Banana leaves lunch... for the first time !!

Had lunch today at steven's corner with the entire pbl group and our faci. It was a rather long, eventful lunch and if you were there it probably wouldn't take very long to figure out that most of us (me included...) had never stepped inside a typical Indian rice restaurant before... or at least not for a long time. By the time we left, i would say we left some sort of a lasting impression.

Everything was going rather well at the beginning. We were shown to our table and were sitting down talking like how any people would in a restaurant when suddenly there came a huge outburst from one of us who had just spotted the waiter approaching our table with a tray of banana leaves:
Batchmate 1: WAHHHH !!! Eii (nudge neighbour)!!, LOOK, LOOK GOT BANANA LEAVES LARR !
Batchmate 2: Walau got banana leaves arr ?! I didn't know we were having banana leaves rice for lunch !!!
Batchmate 3: Wahhhh banana leaves wei... cool...
Batchmate 4: (On closer inspection) Hei.. how come some of them got yellowy-yellowy colour one ??
Waiter : .............

There followed a rare moment of silence as each of us proceeded to (secretly..) admire our individual banana leaves. That moment of calm didn't last very long though and was completely shattered, this time by our faci, when she managed to detect out of the corner of her eyes the waiter returning back to our table to scoop some rice and sauces onto our leaves:
Faci : Eiii !! Can one of you quickly go down to the counter and get some serviettes onot ?! I want to wipe my banana leaves lar before they put things on it...
When the serviettes finally did arrive there followed a mad scramble by most of us (who were obsessively hygienic...) to attempt to scrub and polish and wipe our leaves as hard as we could because the leaves were
Faci : (Threateningly) VERY DIRTY ONE LARRR....you don't believe me rite, you wipe the leaves and then you can see all the dirt... don't believe ahh you try and see...
completely oblivious to the fact that the waiter was bearing the combined weight of the rice and sauces (enough for all 8 of us) for the entire duration of about 5 minutes before he was actually allowed to come any closer to our precious leaves..... and actually i think the very reason why he didn't just rest the bucket of rice and sauce on our table while waiting was simply because he didn't dare risk the entire bucket being toppled and knocked off the table, what with all the vigorous hand motions happening all around.. and now that i think about it, i really do not recall seeing any further for the entire duration of our lunch.

By the time another waiter arrived to take down our orders, the excitement from the previous flexion-extension marathon had somewhat subsided and everything went rather well until the end, although it did take us close to about 20 minutes just to order our drinks, as all of us (being very excited and not wanting to be left out) started shouting out orders simultaneously as soon as another waiter arrived which succeeded only in confusing him further... and unless i was seeing double, a third waiter was actually dispatched a few minutes later to our table to assist the second in listing down our orders...

At the end of our meal when the bill was presented, a huge scuffle broke out between the 7 of us and our faci over who was going to pay, although i wasn't sure we were trying very hard as the bill, by now completely crumpled and in pieces, ended up in the hands of our 40-something year old faci. An argument further broke out in front of the cashiers when each started accusing the other of causing the fiasco.
Faci : You ahhh... very embarassing lar you... fighting for the bill like that...
Batchmate : What me ??? You also what... YOU started it somemore...
Faci : Who say ?? YOU lar started it...
Cashier : .......

Overall though i would say it was a pretty fun thing to do, especially with the exams coming up, kind of took our minds off it a little. Can't wait now for our next faci to come along and take us out, although i probably wouldn't go back to the same restaurant.