What a comic night.

It began rather uneventfully, as most stories do, in line queuing for tickets at Chatswood Hoyts - as not so many stories do.
Waiting in the meandering rope line was an occasion of many awkward eye encounters with various people standing around me in the queue. See, when you're waiting for a friend, you look around a little incessantly. Which also, incidentally, means that you make more than the acceptable quota of eye contacts with the same people - and, because you're stationary, in a line, you can't escape them. Which becomes a little uncomfortable when the lady behind you starts to think that you're trying to woo her boyfriend with seductive eye glances and begins to eye you off suspiciously and adopt the protective girlfriend body cling.

Jen arrives to my rescue after some heinous traffic, and after swapping sides up the escalator to mitigate Jen's mortal fear of the 'bit of a dip' aka chasm of doom, we walk into the movie right as it's starting. Parfait.

He's Just Not That Into You.

Loved it.

Walked down a couple of levels, passing a romantic couple on the Hoyts couches sharing a bucket of popcorn and mutual affection, we perused our options at the illustrious food court below JB. After doing a lap, we fixed our sights on SAHARA for our meal.

Approaching the counter. Gozemeles in sight. We were ready to order. On the precipice.
But before we can verbalise our orders, the guy spills out "WOULDYOULIKETHESEFORFREE."
Insert inflection. It was almost a command.

We look bemusedly at one another.
"Are you sure?"
They're laughing with their eyes at one another and a guy sitting about 10 m behind us.
"Yeah," but their body language suggests that they realise they've made a mistake.
"But, no, I mean, is there anything wrong with them?"
The food in question was two gozmeles sitting on the counter.
"As in, has it been sitting there for hours?"
"No, no, we cooked it half an hour ago - we just need to pack up."
We're laughing with them at this point.
We've both realised that they've made a mistake in offering it to us for free, but they can't backtrack. What's more, is that now a couple has queued up behind us, and is ordering legitimate food. As in, food you pay for.

Laughing all the way, we exchange banter with these two guys, not quite sure what just went down. As I ask for two pieces of baklava, one of them says "That'll be $15" with a joking expression. We laugh, but really want to pay them - so I get out $10, but he just says that he'll never sell me anything again. Jen just comments that he's probably right, he'll probably just give it to me for free. He asks for $5 for the baklava, but I give him the $10 and gesture for him to keep the change. By this stage a girl has come up behind me to my right. He realises that I want him to keep the change, but insists on giving me a drink for free. I laugh, as the situation gets even more bizarre, and I feel the girl to my right disapproving intensely of these girls who are apparently exploiting these two men with smiles and flirtatious laughs to get free food.
She orders a drink, just as we leave and thank them.

As we're walking off, I tell Jen about the other guy sitting at the table, who was probably their manager - so she's turns around, and he waves and flashes a grin. We laugh and keep walking.
Definitely recommend Sahara at Chatswood. Great customer service.

We walk down to the ground level and sit outside, amidst the irresistibly romantic setting of concrete, poles, bins and even a debut appearance of four cockroaches. We chat about life and even inadvertently enact several of our own scenarios from the movie we'd just seen, "it's a barren farm", whilst being entertained by the antics of a small dog/rat and its owner, before departing.

Jen had parked on the roof, so we go up the Hoyts escalator, pay her ticket, discuss weddings and arranged marriages, and promptly realise that we are not on the same roof carpark as Albert is. Her car, that is.

We wander around, appreciating the gorgeous fluourescent lightings, and finally find the ramp connecting the two roofs. Jen's fear of heights didn't appreciate my looking over the edge.

Panic struck Jenny's stressfilled heart once more as Albert was no where to be found.
Momentarily convinced that Albert had been stolen, that a crowd of youths were getting into a car/her car/another car (I never quite understood the logic behind her stricken mind's constructed scenario), and that we would be forever bound to the carpark, Jenny carried a heavy burden for those 20metres.

Then we realised that Albert was in fact there, and that the youths were getting into their own car. We drove down the zillions of ramps. Terrorised by giant huntsmen crawling down her side window and by impractically tight ramp bumpers, we survived the ordeal and made it home.

A great night.
loved every minute of it.