It was fifteen minutes passing a given point.

Each waiter carried a dish containing one of the fifty-seven ingredients of the grand total of the rice tafel.

You helped yourself with one arm until that got tired, then used the other.
When you were all ready to begin your plate looked like a rice-covered bunker on a golf course.
[Drawing: _The Rice Tafel in Java_] Rice tafel is a famous dish in Java.

It is served at tiffin, and after you have eaten it you waddle to your room in a congested state and sleep it off.

After my first rice tafel I dreamed I was a log jam and that lumber jacks with cant hooks were trying to pry me apart.
As the recipe for rice tafel is not to be found in any cook book on account of its length, we give it here even if you won't believe it.