Yesterday i had a rather interesting experience - the precursor to what happened was that there was a Chinese (as in, PRC) girl seated in the seat in front of me in the train, who was not sure when her stop would come. Armed with the timetable, i got her attention and let her look at the timetable. She asked me where i was from and i said S'pore, and she was like oh no wonder we look similar. That's somewhat besides the point, but anyways what i am getting at is that i made a conscious effort to not speak Mandarin, just because i didn't want to.
The experience itself was that after reaching a certain ulu train station i had to take a tram from, there was this elderly Asian man who saw me and immediately went up to me and asked me something in some undecipherable Chinese tongue - i guess cos again, we looked similar. Anyways initially i had half a mind to feign ignorance, but eventually uttered some words in Mandarin which caused his eyes to light up and so the rest of the conversation continued in the said language (of course with much difficulty on my part).
Turns out he was stranded cos he had missed a connecting transport back home and didn't speak any of the local languages. So i ended up helping him by providing English-to-Mandarin translation through the tram and subsequently a train, before leaving him to take a connecting train. En route i learnt a bit more about his fascinating history (or at least whatever i could gather - i was usually just nodding while understanding only 80% at most of what he was saying), and before i said goodbye to him we exchanged contacts, and if he ever ends up in S'pore maybe we can meet up again...
Well, i hope he found his way back home. And on my part, well, maybe speaking Mandarin isn't all that bad...
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