Sunday, March 4, 2007

Lost in Translation

I was reading an old issue of FHM Philippines and there was this interview with some filipino guy and he was talking about all his favourite stuff. "What's something you couldn't live without?" "Oh that's easy, its my PS2, straight out. I could play it for hours." Straight out? Who says that?

I remember as a kid, my grandmother would offer me something to eat. Often, I wasn't hungry or I just didn't feel like eating. The conversation would go like this:

grandma: "Do you want some?"
me: "No thanks."
grandma: "You don't like it?"
me: "Well I like it, I just don't want any."
I always thought it was funny how not wanting to eat something automatically meant I didn't like it. It was just recently that I finally realized that something probably got lost in translation. If I didn't feel like explaining why I didn't like something, the conversation went like this:

grandma: "Do you want some?"
me: "No thanks."
grandma: "You don't like it?"
me: "No."
grandma talking to someone else: "Oh Oliver doesn't like this. Its good, he should try it."
someone else: "Maybe he just doesn't know its good. Oliver, do you want to try this?"
me: "No thanks."
someone else: "You don't like it?"
Right back to where we started. Has this ever happened to someone else? I just remember getting really annoyed at these conversations.

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