Last week when I looked more closely at the grocery store, I realized why I’ve been cursing my Taiwanese washing machine since I got here. Upon arrival, I purchased fabric softener instead of detergent because I didn’t look carefully enough at the labels. One jug of detergent later, all my clothes were clean and I was feeling dumb - that was six months spent grumbling and thinking that in Taiwan clothes never got clean (natural state of affairs, or something of the sort).
Anyone else had similar stupid problems and care to share to make me feel less dumb?
I felt SO stupid the other day. I came to this traffice light, slowed down and saw quite a few cars and scooters zipping past me from the back, with one or two even honking at me. Bloody hell, when I realised I stopped at a red light.
A roommate of mine, while taking a rapid shower when late for work one morning, accidentally used baby oil instead of shampoo. What made it funnier was that there was no shampoo left to fix the problem.
A young nephew stayed with me for three trouble packed months, which included him getting plastered almost daily and on one occasion taking a swing at me, which saw him promptly on his arse gasping for air.
After blowing all his loot in Vietnam and repaying me for the scoot he lost while pissed, he was living off an oily rag. Then one day he gleefully returned from the local shop smugly declaring those “stupid fuckers can’t spell whiskey!” I watched him open and damn near drain that Whisby bottle in one stupid gulp before he realised his folly. Hilarious!
About 4 years ago when I first started studying Chinese I finally got up enough courage to use a bit of it in a store in Shida. Went through the whole “qing wen yi shi” bit to ask where the wallets were (皮包 pi bao). What I ended up asking is where the bao pi (包皮) were. When the sales girl turned red and started giggling with her friends I got in a huff and thought they were laughing at my Chinese.
Later I found out “bao pi” meant foreskin. I never went back.
[quote=“bushibanned”]About 4 years ago when I first started studying Chinese I finally got up enough courage to use a bit of it in a store in Shi-Da. Went through the whole “qing wen yi shi” bit to ask where the wallets were (皮包 pi bao). What I ended up asking is where the bao pi (包皮) were. When the sales girl turned red and started giggling with her friends I got in a huff and thought they were laughing at my Chinese.
Later I found out “bao pi” meant foreskin. I never went back.[/quote]
Same thing happened to me, mixing up pi bao with bao pi, except it was with my wife’s friends.
