Mobile Phone Cards for Sale!
Just a quick report on an incident I had a few moments ago. I went to our local convenient store to pay some bills and also add credit to my mobile phone. I approached the situation quick confidently and formulated the sentence in my head. With my best effort I said (in Chinese) “I want to pay this bill AND I want to sell a mobile phone credit”. After the initial confusion on the poor cashier’s face she handed me the book of mobile phone vouchers so that I could choose the one I wanted. It was at that moment I realized that I had said “sell” and not “buy”. The phonics of these two words are identical “mai” but the tones differ. Sell – mai having a downward tone . Buy – mai has an down-up tone v. I started laughing at myself and entered into such a giggling state that I forget to utter the well rehearsed line “Sorry, my Chinese is not very good”. They say that a healthy person is one who can laugh at himself and his own mistakes. For 15 minutes today I was in a very healthy state of mind :)
