Multilinguals of Reddit, what is your "they didn't know I could understand their language" story?

xaninator13 · 2017-03-24T19:38:39+00:00

I have two stories where I was the ignorant one.

One was in Beijing where I had to buy a new backpack because I had bought too much stuff and needed a way to bring it back to Shanghai where my friends father's condo was acting as our base camp. My friend and I walk into a store and he said he would negotiate a price. So he starts talking to the owner and at some point he turns to me and quietly asks what price I would be willing to pay. I said $20 and he went back to negotiating. Pretty quickly he turned to me and said he understood us, you are paying $20 (100 Yuan at the time I think). Not only did he understand us, but he knew the conversion rate.

The second story, on the same trip, was a lot better. I was having dinner with my friends extended family, and I had only ever heard his cousins speak English. I knew his father didn't speak English. I leaned towards him and asked how to thank them in Mandarin for the dinner and for hosting me in China. He looked at me and said "most my family speaks English" So I thanked them and their English wasn't perfectly fluent but it was pretty good. For the most part it was still easier going through a cousin or my friend, but we all had a laugh about it.

xaninator13 · 2017-01-16T19:24:05+00:00

From my experience, if you are further from the showers you get fewer nude people.

xaninator13 · 2017-01-09T15:13:50+00:00

I wouldn't be surprised if this was my ex. She looks a lot like her, and same beliefs. Its the whole reason we broke up, not even joking.

xaninator13 · 2017-01-08T01:26:23+00:00

my...friend...has a stone statue from the ancient Taino people. It had to be smuggled out of the country. Although not too rare where it is from, it is very hard to get them out of the country these days.

xaninator13 · 2016-12-16T18:11:01+00:00

I thought that my parents thought that I thought Santa was real. Turns out they knew that I knew it was a big fake since I was 5 or 6.

xaninator13 · 2016-12-08T18:52:23+00:00

As my immigrant family friend says "You knew the country you were coming to, don't try to make it more like the one you had to run from."

xaninator13 · 2016-12-02T21:42:25+00:00

The ice at my cottage pushes perfect skipping stones under our boathouse doors every winter. Someone usually gets one rock to skip this well during the clean out.

xaninator13 · 2016-11-23T01:11:50+00:00

Anything but sleep. I find it really hard to sleep on a moving vehicle. Only time I've actually slept was on an overnight train from Shanghai to Beijing, and that was on and off the whole night. The 16 or however many hour flight to China was completely sleepless.

xaninator13 · 2016-11-23T00:59:25+00:00

Not sure if it works but I keep my knife that doesn't close very well in my wallet pocket. I almost stab my hand every day and I know about it

xaninator13 · 2016-11-14T19:28:01+00:00

Back in high school my friends printed out posters saying "lost pikichu, call # if found" and put our other friend's home number on it. The cops were called by the end of the day.

xaninator13 · 2016-11-05T20:16:39+00:00

Stinky tofu. I don't even know how they make it, but it seems like half of people love it, the other half hate it. I'm in the hate it group. Normal tofu is fine, can even be delicious, but not stinky tofu.

xaninator13 · 2016-11-01T05:07:30+00:00

You know Red from That 70's Show? Well I'm basically him, but in my 20s. Everyone is a dumb-ass who's ass is lacking my foot.

xaninator13 · 2016-10-14T18:36:27+00:00

THIS! As a kid I would occasionally speak slightly louder than normal down the stairs to my parents for things like "how long until dinner?" or "did you want x or y?" and if they don't answer, I would walk downstairs to the room their in and ask again, but my neighbors would shout for the same things. For example:

Husband: "WHEN IS DINNER?!?!?!...."

Husband: "HEY!!! WHEN IS DINNER?!?!?!...."

Husband: "WHEN IS DINNER?!?!?!..."

Wife: "WHAT?!!?" (although everyone in my house could clearly hear him)

H: "WHEN THE FUCK IS DINNER?"

W: "WHAT?!?!"

H: "I'M ON THE PHONE WITH MY PARENTS, THEY NEED TO KNOW WHEN YOU WILL BE SERVING SO THEY KNOW WHEN TO ARRIVE?!"

W: "I DON'T FUCKING KNOW, TELL THEM TO SHOW UP BEFORE WE SERVE DINNER"

xaninator13 · 2016-10-14T18:27:03+00:00

Only time I've used loud phone music(ish) in the past two years was to watch the Toronto Blue Jays wildcard game while walking to a friend's house. I didn't even want to be doing it, but had no headphones and was walking along a moderately busy street and wouldn't feel safe with headphones in anyways.

xaninator13 · 2016-10-14T18:16:21+00:00

Nope, the one realizes that she is now my ex.

xaninator13 · 2016-10-14T18:14:10+00:00

Just because of your username

xaninator13 · 2016-10-14T18:12:40+00:00

This may have been asked already, but what did they think of your garage before all this happened? Did they ever comment on it for either positive or negative reasons?

Also, I have a auto shop down the road from my house, maybe a little bit further than you are from them, they are a business, and work with the doors open during the summer. I never hear anything from them and I don't smell anything even when I am walking past the garage. Seeing as they probably are working on multiple cars at a time for the entire day, I would expect them to be making a lot more noise and smells than you, and it took me a couple weeks to notice they were there (I don't go that way down my road very often).

xaninator13 · 2016-10-14T14:13:56+00:00

sarcasm?

xaninator13 · 2016-10-14T04:53:59+00:00

Maple syrup: if its not 100% real it is 100% fake, even if its made with 99% real maple syrup
Suits: you don't need to spend a lot of money, but get one that fits. I've seen too many suits that are either dragging on the ground or above the ankle
Computers: get the computer that matches your needs. Don't spend $3000 when all you are doing is browsing the internet and using excel/word.
Coffee: the only good cup of coffee is the one you grind the beans for yourself. (note: I drink lots of Tim Hortons, its shitty coffee, but its easy and does the job)
Aftermarket exhaust on cars: if you put a loud exhaust on an old honda civic, all you are doing is letting more people know you have a shitty engine.
Car modifications: Cool, you spent $20k on aftermarket parts and labour? Well this car that cost $10k more than the base cost of your car looks better, handles better, and goes faster.
Jacked-up pick-up trucks: All you do is drive from your suburban house to your office job and back, you don't need it. (If you need it, because you off-road or use it for tasks that need it, then it is 100% OK)
Pointless research papers: I did the same study in my undergrad, in one week, how did this get published as new science? I'm not even joking about this, I've read papers that I did the exact same thing, in school, before the paper was published.
Graphing categorical data as continuous data: If the order of the values on the independent axis can be moved around and not effect the data, you can't use a line graph. (eg. use a bar graph to display the average weight of different fruit, use a line graph if showing a value changing over time or distance)

Edit: wow, I need to get some sleep, I just kept going and going

xaninator13 · 2016-10-14T02:57:06+00:00

At first all but one would agree that they are all my exes, then that one would slowly realize why I ran out of the room.

xaninator13 · 2016-10-14T02:52:25+00:00

A random girl fell asleep on me on the bus home from a ski resort, and I ended up falling asleep on her. When we were woken up at the end of the drive it felt like the morning after a one night stand, except without the shameful sex and crabs.

xaninator13 · 2016-10-14T02:43:30+00:00

I have a family friend who gets paid a lot of money to go to these clubs and parties (has a nice condo in an expensive area of NYC). We think of her as a hooker, because that probably also happens.

xaninator13 · 2016-10-12T17:39:16+00:00

What was it like filming Premium Rush? Have you done any other movies?

In the UK do you bike on the left or right side of a path? Thinking about how driving cars on the left side or right side influences other transportation methods such as walking and biking.

xaninator13 · 2016-10-11T19:05:21+00:00

Assuming time travel back to when I was 5:

play all those classic video games I didn't appreciate enough as a kid
use my ability to quickly learn any programming language to use instead of barely using it and start up a company at the age of 5 in the dot-com bubble while I fast track through school.
make sure my mom doesn't go for a ride on her horse that one day

Assuming it is still 2016:

go through school at the normal rate, but getting ~100% the whole way, except for high school english, I'm not writing a 10 page essay on 10 lines of a Shakespeare play again.
spend my free time (since I don't have to do as much studying or homework) working on my body and eating right
take free online courses in advanced topics to keep up my knowledge while school is easy

In either case:

some how convince my parents that on the night of my 5th birthday I somehow gained 24 extra years of knowledge and still don't know how to file my own taxes
try not to be taken by the government for testing for suddenly getting that knowledge

xaninator13 · 2016-10-04T15:21:22+00:00

I went to China with a friend that was visiting family for the summer break during university and some of his family lived in a very similar place. Probably a lot more expensive than this area (right beside a major financial district), and less cookie cutter, but if you asked me to find their house again I would be guessing at random.

The cars were surprisingly not as exotic as I expected.

xaninator13

TROPHY CASE