Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

Aug 30 2001

When I got off of work last night I noticed that i…

When I got off of work last night I noticed that it was much darker outside than usual. It turned out that it was pouring rain, so I left my motorcycle at the office and jumped in a taxi to take over to Warner Village to meet Doug and Donovan. The news report on the radio in the cab was talking about the recent drought and how the Feitsui Reservoir was running dry, which was pretty funny to listen to in the middle of such a downpour. It took 45 minutes to cover a distance I could have covered on my bike in 10-15 minutes, such was the traffic. Someone had covered the roof of the taxi with autographs, although I didn’t see any names I recognized. Maybe they thought they were famous, or maybe it was a group of those flash-in-the-pan ‘stars’ the Taiwanese media is always on about, all distressingly average-cute-daughter-of-a-rich-influential-friend types without an modicum of talent.

Doug and Donovan were already at the restaurant, wading through the usual miserable service to try to get a table. Later on Dean got there, having spent his mandatory 45 minutes in a cab, and we finally sat down to eat.

I told them that I appreciated the offer to head up the magazine, but that I felt I couldn’t leave my current job just yet. They are convinced, however, that they have to launch yesterday in order to get the foreigner demographic and then latch onto their main audience of Chinese readers. They both seem like good guys, and we talked and drank until midnight. Maybe in the future I’ll get a chance to work with them, but I just can’t commit to the venture right now. Having made the decision, however, I do feel a lot better. I think. There’s always going to be could-have-been thoughts popping up, more and more so as life goes on. It’s unavoidable. I hope I’ve made the right choice.

Anyway, speaking of my lovely job, a couple of days ago my boss came by and said I should stop being so rude in my company-wide emails. What happens is, when I notice a mistake that everyone is making, I will send an email to everyone telling them to correct it. I try to be short and sweet in these emails, e.g. “A is incorrect. B, rather, is correct, ok?” Apparently someone, not a native English speaker, had complained about the ‘ok?’ part of my message. They felt it was “rude” and “totally uncalled for”.

Huh? I mean, I usually talk to foreigners in English and to Chinese in Chinese, so I don’t really know what kind of English Chinese people think of as rude, but when I asked my boss this question, she took some serious umbrage, saying “Don’t challenge me!” She said this in the same tone as Norfolk in A Man for All Seasons, when he says “Are you challenging me, Cromwell?”

Fortunately I don’t have many opportunities to communicate with people here. If I did, I might not have even lasted this long. I honestly did not know that “ok” was a four-letter word, though. I’ll just stop using it, ok? Oops.

In any case, do you know what this means? This means, if I can find someone to fill in for me, I can go play in Oz for a month! What do you say, Australia? You ready for a stroppy dag like me, goin’ walkabout and thrashing at mozzies in the bush? As Shauna would say, Ooh, er…

posted by Poagao at 6:53 am  

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment