Some people are just plain irritating.

After lecture just now, a friend[dunno whether she wishes to be named or not so she'll just remain anonymous] said to me that sometimes you just don't feel like talking to some people but they just go on and on. Totally agree with her on this. But that's only one of the many irritating kinds of people in this world.

There's another kind who are just so insensitive, too frank, whichever you prefer. I know 'insensitive' and 'frank' are not synonymous with 'irritating', but since I find this kind of people irritating, they must be quite irritating afterall.

Hmm, actually I've been observing the situation for about a month now, since we'r almost into week 5 in school. There's this girl in my french class who irritates the hell out of me, although we rarely come into contact. I only sat beside her once, and she was the one who planted her butt on the seat beside mine anyway, but on other occasions I've been observing her mannerisms from another corner of the room. I'll go on to say why I find her irritating.

Firstly, she almost doesn't make an attempt to think in French. I mean the learning system with regard to languages is already quite bad enough cos we are learning a language in terms of another language, in this case learning French by using English. I would seriously prefer learning French without using any English, but I guess that'll take a whole lifetime instead of the 3 or 4 years in university. So, if we can't spend our whole lifetime doing it, at least we could try conditioning our brains to think in French instead of in English in these 3 or 4 years right? But no, she's not trying hard enough. And she keeps trying to translate everything literally. I wonder if she knows this isn't a course on French translation into English.

Secondly, she almost always raises both her arms and put them at the back of her head[if you can visualise that'll be gd, but useless if u don't see it for urself cos it's more annoying when u see it 'live']. Ok once or twice maybe I can understand, maybe cos u need a stretch or something. But hey every other 10mins? I think it's abit disrespectful towards the lecturer, like there she is trying to get her points across and here's a student who seem so laidback. And, she always wears sleeveless tops so it actually looks pretty indecent too. But nothing is as bad as...

the third reason why she's irritating. We were learning a whole range of adjectives that can be used to describe people but too bad they didn't include 'irritating' in today's list. Or I could have made a sentence about that irritating girl. Well, we were also learning how to express ourselves when advising people and there were 4 scenarios given in the textbook. One of them was about a girl who's trying to quit smoking but has failed 3 times. Then came the question from the lecturer: Who amongst us actually smokes? Nobody owned up. So ok lar whatever, although I wouldn't be surprised if there is any amongst us who smokes.

Then the lecturer said again: Really nobody? It was then that the irritating girl gladly announced to the whole class that a certain classmate smokes. And the girl who smokes was like so embarrassed and there was this air of weirdness that enveloped the whole class. I mean, if we were to know who smokes and who doesn't, it's best to hear it from the smoker himself/herself, don't you think? Ok maybe u'll say berani buat berani tanggung[this is Malay btw, not French ar], which essentially means if we do something, we must be prepared to bear the consequences of our decision to do it. But really, at this point during the semester, it's still a bit early to be ready to open up to every one of ur coursemates, especially when your coursemates keep changing. I myself am taking alot of time to know my French coursemates better, and it's only after a semester together that I'm starting to get closer to some coursemates. Anyway, going back to the point about her being irritating, think she's pretty tactless. Luckily the lecturer tried to save the day when she asked for suggestions on how to help the person stop smoking, bringing us back to the textbook instead of rapidly forming new images of that girl in class. But really, the damage was done lar so it's also the irritating girl's fault, not only ours for forming new images of the smoker.

Before people get the wrong idea, I'm not ok with people smoking. I know lotsa people in this world who smoke, even in the family, but I'll ask the smoker to do his thing far away from me, or I'll temporarily move away till he is done. There are all these campaigns going on about quitting smoking, but seriously if it was that easy, the tobacco industry wouldn't have survived till today. The tobacco bosses would have gone bankrupt if the campaigns were 100% effective. So, I'm saying smoking isn't about the smoker alone, although it's partly about the smoker. Since there's a whole range of issues involved, why was she so eager to help that girl announce her smoking habit to the whole class? Trying to get her to quit? She certainly didn't sound so.

I wonder whether she realised if she made the wrong move today. Cos almost the whole world, at least thru their body language on hearing her announcement, thought she made the wrong move.