Quote:
Originally Posted by airfooter
Bottom line, there are lots of places to get WVO - the oriental places are not always the best and the language barrier seems to be a problem.
|
We eat a lot of take-out from the various Asian restaurants in the 'hood.
We are also blessed with friends who speak Mandarin (kid's friends adopted from China, parents in Chinese school) and Vietnamese (same thing except the kid also attends).
So with a properly prepared 7 year old as my translator, I had NO problem communicating with my neighborhood egg roll purveyor.
They thought I was weird before, and now they know it, but hey! I was culturally competent to bring a cute little interpreter whose presence shows respect...weirdo with manners, is what I THINK they were saying.
But I don't care what insults were being tossed my way. The younger generation that speaks perfect English told me that the rendering guy is a pushy (monolingual) salesman who locked the parents into a contract for more disposal than they need...so by comparison they love me.
Point being, where I live, it helps a lot in building relationships with restaurant workers that I speak Spanish and can hook up with three Asian languages (Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai)--but every time a new relative comes from the old country, they look sideways at me. Until the promotion from garbage duty, that is...
