Level

Shortly after encountering that trivial war between snail horns, I had, for political reasons, the privilege to dine again with a group of senior physicians.

I shall not explain what triggered this gathering. For some unknown reason, I was assigned to sit between an famous respiratory physician and an exceptionally senior neurosurgeon. Since the former one was obviously having some problem with his hearing aids, I spent my whole evening chatting with someone specialized in opening up others' brains.

At some point, our discussion came to Professor Y, the host of the evening.

"You know, Y is highly praised by the medical students," my new acquaintance said. For obvious reasons he was referring to the students over the other side of the harbour.

"Yes...?"

"Yes, because he always appears very kind and smile to the students," he continued.

"Em... I think Y has... er... his own character...?" Knowing Y's real personality well, I tried to put forward my opinion with some ambivalent wordings.

"Alas, I know what you mean," the neurosurgeon said, "But, as a rule, Y does not shout to medical students - he just teases on the ones whom he doesn't like. Since Y has a slightly convoluted mind, most of the students do not know they were being laughed at - they just think that the senior professor of nephrology is making some harmless jokes!"