Italy.

100. Waking up with lines of blue ink all over my left arm and forehead. Old married couples probably do not fight with markers while playing Wii Golf.

101. "Is Italian ice-cream actually better than normal ice-cream?" I ask him. With an sigh, Mario pats my shoulder, in the way that a father would pat a child and say, "When you grow up, you will know." Instead, Mario says, "When you are in Italy, you will know." 

The closest I have ever been to Italy, was last year's planned Venice trip, ceremoniously announced months ahead in a cheesy PowerPoint presentation that took me four hours to make. Between the advertisement of the vacation and its actual dates, my octogenarian then-landlord started to enjoy leaving handwritten notes on my table as surprises; I surprised her in return by impulsively moving out. This resulted in more handwritten notes during my last few days being there, and the exorbitant fine for breaking contract meant we never got to see Festa del Redentore. It also meant I have never tried Italian ice-cream.

This bothers me, because ice-cream is my religion, and now all of a sudden I am told that the God I know and love is not actually the ultimate God. "How is it different?" I want to know. "What is in an Ita-" then it dawns on me. The decade of overeating and overdrinking in Australia is finally useful for something. 
"Oh, is Italian ice-cream like gelato?" 
Mario stares at me, "Gazpacho, you just said, Is Italian ice-cream like ice-cream?" 
"But, in Australia, we have two types: ice-cream, and gelato." 
Shaking his head, Mario says, slowly, in the fatherly manner once again, "And now... you just said... we have two types: ice-cream, and ice-cream..."

102. The backhand wave. The one that says, "I guess you see me looking back into your office as I am passing by, so I should probably say hi, by waving my arm listlessly behind my body." 

Totally a step up from the initial wordless staring: "It's a natural reaction to look into people's open offices but I don't know who on earth you are, hence I'm not saying hi." 

Then came the almost imperceptive nod: "We've met off campus. I suppose you get to be nodded, but only ever so discreetly."

A week or so later, words were actually spoken, or should I write, a word was actually spoken: "Hello." Probably short for, "Hello. I can socialize and I can write but here at work "Hello" is all I have."

"Good morning." "Good bye."

The climax was when he waltzed into my office, delivered one full sentence, with pronoun, verb, adverb, the whole package, and then immediately left, as if scared that I might not like the sentence and ask to exchange with another one.

What comes after a climax, in most Hollywood movies, is an act of disappearance. He dutifully followed the script. After a few weeks, I finally saw him around, but it's been almost like we were complete strangers. 

Then, today, the backhand wave. It is strange how nice little gestures can be. It probably will be another four months until the next climax, but Rome wasn't built in a day. 

Swimming.

97. "Do you swim in the ocean?" Bowser asks me. Earlier today, I forwarded to the Super Marios an Australian map, sent to me by a patriotic Australian friend.

This prompted Bowser to ask about the sharks ("What are sharks with frickin' lasers?" "Haven't you seen Finding Nemo?"), and then about my swimming in the ocean. 

"The question should be, 'Do you swim?'", I reply. 

"Do you swim?" 

I look at Princess Peach. Princess Peach looks at me. She was there, the one time I ever attempted to swim in Brussels. I suppose there is no way to go around it. 

"No, I guess I don't." 

"You... do..." Princess Peach generously concedes, "Just not very far. Or very fast." 

"Or very deep," continues Mario, even if he has never witnessed me in action.

"Really? You don't swim? You don't know how to swim? My God how do you not know how to swim? How long did you live in Australia? You really don't know how to swim?..." thus begins Bowser's seventh passionate speech of the day. After failing to use Cassandra, the only other non-swimmer, as a replacement target, I ask for help. 

"Peach, which sport doesn't Bowser play, so that I can make fun of him?"

"Like, most of the sports?" Princess Peach offers. 

Leaning towards me, Mario whispers, "All of the sports..."

98. View from a window. 

99. One bottle into the evening, and we are already fighting like an old married couple. "She doesn't know anything about me," he tells his friend. "Even her friend whom I've met just two or three times knows where I was in the States." Stealing a piece of cucumber from his pasta sauce, I retort, "Oh yes? Where was I in the States?" "New York...?" he ventures, hesitantly. "Yep, that makes one out of 15." "But you were never there for long..." "What about that place where I was for three and a half months?" He's stumped. Of course he is. I am grinning. His friend watches us, resigning to an evening of arguments from an old married couple who just don't give up. "You don't know anything about me," I'm mocking his Belgian accent, "name five things..."

He starts with two easy ones. Easy, I suppose, is relative. Strangers wouldn't know those things about me, not many know about the first one and I can count on one hand the number of people in Brussels who know about the second. The third one surprises me. "You don't like green apples. You prefer pink lady," he says. "Four: You've been to 20 countries. I bet Zoe doesn't know that..."

Another reason why we are like an old married couple: We know things about each other that people don't.

Burritos.

94. "Over there, sushis, the little pieces were 7 dollars each. That's too expensive for me, so I chose to eat burritos. So, I was at this burrito place, and the woman who was making the burritos was," he extended his arms as wide as possible, "this big. There were at least three layers here," he motioned his hands around the neck, then making the shape of two watermelons in front of his chest, "and then there were the breasts. At least, I had to think those were breasts..."

Lunchtime will never be quiet again, now that Bowser is back. 

95. Seen on a condom wrapper: Want to see BIG BEN? 

96. 5ish pm. We are coming back from our Coke break, which, thanks to Cassandra, should now be renamed as Coke-n-Coffee break. (Co-n-Co break? Caffeine break? We-haven't-talked-to-each-other-for-three-hours-so-we-should-talk break? I need to keep working on this.) 

By the time Zoe reaches her office and I am in front of mine, we realize, simultaneously, that some stranger is unlocking the office door between ours. We are puzzled. We would like to know who this is. Of course, this is only because we are concerned for the safety of the various MacBooks lying around in our colleagues's office. As it is generally considered to be slightly impolite to walk up to a stranger whom you have just seen for two seconds and ask, "Who are you?", and apparently equally tactless to say loudly, "Do you know who this guy is?" in front of the guy in question, Zoe and I communicate in silence. Our first looks, accompanied by raised eyebrows, are identical: "Do you know who this guy is?" Our second looks, accompanied by raised shoulders, are also identical: "How do I know?" At this point, the guy gets inside the office, we go into ours, thus concluding our telepathic conversation. 

Tomorrow, if it is discovered that a MacBook has gone missing, don't ask us. We did the best we could.

Books.

91. Less than twenty pages into the book, I've learnt that he was (1) introverted to the point of being at school precisely on the hour and leaving as soon as classes were done, without talking to anyone in between, (2) married by the age of 13, then promptly turning into a jealous husband, (3) lying to his religiously vegetarian parents about eating meat for a year, and (4) smoking and stealing, when still in the early teens. Not something I had expected from the autobiography of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

92. Heard on an episode of Coffe Break French podcasts. One teacher, and one supposedly post-highschool student. "So, Anna, see if you can tell the difference between the two following sentences. If it helps, try to count the number of words. Je viens de Glasgow, and, Je ne viens pas de Glasgow. Anna, can you tell me how many words are there in the first sentence?" "Four!"

This is going to be great. French and math, both just at my level.

93. "He's writing two books," my mother tells me. My 8-year-old nephew is? "In the first one, there are two characters. I forget what they are, but then there's a chemical spill, turning one of them into a monster. I say to him, no monster, grandma doesn't like monsters. What about Buddhists, fairy angels and good kids who help their mothers? Then he says, OK grandma, I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, if you prefer, I can write a second book. It'll be about the most intelligent person in the world. I say, good, grandma prefers that."

If my mother were J.K.Rowling's grandma, there might have never been a Lord Voldemort.