Today's rying times

I had a 'course dinner' last night - for those on the course still in here.  Eleven of us in Chinese buffet restaurant: two from Oman, a Pole, a Belgian, two from N. Ireland, a Glaswegian, a Welshman, one from China, one from Hong Kong, me.  Cross-cultural small talk is very strange.  At one stage an Omani sitting on my left, asked the Welshman opposite 'How much do you weigh?' The Welshman replied 'Er, about 12 stone I think', to which the Omani responded 'I meant in grams.'  A little later we seemed to be in some kind of encounter group, after the Glaswegian who'd arrived rather drunk, and who's recently separated from his wife, described in great detail just how sad Christmas had made him feel.  The Glaswegian had been married for about 25 years, and the average age of the group is about 24, and the solutions proffered tended towards the extraordinary - I distinctly heard one girl advising the afflicted gentleman to go ice skating, because it always worked for her.  The entire meal was punctuated by stints of photograph-taking, during which we all had to stop talking/eating/etc. and face either left or right towards the waiter or waitress standing at one or other end of the long table we occupied, who'd been cajoled into the task, and who was trying to work out how to use the camera pressed into his/her hands, while the chap from Hong Kong exhorted us, repeatedly, to 'Look gorgeous!' 
 
The Chinese girl wasn't very impressed with the food, but then she's never impressed by anything British.  Since the place is self-service, I gave her my plate and asked her to choose what she considered the best of the selection for me.  Unasked, she kindly did the same for pudding: I was given a pot of mango milk jelly; a pot of a different milk jelly, which looked slightly blue and tasted vaguely soapy; and a bowl containing both something small and round in batter which looked unnervingly like scampi, but which was, I think, a piece of banana, frittered, and an enormous slice of gateau, thickly coated and filled with ersatz cream and bespeckled with vibrantly coloured hundreds and thousands, both of which soused in a sauce of the same bluish hue as the unidentifiable jelly and bobbing with unidentifiable bits - perhaps fruit.  She'd furnished herself with the same (although she had two pots of each jelly), and cleaned plate (and pots).  I was less successful.  
 
The evening was deemed a huge success, and people have arranged another gathering - to an ice rink.  My fortune cookie's verdict: 'Today's trying times will become tomorrow's good old days.'