UNIVERSITY LIFE IN JAPAN

There is one particular thing that I must blog about the university here. It’s about the lunch break. The peak hour for lunch is really packed with students and three cafeterias are not able to cope with the lunch crowd. It is just sardine-packed! The Japanese are known for their courteous customs, discipline and hospitality. You would probably hesitate to believe if I were to tell you that they even have a queue for students to hand over their dirty plates, trays and eating utensils after completing their meals. And the queue is always terribly long. Man! I don’t think we give two-cents about it in Malaysia , not more about where the bones and toothpick go and to which container or designated zones. Lunch hour queues made me reminiscent about queuing to pay toll every morning at the LDP before I came to Japan. Can you believe it, there is also something to learn from queuing in line. I learnt that we have much to learn about patience and tolerance in Malaysia. I learnt that no matter how advanced a country is, there is always a queue to something or somewhere and if other people could wait in line, why do we always complain and compare about other people’s way of doing things when at times, our so-called predicament in Malaysia is not too bad after all. We must always remember that technologies are created out of problems to solve them and not necessarily completely solving them. O yes, I have also learnt that if the Japanese have conditioned themselves to waiting in queues, you can be sure that your Toyota or Honda is also conditioned the same way and would never overheat to cope with the exasperating queue at the toll plazas in Malaysia..