Last night I went out to dinner with some friends from university. We get together regularly...well, by "regularly" I mean when the fancy-pants restaurants in the city offer fixed price menus so that normal joes can afford to eat like the other half. So that's about twice a year. But one of these days Kevin is going to move his business out of his living room and will be able to host a proper mah jong party, so then we'll probably see each other more often.
In any case, we were at Centro (which is a very nice restaurant, highly recommended by "some guy on the internet"), catching up and having a great meal. Time disappeared as quickly as our food and suddenly we had spent 3 hours there. Kevin and Sylvia had to leave to catch the bus to Vermont for the annual ski trip (dear God...I want to go skiing...). As we all entered the subway, Kevin's phone rang, and after he answered, his voice got louder, his grammar became non-existent, and it was as though he was singing a slow children's song. Sylvia smiled and informed the rest of us that it must be the Japanese exchange student on the phone, who had been invited to the ski trip but was waiting for someone to pick her up.
I know it's bad, but I have to admit that I am guilty of this kind of behaviour as well. Ron commented that it's no wonder new immigrants have such a hard time grasping the English language. Nobody ever speaks to them normally. I find that I just can't help speaking louder, slower, and using as many simple words strung together as possible to try to get the meaning across, complete with hand gestures if possible. I can understand the slower pace and the simple words, but why on earth do we feel compelled to speak louder? They're not deaf, they're just from another country, and it's not like we can force our message into their brain by shouting.
But I still laughed as we watched Kevin attempt to communicate with the Japanese girl. I'm afraid it's just hopeless, isn't it?
"Give me back my point of view 'cause I just can't think for you"
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