Wednesday, March 14, 2007

I'm back!

But I make no promises about regularity of posting because of good reasons and stuff.

I am in the UK! It is cold - although getting less cold. There are all kinds of mundane things I could tell you about how I've been and what I've been up to and and and ... but why?

Let me tell you some other things instead.

My favourite exchange so far on a topic related to some of the topics of this blog:-

Random woman in the store: Are you from the far east?

Me (honestly innocent, rather than just being smart): [thinking hard. I'm not very good at geography]. Um. Well I guess it depends which direction you are heading to. [smiling because a stranger is talking to me] But if you mean what country, I am from Australia.

RWIS: [looking perplexed] Sorry? I meant are you from The Far East. You know where Orientals come from. I would like to travel to the Far East some day.

Me [realisation dawns; now being smartarse]: Oh. Right. Yes. No. Maybe. Kind of. Not really. I guess Australia is east of here. But in those terms, it is probably the Near West, rather then the Far East. har har.

RWIS [looks at me again like I am lint on her clothes ie. how did that get there? it wasn't there when I left the house this morning]: mmm.

Me [brightly, a little too brightly]: Nice to chat. See you later!

My next favourite exchange, to show that I am a little clueless, and unrelated to the topics of this blog other than that it is about ME:-

Me: May I please have a cheddar cheese sandwich with red onion, tomato and capsicum?

Sandwich-gal: Sorry?

Me: A cheddar cheese sandwich with red onion, tomato and capsicum.

Sandwich-gal: I don't understand?

Me [a little louder and a little slower, after all I have an Australian drawl (or so they say)]: A cheddar cheese sandwich with red onion [pointing], tomato [pointing] and capsicum [pointing].

Sandwich-gal: Oh right. A cheddar cheese sandwich. Would you like any salad with that?

Me: Yes please. Red onion. Tomato. Capsicum.

Sandwich-gal: [very slowly] Red onion. Tomato. And what else?

Me: Capsicum.

Sandwich-gal: Sorry?

My partner steps in: Pepper.

Me: Ooh yes. I would like some pepper too.

Both my partner and the Sandwich-Gal looks at me like I'm thick.

When we sit down, my partner patiently explains: Oanh, they call capsicum pepper here.

Me, to show off that I know things: Oh yes, and zucchini is courgette and eggplant is aubergine, and they have a real funny name for snow peas. Mangy something.

My partner: Mange tout. Means ready to eat in French.

Me (still stupid and blithely munching sandwich): Yes. Isn't that odd?

Only after my coffee did I realise how dumb I'd been.

Welcome to the mother country, Oanh. They do things differently here. *smack forehead*

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Welcome back! Hope you're getting all settled in alright.

Orientals huh. Good for you. What was she going to do? Ask you for directions? Ugh.

Well, you've cleared up something for me. I had no idea what capsicum was.

honglien123 said...

Welcome back, glad to see you haven't abandoned the blog completely.

I'd like to see that woman come to the states and say "Orientals..." And regarding the sandwich, eh, I can't imagine anyone would understand me in the UK or Australia for that matter. I didn't know what you meant by capsicum.

Kirsty said...

Pepper instead of capsicum? Really? I thought that was an American thing only. Huh. There you go.

They've got the metric measuring system though, haven't they?

Say you don't have to put up with that *and* the outdated travel brochure vernacular.

Oanh said...

Sume, Hong Lien, Kirsty -

It's nice to be back :-)
(although I'm not sure how back I actually am).

Thankfully, although they are otherwise so medieval, England has moved to metric and I am spared the embarassment of having to calculate in the imperial system. phew.

 
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.