taking away the plate

I am yet to discover the reason for the haste in removing a plate when you have just eaten the second last morsel. We ate out several times last week in Madang and also when I have occasionally been to the hotels here in Lae it almost seems that waiting staff are ready to pounce on your plate as soon as you are about to put down your fork when the plate looks nearly empty. To put down one's fork and reach for one's serviette seems to be a signal to remove the plate with all haste. I think I must like to contemplate what was on the plate for a while before it is removed and therefore to have it removed, as seems to be the Melanesian Way leaves me feeling as though I have too readily farewelled a dear friend. Can you not spare one short moment to contemplate what could have been, I hear myself saying to the departing plate?
John corrected me about my Melanesian-Polynesian distinction the other day. He said the distinction was based on traditional trade routes and that Fiji was in fact Melanesian and the Micronesians went as far as Hawaii.
We are goint to UPNG in Pt Moresby today for a similar venture - to see the way it goes about writing courses for correspondence studies. We go by balus so it is unlikely we will see any pythons: returning from Madang we came across what looked like a speed bump in the road with an eagle antap. As we slowed down we could see it was a dead four metre long python about as thick as one's leg. What a beautiful creature that it should end its long life that way as road kill.