The benefits of understanding Chinese

Disclaimer: Ab sofort werde ich versuchen hauptsächlich auf Englisch zu schreiben.

One big benefit in being an Ang Moh who understands a bit Chinese is that you can listen to other people's conversations (ok, currently I can only understand a few words and sometimes short sentence, not the whole conversation), who suspect that you can't understand what they're saying and thus speak more freely.

Earlier this evening, when I came home to my HDB block, 2 young guy (maybe around 20) went into the lift with me. I had a feeling that they were talking about me as they seemed to bit surprised to see a white guy around and also looked at me a bit more than people usually do. On our way up I got the proof that they were talking about me as I understood 2 words in a short sentence. Topic was (of course) a very popular one among the locals, my size Wink. One guy said "他 some-word-I-didn't-understand 大" to the other one. 他(tā) means he, the second word I didn't quite understand, and 大(dà) means big. I suppose that the unknown word was something like very or extremely.

Every now and then I see a guy who is a bit taller than me, the girls are usually very short (from my point of view). So far, I haven't seen a single girl who's bigger than me, only maybe 2-3 (including last year!) who are nearly my size (maybe 1,83-1,85m). 

Rene Modery

Having worked with SharePoint since 2007, Rene has been involved in and responsible for two Asia Pacific wide SharePoint implementations. Equipped with a Master’s degree in Information Systems and various relevant certifications, Rene keeps a keen interest in technology and how it can provide solutions to common problems, but also looks at the "business side of IT". He lives in Singapore with his wife and two cats.

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