A lesson to learn

It was yet another sunny day... I was all rugged up in my pashmina in the train. It took me about 10 minutes to think of a topic to present in my Chinese class tonight. All I could think about is the coming Easter weekend, kids & food. I decided on food - "Zao dong xi chi" (Thanks to my lack of creativity, they are probably sick of hearing my food talk by now...)

It was a struggle at first but as I got into it... it became rather fun. Sashimi, lebanese bread, Korean barbequed meat, noodles, the list goes on and on...

While frantically writing my 3 minute presentation (in pinyin) and flipping through my Chinese-English dictionary, I felt slightly uncomfortable as the "guai lo" beside me was reading my 'food fantasy'. Because I was writing in pinyin, I became less concerned as I was 99.99% sure he was just scratching his head thinking... "What language is this?"

Tom (yes, we did meet formally after) then said to me... "Your pinyin is not bad at all". I looked at him - shocked & very embarrased that this stranger is reading all about my horrifyingly big appetite in broken mandarin!

Friends, the moral of the story today... Don't assume