| eyechartmaker.com. yes, it exists! |
one of the coolest "hong kong moments" happened to me last year at my optician's office. located between a froyo place and a coffeeshop in LKF (read: expat central, for those overseas readers), it's usually not a problem to find someone who can understand basic english in the vicinity. that particular day though, an italian couple walked in to discover that the one guy on duty spoke only cantonese.
"you speak english?" the couple ventured.
the old cantonese man smiled back sheepishly and shook his head, "ahhh, mm sik ahh. velly bad".
given the proximity of the small space, i couldn't help but overhear the couple's subsequent exchange. while it was in italian, i nosily guess-timated the meaning of their conversation by drawing upon my rusty knowledge of AP Spanish (not stellar, but better than just "vamos a la playa"). i caught them before they walked out and asked in english if they were looking for eyeglasses and the specifics of the delivery date for contacts.
i don't know what was more shocking to the foreign couple, that an asian chick was speaking english in this seemingly local store or that an asian chick could understand what they thought was their secret language, safe from the rest of the store. probably some combination of both, as it turned out, because i was right! i had translated the italian/spanish to english, and then communicated to cantonese man in mandarin what the couple was looking for. thankfully, he had good working language of putonghua and the two parties ended up completing a transaction for glasses and a few boxes of contacts. success!! now where's my comm??
anyway, this story was really just a long-winded way of showing how useful languages can be for closing business. i suppose it is very obvious, but as american-born-anythings, it's easy to forget or under-appreciate the value of mastering your "mother" tongue. since I started ZAO'ing, i've been using pinyin to type traditional chinese characters (product of my taiwanese upbringing) to communicate with local cantonese designers, who also use the traditional form of written chinese. my limited but sufficient knowledge of the chinese language allows me navigate electronic devices, but in person what ends up happening is we will use bits and pieces of canto, mando, and english to communicate. some designers have also dropped korean and hokkien words into the mix. i don't know when the last time i used 100% of any language to describe the ZAOZAO designer upload process, and sometimes i go days now without speaking to a single soul in engrish. turning ESL? maybe. but more importantly, utilizing 200% of my brain capacity to make things happen around here, which is really one of the most rewarding aspects of doing this job at the end of the day.
Like the "ZAO" eye chart.
ReplyDeletethanks! pretty amazing the things you can find on the internet
ReplyDeleteI must say you have good observation skills. There are so many interesting things happens all day around us but only few of them think about them. You really did a good job.
ReplyDelete