The Merry Hunt

I met Lynn the friendly girl from Malta at the canteen today. She came over to join me and Deimante for lunch.

She told us that she did not go to class today. She had overslept. She had taken the regular bus that takes us to the Uni but for some strange reasons the bus did not stop where it usually does. She had to wait another half hour for another bus. It took her almost 2 hours to go to the Uni. By the time she got there class was over.

After lunch, on our way home, we wanted to go to the supermarket. She wanted to go to Conad, near the centre; I wanted to go to Pam, near the train station. ‘’Which is better?’’ she asked. “The best is actually Coop, not far from our residence – lowest price and wide choice,’’ I told her. “OK, let’s go there,’’ she said.

The last time I went to Coop, it was by accident. I literally stumbled upon it. I’d wanted to go to Pam, got lost, and was directed to the Coop, all on foot from the city centre. Since then, I realized that I could have taken the bus that takes us home, descend earlier, and walk there. Today, I asked Lynn, ‘’do you know which bus stop to descend?’’ “Si, non tipreoccupare (don’t worry), ‘’ she said. To my surprise, it turned out that the bus stop she knew was the one at our residence!

‘’It’s really near, we can walk there from our residence,’’ she said, as we descended from the bus. So we weaved in and out of the blocks of Uni, as well as other, residences. “I’m not sure of the way, ‘’she said after a while. Before you knew it, we were lost, had to ask a few passersby, and even had to clamber down some steep grassy slope.

‘’It thought you knew, that you’d followed Kaisa and Xiao Peng the other day?’’ I asked. ‘’No, I meant we dropped off at the same bus stop and heard them talking about going to the Coop and saw them walking in that direction,’’ she explained.

Ah! You see, Lynn is so much more proficient in Italian, having studied it at Uni level for many years (in fact, she’s in a higher level than me here in Siena), and when she speaks very fast, I have a tendency to miss what she has said, or have to ask her to repeat.

Most of us (not all though – the other Singaporean who got this scholarship and a girl from Egypt – speak English to everyone even though others reply them in Italian) have this tacit agreement to speak in Italian, no matter how badly or slowly we speak, and even if we all know English. That’s what we came here for – to practise the language. So even though Lynn speaks good English, we never use the language, except for the occasional ‘’desperate’’ situations when we are totally stumped and could not think of a substitute Italian word, and even gestures fail us.

After many flights of steps and a lot more walking in the sweltering heat (it certainly didn’t feel that ‘’near’’!), we finally found some warehouse-looking building and took a peep. It sure looked like parts of a supermarket, the backend operations, so to speak. We circled the area trying to find the entrance, and went up and down some staircase which led to 2 locked doors.

‘’What a day for me! It’s a day of getting lost, first with the bus incident, and now the supermarket!’’ said poor Lynn. From the road where we stood above, we saw a guy below sawing a piece of wood and Lynn shouted ‘’mi scusi, mi scusi’’ many times but he just could not hear us. Lynn asked me to try and I also shouted but could not be heard. So we walked to the other side, nearer him, and Lynn shouted, ‘’scusi, scusi,’’ again, to no avail. ‘’Can you try again,’’ Lynn asked me. This time I tried, ‘’signore, scusi!’’. Again, he totally ignored us, bent on sawing his piece of wood. Finally Lynn and I looked at each other and with some synchronization, screamed, ‘’signore, scusiiiiiiii !!’’

This managed to startle the poor signore so much that he jumped. Luckily he did not drop the saw on his toes. Lynn and I tried our best to hide our chuckle. Lynn asked for directions and the nice chap climbed out of the woods (pun not intended) and walked us to the main road to point us to the right direction.

It was only then that I realized that Lynn and I had been referring to a totally different Coop branch! The one she had heard of is this one, while the one I had chanced upon was another one.

When we finally reached the entrance, Lynn said, ‘’we should have just gone to either Conard or Pam, at least we won’t have to walk all the way back carrying heavy bottles of water!’’ I realized what she meant – she’d bought 2 bottles of soft drinks, cups and cups of yoghurt, food, sausages, snacks, etc. ‘’Are all these for you, or are you sharing with the other Maltese?’’ I asked, somewhat tactlessly. It turned out that they are all for herself, while I only had a bottle of water, a box of tissue, and 2 other items.

While inside the supermarket, I wandered off to the fascinating pasta section to marvel at the gazillion types of pasta they offer. Lynn came to me, saying, ‘’we better stay together and not lose each other, after all this!’’