I went to Swensons with Ram today and we both wanted to order a double scoop of ice-cream. Being a vanilla base chocolate chip ice-cream lover, I wanted to order something along those lines.

So I asked the waiter (while pointing to the menu): "What's the difference between chocolate freckles and chocolate chip?"

Waiter (looking upwards with a desperate effort to think): "Errrr...chocolate chip has, you know, chocolate chips." (Holds his forefinger and thumb close together to demonstrate) "You know, chocolate chips?"

Nodding to assure him that I did know what a chocolate chip was, I asked patiently: "So what's the difference between that and chocolate freckles?"

Waiter: "Chocolate freckles...chocolate freckles are, you know..."

I waited for him to finish the sentence with "chocolate freckles" but I think he, like me, realised that it was an extremely stupid thing to say. So he stopped his words midway and hunted around the menu for something that would save him. He saw it a few seconds later.

Waiter (Face lighting up): "Yes, it looks something like this." (Finger points at the picture of some towering temptation, at the brown part between two white parts.)

I couldn't see anything special about it except that it was brown, so I deduced that maybe he was talking about the ice-cream base. So I asked him: "You mean chocolate freckles ice-cream has a chocolate base and chocolate chip ice-cream has a vanilla base?"

Waiter: "Huh?"

Me, very politely: "I mean, chocolate chips inside vanilla ice-cream."

Waiter: "Uh, no?"

Ram, understanding me completely and trying to clear things up: "So the chocolate freckles ice-cream is chocolate chocolate freckles?"

Waiter: "Err, yes."

Ram: "So is the chocolate chip ice-cream chocolate chocolate chip as well?"

Waiter: "Err, yes." (I think he would have said yes to anything at this point.)

Me: "So what is the difference between chocolate chip and chocolate freckles?"

Waiter: "One has chocolate chip and one has chocolate freckles."

At this point I just gave up and made my orders. Anyway he's quite hopeless because he got both my ice-cream order and topping orders wrong.

The SCGS Y-14 team made it to semifinals today, but lost against MGS in that round. I didn't tell them that it didn't matter that much to me, because a coach would always want her coachees to remember their mistakes. I saw them pass their POIs, help each other to write rebuttals and resolve their differences openly. They didn't know that teamwork had always been one of the hardest things to instill for any coach, and as far as I was concerned, they had learned what they needed to for this competition.

To win all the way, you have to first learn how to win. If you girls are reading this, keep that in mind and know that I am proud of you.