The melting point of a toaster is ______?

Was talking or rather entertaining a younger friend of mine tonight at a dinner, about some of the funny or exciting experiences i had in edinburgh the past year. and man, those were great memories, so i thought, it deserve to be written somewhere. haggis it is.

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Ang mohs have the hardest time possible when faced with any thing with 'ng'. Too bad, a lot of chinese have 'ng' hidden somewhere in their names. The 'Ng's and 'Ngu's always produce a lot of restrained laughter. The English language is created in such a way that most words have vowels in them, making them somewhat pronounciable to the ang moh tongue. Unfortunately, when you translate some dialects like foochow to english, there are some syllables that are just not very Englishifyable. Hence the problems.

I have a classmate with the surname Th'ng. I bet those ang mohs were going "Oh my goodness, what is an apostrophe doing in a surname? What in the name of Th'ng?"

The thing was, most people is just brush that away and keep it as a point of curiosity somwhere in that brain of theirs. But at some point in my first year, this classmate of mine used the academic discussion board to post a question on our online discussion board.

Of course, the question of academic importance posed by her then took a backseat to questions like "Just out of curiosity, post # xxxx, how do you pronounce your name?"

Well, we Chinese had a good laugh then. But nothing beats the arrival of my friend sarah ng to edinburgh.

She was so used to people looking at her and going...."errr...how do you pronounce or spell that?" and the ang mohs getting really ang-faced that she decided, she's better off spelling her name out to them when introducing herself.

So, when i met her, she was so used to introducing herself as if to an angmoh that when she saw me, well, i recalled her as being glad to be surrounded by malaysians, very very glad actually.

The conversation went something like this...
"Hi there! I'm Charis. Nice to meet you! where you from ah?
'hi. Sarah N-G. i'm from kl, You?
"Sarah Angie? Wah, so cool you got two first names!"

Laughter laughter laughter......

N-G kinda stuck to her after that. even till now.

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The great thing about staying in flats instead of catered halls is the liberty to cook up a mess and experiment with new stuff. New stuff meaning things we never cook before, which is actually quite a lot of stuff. Think roti canai, apam balik, egg tarts. Things that you don't make when you are in this lovely nation. Why make it when you can get the best for dirt cheap? And making these means making in bulk. It's easier just to go to a stall and buy one, right?

So, holidays come, and the itch to experiment becomes uncontrollable when there's less things to take up your time. Oh yes, we were supposed to study, but procastination can sometimes be therapeutic to the mind. sometimes. And on that fateful day, we decided to fire up a few pans to make apam balik. The end product was like a peanut filled pancake, but no, not like the apam balik you get from stores. But anyway, the thing is, our hob was crowded with pans touching each other and there were three of us trying to make sure we don't burn the poor apam baliks and flip them and the right time etc. Oh flipping. Flipping can be such a mess. Flipping mess. The good thing is, the mess usually happens in the pan, when a nice round pancake flips into a ..... thing. a thing that looks semi digested. Anyway, back to the point. The hob was so crowded and we were watching apam baliks as if they were the tennis ball at Wimbledon when the final set score was 15-14. Until,
*sniff*....*sniff sniff ala stupid squirrel in Ice Age* *sniff sniff sniff*
"what's that horrible plastic burning smell?!" *look around*
hmmmm

don't think i can find it....

then....
*SCREEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM*


"THETOASTERHASMELTEDTHETOASTERHASMELTEDTHETOASTER!!!!!"

"The what?"

"OHMYGOODNESSTHETOASTERHASMELTED!"

"What?"

"THETOASTER!!!!!!!!"

gasp.

*removes toaster from near the hob*

*silence*

*LOL!*

"That's so cool!"

thing is, the pan at the edge touched the plastic part of the toaster which then ....yes you got it. it melted. there was a huge gaping massive crater in my toaster. I think I could have just went out and report to the police saying aliens have invaded my flat and shoot random fiery hot projectiles at me and i used the toaster for protection and manage to run out to find them, and i really think they'd have believe.

You never thought a toaster could melt, have you? Well, I haven't. Till that fateful day.

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