So, those of you who’ve been following my posts for a while now know that we get our food served in the foreign faculty dining hall. And there’s always a little battle going on. It’s because of the Ketchup. Usually, every table in the cafeteria is stocked with a bottle of Ketchup. The problem starts, when the bottles start to get empty. The dining hall staff won’t start handing out new bottles, unless all the Ketchup is gone (if they wouldn’t do that there would be a multitude of half empty bottles). So, when the bottles are about to get empty, people start collecting Ketchup from the other tables. Many times you can see one table with a collection of up to 10 empty bottles, all turned upside down to get the last little bit of Ketchup out. Otherwise, there will be no new Ketchup for us. Usually by that time the staff gets the message, and that’s when we start to get new Ketchup bottles from the staff.

The other day, however, when I was expecting to get a new bottle of Ketchup after I realized that the bottles were gone from most of the tables, I was in for a big disappointment. They had run out of Ketchup! Two days, there was nothing to be had. It meant eating our chicken sandwiches, our french fries, our fried potatoes, everything without Ketchup, and I’m sure, the poor kitchen staff got to hear their share of complaints from my colleagues. So today, each table was provided with not just one bottle of Ketchup. Each table had TWO! Looks like they were trying hard to make up for the neglect!

Happy dining, everyone!