How to pick up on a taxi driver
Take for example, when I was in Vienna...Austria neighbors Slovenia and I don't know any German except the phrase "I don't know German" which comes in quite handy. So I was in the taxi and the driver didn't speak English (a common theme abroad). So he starts going down the list of languages he speaks which many I had no idea what language he was saying when he asked. After blowing threw his 8 or 10 languages he knew (oddly, English was not among them), I gave my list of two (Engish and Slovene). He paused and asked, "Slovene?" I responded, "Yes, Slovene." He shook his head and we continued in silence.
One time, however, the taxi guy in Vienna was Croat and I fumbled through my really bad Croatian with him which was mostly him bad mouthing American foreign policy. Good times.
For my trip to Israel I attempted to bone up on some Hebrew using language tapes. I got through several lessons and before long I was having fantastic virtual conversations with the speaker on the tape. It wasn't until I arrived in Israel that I realized how little I knew and when I started writing down everything I learned from the lessons, I came to the conclusion that the only thing the tapes taught me was how to pick up on women. "Would you like a drink? Would you like a drink with me? Where would you like to drink? Would you like some wine? Would you like to go to my place?" No kidding, that is what I learned! Consequently, the taxi drivers were not interested in my limited Hebrew vocab.
Are you speaking English?
My last international trip a couple weeks ago was to Singapore. Interesting thing about Singapore is that English is the official language and everyone speaks it, but I don't think anyone I encountered speaks English as a first language. There were several occasions I had to ask people to repeat themselves because I either couldn't follow their accent or the words they used were not words I was familiar with (what the heck is a quay and dungue?) And for a good laugh, I found this poster in a bathroom. I'm not sure I can explain it and do it justice...just let the poster do its own talking.
Notes about Singapore
It was recommended I take a visit to the island of Sentosa. So I left after work one night, took a cable car our to the island, and walked around a bit. There were two things I was told to do...do the luge and see the show. I found the luge ride, but before I tell you about my experience on the Sentosa luge, let me first explain that I am FREAKISHLY tall in Singapore (freakishly tall in all southeast Asia, actually). On the subway, it didn't matter how crowded it was, I could see above everyone's heads and see both ends of the train. So this luge ride is made for Asians, not freaskishly tall Americans.To stop or slow down on the luge, you have to pull back on the handlebars. This is easy to do if your legs are Asian size, but my legs didn't quite fit under the handlebars so when I pulled back to slow down, they handlebars just hit my legs. So I barrelled down the hil
l full speed with no way to stop or slow down the whole time picking up speed and passing other lugers (plural for those who luge), and since I weigh twice as much as your typical Asian, my momentum whipped me faster than anyone else on the hill!Eventually, I found I could spread my legs way out (imagine putting the soles of your feet together and then spreading your knees as far apart as possible...that was me in Dockers) making some room to pull back the handlebars just enough to slow down my bullet ride, but in so doing I looked like a complete baffoon...so much so that I had people I'd never met were laughing and taking pictures of me as I attempted to maintain control of my danger ride and keep from killing myself.
The next event was the night show..."Songs of the Sea." Somebody's posted it on YouTube if you want to see what it's like. What you can't really tell in the video is that the laser and video is projected on sprays of water. It's very impressive and worth the trip.
Singapore...go to Sentosa, take a walk on Clark Quay, and don't squat on the toilets.
