The first line was in bigger fonts and was easier to read. I could read the following 3 lines while she took the orders with a smile. She was one of those fortunate girls who was born with a happy countenance, unlike her lady boss whose wrinkled facial lines told of a thousand worries and stress of sustaining the profitability of a cafe in suburban Jalan Leban where the crowd was very small. 

"Is love like a butterfly or is love a butterfly?" I asked her. She did not reply but her eyes sparkled as she took the orders. She appeared happy.   

The boy's mother pursed her lips and admonished me: "It is not nice to stare at a lady's chest." She was the prim and proper type. It was so hard  to impart good values to her impressionable son if I cracked such corny jokes.   

I had not thought of the sexy implications. In any case, the waitress was no Dolly Parton whose bosom always demanded attention. "If I fall down, they need to milk me before I can stand up," was one joke Dolly was reported to have said in a magazine I read. Once I shared this joke with the boy's mum. She did not laugh. Veterinary students may appreciate this joke after seeing the heavy udders in milking machines during seeing practices in a dairy farm. They would understand what Dolly Parton meant.     
 
Back to the present, I said to the boy's mother: "I was reading the words of a poem on the T-shirt." It was the beauty of the poem, not the magnificence of the bust. 

It is always good to make a happy connection with the serving staff as they work very long hours. This waitress was a student who needed to work and standing up long hours serving Singaporeans who usually just give orders but no rapport would be tedious job. How do I understand the working life of the waiter?

Well, I was a waiter during for the 3 months of summer holidays during my first year veterinary studies in Glasgow University in 1969. I could not go back to Singapore unlike this young man I was dining with.  My Colombo Plan veterinary scholarship bond paid for one return airfare. One to Glasgow University at the start of the course and one at the completion. My parents had no money. There were no budget airlines in 1969 and therefore there was no need to think about going back to see my girlfriend in Singapore.

In 1969, the Glasgow University bookshop had notices of summer jobs offered on its notice board. I got a job as a waiter in an upscale hotel opposite St Andrews' Golf Course. After 2 days, I got the sack. Probably I was inexperienced and was too slow to serve or not up to the mark, I guessed in retrospection. This was after all an upmarket hotel and St Andrew's Golf Course was a Mecca for golfers all over the world.

I took a train back to Glasgow and went to the University bookshop. There were other waiting jobs. A small hotel catering to tour groups accepted me. A small seaside town called Dunoon, in Scotland. I had never worked before I went to Scotland on this veterinary scholarship. In a way, I was like this young man I was dining with. A 19-year-old who had no encounters with the demands of a business world.

After the termination of my first job, I decided to work harder. I worked 7 days a week and took any overtime. The tour groups of British people would come in for breakfast, lunch and dinner and the waiters and waitresses would have to rush in and out fast to serve them. Then they would go out on their tours. They were the British homelanders and appeared to me to be older couples. Happy couples with some sense of humour.  

Now, how to serve fast for a table of 10 people? The British way of dining is so much different from the Chinese way which is a communal way of dining. For the British dinner, for example, there was the soup first. Then the main course of meat followed by the dessert of sweets. Then coffee or tea.

Each person had his own bowl or plate. So, 10 people would need to be serve 10 bowls or 10 plates. And we had to serve fast as they needed to go for their tours.

The head waiter taught us how to balance the plates for the main course on our left hand. The waiter bent his elbow to hold one plate in the crook of his elbow. His right and left hand held two plates. A total of 3 plates. That meant rushing up and down to the kitchen 4 times to serve 10 plates per table. Some tables have more than 10 diners and each novice waiter or waitress had to service more than 1 table.

Remembering my premature job termination, I resolved to work smarter. All waiters and waitresses were of my age and undergraduates from various universities in the U.K. We improved our serving technique to serve much faster.

After some time, we challenged each other as to how many plates we could serve at one go. We were young and energetic. Do you know how many big plates holding the main course could be served by a waiter?

Give me a number. Say it loud. Write it down.

Now, it is 2007. Almost 38 years had passed. I wonder whether the Glasgow University bookshop still exists and whether there are still vacancies for summer jobs.

The young undergraduate I had dinner was really fortunate that he did not have to work during his 3 months of summer holidays and could come home. His mum missed him a lot. If I advised him to stay back to work in Australia to understand more about the Australian way of life, I would cause disharmony with his mother who worked extremely hard and was having white hairs.

This mum would pluck off the increasing number of white hairs she saw every day. But the more she plucked, the thinner her crowning glory became. Fortunately, hair dyeing was available nowadays and she had her hair done by the stylist. She needed to give an impression of youthfulness at her office. So do most older career women in Singapore. Unlike this young man and his breed. He dyed his hair with streaks of blond and white to show he was in fashion. He had spent money on young girl hair-stylists - money which I would have had saved up when I was at his age.      

Back to the number of plates I could carry. It was 7. Two hands held 2 plates. Of the remaining 5, the left hand's elbow area held 3 plates in tiers. The right hand's elbow area held 2 plates. When I reached the table, the diners would help me to unload. Two trips would do for each table. The customers sometimes clapped their hands as if viewing a circus show.

I didn't know my fellow waiters and waitresses and I were so entertaining to them. The folks were the English heartlanders and very kind. There was interaction between the customers and the staff and we did get some tips at the end of each week of service. 

Occasionally one of us dropped a plate during the rush, but that was not common. In that 3 months of summer job, I learnt much about the lifestyle of the British undergraduate. I went out with my colleagues to the pubs. The aroma of beer was memorable. 

I remembered one young man called Bill for this incident. Once after our drinking at a pub, he stole a traffic hazard warning light and brought it back to our hotel accommodation.

A blonde undergraduate waitress taught me what "mascara" meant when I asked her what she was applying to her eyelashes as all of us went to the pub. She would hum to this top of the pop song starting with the lyrics: "They paved paradise and put in a parking lot...".

At that time, I could not understand the slang of the British singer. it was something to do with a yellow taxi and old man dying and taken away.

Recently, the young man's radio played this song which has the "Save the environment" theme. This song whizzed back some 3 decades ago to this blonde undergraduate girl and the summer job.  We worked from 7 a.m to 10 p.m everyday. Rest periods were the hours in between. We had one day off per week but I chose to work.

If you need to know, the girl with the green eyes was a friendly and fair Irish undergraduate. She had a good figure with some curves. Not like the twiggy 19-year-old   undergraduate girls in Singapore. We conversed and enjoyed going to the pubs. But "Love is a butterfly". It just did not alight upon me in the quiet resort town of Dunoon in Scotland.