:: The indian head shake still baffles me ::
Coming close to half a year as a RNI (as opposed to NRI, anyway more about that later), most o the time I have managed to conquer the problem of "not understanding whether that head shake is a yes or no" situation.
This morning however, was a disaster. At 11am (ok, maybe I woke up too early!), I walked into my favourite BAKES and BEANs cafe (which by the way is the only place in town that serves decent Italian and other eats like Greek Pasta, a decent Latte etc), yea so I walked in, everyone was like busy cutting vegetables, one was staring at the TV, one was sweeping the floor. I mean, they must know when someone walks in through the door right? For like 30seconds, I was trying to grab the attention of any of the nonchalant folks there, I'm quite bad at it I think.
When I finally got hold of the eye contact of one of them I ask him, "Are you open?, Can I get a Latte?", he gives me this 'actually I also don't know if we are open' look. Then he shakes he head. I ask again "I mean, are you open, can I get a Coffee, a Latte?", he shakes his head, blabbering something in Hindi (or Punjabi I don't know).
Actually I still did not get the answer I wanted. I asked for the third time. Then he motions to someone, apparently his superior, and they blabber among themselves like saying "hey theres' this irritating Chinese guy asking for a coffee when we are still cutting vegetables and watching TV, shall we entertain him?" kind of banter. The superior comes to me, shakes his head and then blabber in Hindi again.
ARRRRGH !!!
In the end I had to use sign language, showing "open" as in seperating my hands, or "closed" as in closing my hands to depict whether the store was open or closed.
Well, anyway to cut the long story short, I got my coffee, 36INR (about sgd1.20), decent Latte.
And guess what, outside the store, the sign read "Open 10am - 10pm"
!!!!!!
posted by Globetrekker @ 1:26 AM
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