den | 13 February 2012

Last Tuesday I was having lunch in the crib room at the Gladstone, Queensland, LNG refinery, and I overheard this conversation between a welder and a truck driver. The welder was reading an text on his phone when he started laughing.

"You know it's the Chinese New Year?" he asked the driver.

"Yeah."

"Year of the Dragon?"

"Yeah."

"My friend in Alice Spring says two guys dressed in a dragon costume just ran into her shop and crapped a whole lettuce on the floor."

The driver blinked at him. "What?"

I started shaking with suppressed giggles. The welder looked at me. "That's pretty wild." he said

"It's Alice Springs," I said. "It's that kind of town."

He typed into his phone, and a minute later recieved a reply. "My friend says you must have lived in the Alice for a while."

Finally the truck driver spoke. "Why a lettuce?"

The significance of the lettuce was never resolved. Even the Malaysian guy (born in Malaysia, Chinese parents) was mystified. Maybe there is a cultural significance we were missing. Maybe a lettuce crapped onto the floor of a shop by a dragon costume, is just a lettuce.

I don't care. It made a very dull day a little more interesting.