What do you do when you're completely owned?

Well, I just stood there gapping, opening and closing my mouth, struggling to say something that makes sense.

See, a few days ago, I was attending to this caucasian guy (rather cute, I might add). He came up to me and spoke in a really weird language that sounded strangely familiar. In my mind, I was thinking if he had just landed from Mars and was speaking in an international alien language, which he assumes us earthlings understand. Then he repeated himself and lo and behold, he was actually talking to me in perfect mandrian! Upon realisation of the mode of speech I have to use to converse with him, I teetered into my very shallow and un-used pool of chinese vocabulary. (one would ask why couldn't i simply talk to him in english..that's because he didn't seem to understand a word of english..believe me, I tried)

I almost spattered and died on the spot.

I believe the words that came out of my mouth (broken chinese and to make it worse, because I was so confused, broken english as well..), were far more alien than anything he would ever have said.

He left with a tight but still charming smile. Probably disappointed with the level of mother tongue singaporeans hold. Sorry fellow citizens, I've let you all down.

As if one chinese-conversing customer was not enough, the precise next one was a man of chinese nationality!

I died twice that day.

To make matters worse, Jesslyn Ng who was beside me couldn't contain the amusement, that I have managed to conjure up in the span of less than 5 minutes, was guffawing like a mad woman, thus sparking me off in generally the same direction. The next customer was so puzzled he asked, "Are you alright?"

I went on to explain that I suck at speaking mandrian..

"but I'm speaking to you in english!"

"yes..i meant the last 2 customers.."

If there was a 18-feet deep hole, I would have jumped right in and buried myself alive.

So kids... Chinese lessons are important!

Bangkok post coming up soonish!