April 30th, 2010

Welcome to Taiwan's premier English-only nightclub

One of my friends is fluent in both Mandarin and English. When she lived in Taiwan, she paid a visit to a nightclub whose gimmick was that you had to speak English. The target audience was not foreigners but rather native Taiwanese who learned English as a second language. My friend didn’t have any problems with this rule, but many of the guests appeared to be struggling to conform. My friend paid a visit to the ladies’ room, and there she overheard a conversation between two other guests. (They were speaking in Mandarin. Apparently, the rules aren’t enforced in the bathroom.) “There’s this cute guy out on the dance floor, but I don’t know what to say to him. My English is not very good.”

My friend told her, “That’s okay. His English isn’t very good either.”

Author

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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