago, before handphones were so commonplace. A friend of mine called me up at home. When I picked up the phone, he asked "eh, where are you?". Okayyyy... he called me on my home line, so where else could I be?! Of course, nowadays where everyone owns a handphone, asking "Where are you?" would be justified, since a mobile phone is just that - mobile.
There are many more instances where people ask such painfully obvious questions, like when you're about to step out of the door ("Eh, going out ah?"), when you just arrive back in your office/home after going out ("You come back already ah?"), to answering the phone sleepily ("Eh, just wake up ah?").
What I'd like to know is - WHY? Why do people ask these kinda questions? Out of courtesy? I mean come on... there are lots more ways to be courteous.For example, instead of asking "You come back already ah?", one could ask, out of courtesy, "Did you go shopping?". At least that's not a weird question.
13:49 by FoxTwo Hi again... welcome to another inane installment of my personal soapbox. For those of you who are new to this, this is the place of my very own where I get to ramble on and on about things that seem trivial, yet they irritate the heck out of most people.
Part 3 here, deals with those seemingly inane and yet rather irritating questions that people ask of you, be it your relatives or your friends/colleagues. For example, when you are carrying your tray of food looking for a table for lunch, and you spied a table and race for it and sit down, a nearby table full of your colleagues will ask you, by way of making small talk, "Eh, eating lunch ah?"
Okay, what can I tell them? Here I am, tray full of food, speeding for a table and plonking myself down with the food... isn't it painfully obvious that I am gonna eat lunch?
Or, how about this example - you are working away furiously at your desk. A head pops around the corner, looks at the empty cubicle next to you and ask you "Eh, James not around ah?". So I look at the empty cubicle, trying to see into other spectrums of light, hoping maybe James had just moved into another dimension where he is visible only to Ultra-Violet or Infra-Red. I tried to reach into the next cubicle to try to feel whether he was actually there. After all in the movie Hollow Man, even though the guy is invisible, he is not "invisible" to the sense of touch.
So, the question is two-fold. One, why do people ask such painfully obvious questions? and Two, what kind of answers they expect us to give them?
There was this one time, where it rained very very heavily during the dawn period. That is when everyone's trying to get to work. So I got myself to work, half-wet after being not very successful at the art of Umbrella Fighting (you gotta Umbrella-Fight with other people who are crossing at the traffic lights with you), and, someone who was already in the office, would see you and say a cheery "Good Morning! Wah outside raining ah?"
For this one time, I decided I have had enough and replied "No lah, outside very sunny. It was so hot that I had to jump into a swimming pool before I came here", to which that said colleague was stunned for a good 3 seconds.
However, nothing beats this other incident which occured some years ago, before handphones were so commonplace. A friend of mine called me up at home. When I picked up the phone, he asked "eh, where are you?". Okayyyy... he called me on my home line, so where else could I be?! Of course, nowadays where everyone owns a handphone, asking "Where are you?" would be justified, since a mobile phone is just that - mobile.
There are many more instances where people ask such painfully obvious questions, like when you're about to step out of the door ("Eh, going out ah?"), when you just arrive back in your office/home after going out ("You come back already ah?"), to answering the phone sleepily ("Eh, just wake up ah?").
What I'd like to know is - WHY? Why do people ask these kinda questions? Out of courtesy? I mean come on... there are lots more ways to be courteous.For example, instead of asking "You come back already ah?", one could ask, out of courtesy, "Did you go shopping?". At least that's not a weird question.
