The first two scenes you mention were funny for me, and for a character who has traditionally provided a larger slice of comic relief than most, that was frefreshing. The humour in Mat's storyline in the several books before this were things like his relationship with Tylin (if I recall that name correctly) and taking an Aes Sedai over his knee and spanking her. I much preferred the humour here to those things. He also had the best line ever with Verin when he mentioned that he had assumed she had just, you know ... saidared it.

I also very much enjoyed the fact that every third sentence in his PoV wasn't about how confusing/frustrating women are. It was getting kind of old ...

He was certainly a little different than Jordan wrote him, I won't deny that. If you lined this Mat up with the Mat of the first four or six books, I'm not sure which I'd pick. But I'd take this Mat over the Mat from books 7 through 11 anyday.