I finished work relatively early today. That is, the sky was still light when I was walking to the gym. The gym! Yes, yes, I'm back, after a 6 week hiatus.
After the gym, I was at Central station and there was a 11 minute wait until my next train. This, combined with the fact that I was feeling rather hungry from all that gym work prompted me to pop into Chinatown for a bite to eat. I had Chinese BBQ again at Emperor's Garden BBQ & Noodles, so far the best Chinese BBQ I've had in Sydney.
After polishing off a plate of soya chicken and roast pork, I wandered back out into the streets of Sydney again. Coming back towards Central station, a guy was walking in the direction towards me, asking people for a dollar (for what, God only knows). As he headed for me to ask for his dollar, he suddenly took on a bad Chinese accent - "One Dor-lah! One Dor-lah!".
Fucking yobbos.
I got back to Platform 19 at Central, and surely enough, my train was still at 11 minutes.
Damn.
Posted by davechan at January 24, 2005 10:50 PMDickheads who have nothing better to do than assume/discriminate. Although sometimes it's funny.
When we were in Italy and we walked past some spruikers advertising their stalls they said "Arigato" to us (which is thank you in Japanese, not hello but oh well, and I don't think we even remotely look Japanese), I replied in a strong Australian accent, "Sorry, wrong language mate". The apologetic look on his face: priceless.
Do you know of a decent recipe for soya chicken?
Posted by: Callisto Shampoo at January 27, 2005 01:10 AMDoes not "arigato" seem like it could be an italian word (I'm thinking, allegro!). Maybe that's why it's the only word of Japanese that they could remember!
Posted by: Todd at January 28, 2005 02:41 PMThe flip-side is, I have heard of funny stories where an Asian appearance and associated blind assumption of incompetence in the English language has been used by Asian Australians (who are actually fluent in English of course) to get themselves out of sticky situations, from Jehovah's witnesses to door-to-door salesmen to traffic cop about to write you a ticket, simply by uttering "Me-No-Eng-gu-li-shh"!
Posted by: Helene at January 29, 2005 02:03 AMBut having said that, yes I HATED it when people always assumed I was Japanese when I first came to Australia and was new at school.
Posted by: Helene at January 29, 2005 02:05 AM