dance.yang.dance: COE Chapter 1

Chronicles of Egypt : Chapter 1

Assalamualaikum and a very good day! How are you? Today marks the 1st time I'll be writing about COE. Le grand opening! Wooh!

Today's topic : Language barriers and Charades.

Speaking from my experience, people will react differently to your insufficient knowledge of Arabic words. Mind you, I have NO BASICS whatsoever in Arabic language (minus the ones that's practiced in Malaysia - Ahlan etc.)

From my first year experience (still muka hingus) living in Alexandria, some people are helpful and others will just ignore you. Here's how the story goes...

(Helpful people)

I always love how these people react. They really want to help you! Be it, a certain store or the hospital or even the food you want. They will try to figure out what you want! Usually, these are the friendly folks. Well, if you're with me, we'll probably end up playing charades hehe. There was this one time that my friend and I wanted to go to the big library in Alexandria, the Bibliotheca. For some reason, people here do NOT know what Bibliotheca is..hmm...(They call it by a different name and I was too ignorant to know at that time >___<) So, as I told the driver, he was like "Eh??" (What?) My friend and I repeated a few times so finally I decided to make gestures with my hands and was saying "Book! Book!" The driver was a good sport and said "Well, just stop/tell me when we get there!" In Arabic of course. So we rode in the tram-co and the funny thing was, the place wasn't even that far from where we were, a walking distance really haha! We were somewhat lost. The pak cik was like "Ahhh, Maktabah Iskandariah!" My friend and I were like, "Ohh! Maktabah Iskandariah!!", said thank you and left.

Another story, this was when I wanted to buy sugar from the shop. The lovely old shop owner is really kind. I went there with my derp face.."Ana ayza sugar. -(I want sugar) ~~Sounds slightly disturbing after it's translated~~" She was like..."eh?" And I was like, never mind, I'll look it for myself. As I was browsing, she kept taking one thing after another and asked me if the thing she's holding is what I'm looking for. After some time, she took out the sugar and I was like "YEAH! THAT'S IT!" Then, she asked me to repeat after her..."Sukkar...Sukkar." I got to learn a few words from her as I paid for the sugar. She pointed and made me repeat after her..and so I did. I had a fun time learning! We laughed and I said my salam and goodbyes and left, happy, as I successfully bought sugar.

And some other time, you'll find yourself surrounded by local folks playing charades with you. Well, at least I did. ^_______^

( "I don't give a damn!" type of people)

So we have come to this. My experience...TAXI DRIVERS.

Not all taxi drivers are bad. But there ARE bad taxi drivers. =___=

Before you get in the taxi, as always, you tell the driver the place you want to go. Easy huh. Not really. Some of them would have their Don't-waste-my-time- face on and drive on, leaving you in the dust, literally. Common. VERY VERY common. Well, that's better compared to the taxi drivers on PMS. Yes, apparently, I've experienced them all.

Other times, people would either ignore your existence or just find you a nuisance. Sad but true.

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Okay, so my point is, if you ever find yourself stuck in translation, my greatest advice would be ask or speak politely, play charades, SMILE! You have to have a positive attitude when facing this kind of situations. Smile when you're asking. You don't want the other person to be rude to you, so you SHOULD'NT be rude to them! Lastly, just learn Arabic haha. A reminder to myself too of course. But, I believe that you can and you will pick up a lot of words just by talking to the people in the streets. There will be people kind enough to teach you words so don't worry too much!

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Random picture TIME!!