DO NOT STARE!

Lately, I've been hanging out with some expatriates from my workplace. They are fun people and I enjoy their company.

Until I started feeling the stares. You know, the sensation like someone is looking at you.

Actually, this did not bug me at all until A brought it to my attention. It seems that if you look different with coloured hair and colored eyes; people stare especially in the small towns like Seremban. Sometimes, people ask you to pose for photographs. Sometimes people offer to take you, a total stranger, around for free. Gosh, what are they thinking?

Anyway, last night, we were having dinner. First, there were this group of young teenage waitresses who seemed to have nothing better to do than to stand at one corner and STARE like a harem of inquisitive monkeys.

Then the highlight of the evening came in the form of a young girl. The restaurant we went to had an elevated platform, bordered with some ropes. Our table was near the edge of the platform. As we were eating and chatting, suddenly this young bespectacled creature weaved into the narrow space between our table and grasping the ropes, with the very obvious intention to STARE. As she sashayed through, I thought she left. But when I turned around, there she was, hanging to a pole behind me like an orangutan, STARING at my friends. At this point, I gave her the 'death stare' for the 'Enough is enough' look. Finally she got the message and went scurrying back to her parents who were many, many tables away. Such insolence. Whatever happened to parental supervision? What kind of parent would let their children wander off far away, monkey around and be totally oblivious to it? No wonder, kidnappers and pedophiles have a field day.

I am stupefied. At this time and age, I wouldn't have thought people behaved like this but apparently, I'm wrong.