7/12/2006

Tinatile??

Being an Indian with not many options for lunch, most of the lunches happen at burger joints like McDonald's or burger king. Don't get me wrong, I am not a vegetarian but somehow my office is in a peculiarly Chinese neighborhood where experimenting can be fatal. I have tried a couple of times things that I had never tried before. Last time I had lunch at such a Chinese/Vietnamese/Japanese joint, the soup bowl was similar to a living pond from which you could fish out living thing possible. It had clams, shrimps, fish, crabs and some of the things I hardly remember name of.

Coming back to Burger joints or similar fast food joints, they have a peculiar process defined even for asking question. That's gone so standard that some day some chimpanzees could be trained to take orders. Well its something not new to me but today's incident opened my eyes a little more. I was off to Burger King and ordered a menu number x with coke and medium fries (I tend to tell whatever they want to avoid time wastage). But the conversation doesn't stop here, she asks me

"tinatile" (she was a Chinese I guess),
I said "What!!"
"tinatile"
I again "What!!!!!!" (With all my ears focusing only on this one word in English)
"tinatile" (what the heck, C'mon if someone is not understanding a sentence their process should have a clause to re-phrase it with some different words but no!!)
I said "I just want this and nothing else."
Well that was the golden answer and then I understood what she was asking was "Anything Else?"

And the last part of the process I kind of guessed rather than making out the Chinese accent.
"For here or to go?".

By this process memorized for all the major joints I think people should be able to answer them in any part of the world. Ask the same questions in Mandarin and I'll shoot the answers now.

My problem would be solved but I just wonder how these people's reflexes in real life be. Guess if the boy friend asked her for a kiss, I bet the answer would be Medium or large? :)

2 comments:

ASSET said...

i am still trying to figure out, how cud "Anything else" sound like "Tinatile".

Asset

Aps said...

No idea what so ever..