Eshin Direct

I said to my friend that I hated bitching about expat behaviour on my blog… and I do… but not enough to stop doing it. This incident just really highlights the communicational frustation that probably results day in and day out with expats and Hong Kong being a world city…

I was sitting in Illy when this guy comes in looking for the vodka bar in that Russian place. He asked where it was and the staff didn’t really know where it was… so they told him that they didn’t really know where he was talking about. His response was “You don’t even know where a place is in the same building?” (apparently he knew it was in this building) in quite a condescending tone. In my defense, I actually called out to the guy to tell him where it was but he didn’t hear me. This was actually important because after I heard his change in tone, I didn’t really feel the need to help him anymore. I imagine the staff at Illy felt the same because when he left, he was none the wiser about where the vodka bar was.

Expats who don’t speak Chinese are getting fewer (and I am one of them), but still feel a sense of frustration when we can’t get the point across. Perhaps we’re spoiled… with how easy it is sometimes to not speak Cantonese. But then, I think about if I were in London and some person asked me in Romanian where a place was… and then proceeded to get angry with me if I couldn’t tell him where a place was. I’d tell the guy to take hike.