One day I was laughing at Cowboy Caleb's post on the totally langa sub-title on pirated Chinese edition of Spider-man 3, and the next thing I know I came face-to-face with a sales consultant with equally bad English at a car showroom. She was obviously more comfortable with Mandarin, when she said, "You doesn't need to change anyting if you take dis package." So we tried to converse with her in Mandarin, but she insisted in speaking English.

Don't the car distributors make sure that their employees can speak reasonably well in English when they hire them, especially when they are selling European cars? If I'm going to part with more than $70,000, surely I would want to be served by someone whom I can understand and who can explain things clearly to me.

I must be bored (or evil, depending how you want to look at it), because instead of leaving, I actually wanted her to do some break-down of the figures for me. So we sat at a table and while she was doing her calculation (with some difficulty, I must add), I could smell her after-smoke stench and noticed her blood-shot eyes. I almost wanted to ask her: "You chiong until very late last night, ah?"

Of course I didn't ask her that. We thanked her and left, wondering if we could take anymore I-is-You-am English.