QUARTER ELEVEN: THE CHRONICLES OF UNDERSTANDING COVENTRIAN DIALECT PART 2

Occasion: Sherbourne Residence. Where else would I be on a weekday morning but on this cryptic residence of students or better described as ‘the residence of the dead’ since they all roughly woke up around 1100 to 1200 AM onwards to start their day, pretty much still drunk from over partying last night in the kitchen which is left for me to clean. I can even tell from the pile of rubbish they left that they loved Captain Morgan and Malibu more than the rest. Smirnoff would come as the third favourite.

No one showed up in front of the building so I decided to selfie with my mate's Kawasaki Ninja ZX6R parked nearby. Notice the black t-shirt worn underneath my uniform shirt, which means the day is chilly and 'Winter is coming to Winterfell'

As any other morning before our shift starts, the manager or supervisors will have something to say and this time, Eunice, one of the supervisors on duty told me ''Azfar, we have a meeting today in Rootes Building, you’ll have to come down and wait in front of Block 5 by quarter eleven?’’. And as usual, without thinking twice and keeping my cool, I nodded in agreement and said ‘‘Yeah, sure. Quarter eleven, will do’’ and headed straight toward my cupboard on the third floor to start my routine for the day before I started to think what does quarter eleven really means? I mean I was pretty sure I wasn’t hallucinating when I heard she said, ‘Quarter Eleven’ and not ‘Quarter to Eleven’ and of course not ‘Quarter past Eleven’.

But I didn’t have my mind wandered like a flying soul like last time, as I was so sure that I would get it right. But still I would have to do some of my detective work to determine any possibilities.

Possibility No. 1: She meant quarter to eleven which is exactly 15 minutes before eleven o’clock in the morning.

Possibility No. 2: Quarter Eleven literally translated as 11.15 according to my sanest thought. As if you transmit the numbers by words to someone else who is in other room, by not seeing the numbers like you do from your visual sense and that is the number ‘Eleven’, followed with ‘Fifteen’ which is equivalent to a ‘Quarter’ in a way.

As soon as I figured out that the nearest possibility would be quarter to eleven, I began to visualise all the cake muffins and cream cakes served with freshly brewed hot coffee and English tea all lined up on the table waiting for me prior to the meeting since I have missed my breakfast this morning. I then resumed my job with all this good breakfast meal in my thought and when the time comes, I quickly rushed down from the building and headed straight in front of the building except that there were no University white van or any of my colleagues waited in front of the mentioned building when I waited there exactly at 10.45 AM. Okay, maybe they will show up after like 5 minutes later but the only thing came was a flock of ducks marching like toy soldiers probably to the nearest pond that they could find near the Lakeside Residence. Man, I blew it again. There goes my cream cake and coffee milk for today.

I decided to let this one pass and continue with my job when I honestly have nothing much left to do when most of the cleaning I already did in advance for this meeting.

As soon as my shift ends at 1.00 PM, Eunice popped out from the Supervisor’s Room, barging towards the exit, saw me and said,

Eunice: ‘’Why haven’t you waited in front of the building this morning? We were all waited for you’’.
And I said ‘’, I did wait but there was no one there, so I decided to continue cleaning’’.
She then replied ‘’What time were you there?’’.
Me: ‘’Just like you said, Eleven Quarter, that is quarter to eleven, right?’’.
Eunice, wrinkled her forehead when she said;
Eunice: ‘’It’s actually meant 11.15’’.
Already expecting she will say that I quickly said
Me: ‘’Owhhh… really? My bad. I should’ve asked earlier what Eleven quarter means’’. 

She then told me to just forget it but also told that the Manager was quite furious with what happened. I don’t really care much since the incident with the name tag thing, I might as well called this one even 😊