Communication Problems

I rarely write about my work, partly because I don't want to cross any boundaries but mostly because it probably wouldn't make very interesting reading. I meet some really nice people in the course of my work, but sadly I meet plenty of the other kind too. I always try to be helpful but is not unusual to get shouted at and called names, you would be surprised how nasty seemingly ordinary people can be about the most trivial things. I have even had to deal with threats of physical harm. So you can imagine my confusion when an Indian gentleman approached me with a broad smile and began to remove all his outer clothing. Hat, scarf, two pairs of gloves, coat, padded waistcoat etc, etc. It wasn't an especially cold day but it seemed that he was dressed for an Arctic expedition. It is rather unusual for customers to remove their clothing, they are not usually with us long enough for that, so despite his smiles I was a little weary of his motives.


Thankfully he stopped disrobing before it became embarrassing, but then I was faced with another problem. He began talking to me and I didn't have a clue what he was saying. He repeated himself several times but I was making no progress at all. I asked him what language he was speaking (thinking I could perhaps find someone else to converse with him) but he informed me that he was speaking English! A very long 20 minutes followed with lots of smiles, nodding and waving of arms but not a lot of progress in terms of communication. He had brought out all sorts of documents from his pockets. He showed me pictures of his wife and children and he taught me how to pronounce their names. He showed me a train ticket indicating that he had been to London the weekend before and a series of mimes suggested that he had visited Madam Tussauds, Buckingham Palace and other landmarks. After 20 minutes, I knew his name and job title from a business card, I knew the names of his wife and children and I knew what he had done with his leisure time in the last week or so but I hadn't got a clue why he had come to see me! 


At that point we were joined by a second smiling Indian gentleman, also dressed for the Arctic. He possessed a few more words of recognisable English and over the next ten minutes the pair told me that they were here for two weeks for a training course, but they both lived in India. They had enjoyed their stay here very much and they wanted to find out as much as possible about our town and how different businesses worked so they had come in to have a look around. The first man had just stopped for a chat and he had showed me the pictures of his family because he missed them very much. They left still smiling and promised to come and see me again next year when they are back in England. It was rather a surreal experience, but it is something I will remember with a warm smile, it was much better than being shouted at!

The Differences Between Men and Women

I met a really nice man a couple of weeks ago. We had an interesting chat about all sorts of things including trains. He observed that men tend to obsess about things and women tend to obsess about people. That made a lot of sense to me because Robbie notices things such as minor changes if product packaging, bus numbers, car numbers, the design of post poxes and lamp posts, that sort of thing. I hardly ever notice those things, but I notice if someone is wearing odd socks, looks sad, or seems worried, things that Robbie  would probably not notice. 


Yesterday I received further confirmation that men and women have a different way of looking at things. My son announced to me that his English homework had been to consider gender stereotypes and to analyse the way that Robbie and I use language, then to present his observations to the class. Apparently is caused his teacher considerable amusement when he told the class that I'd told him that men almost always consider their cars (and trains) to be female, but I know for sure that my car is male because it is unreliable and expensive to maintain! He went on to tell the class that our use of language indicated that Robbie is submissive and I am dominant because I use imperatives and Robbie uses tactics such as hedging, fillers and hesitation in response. I have to admit that it feels a bit creepy to think that our use of language gives away so much about us (assuming his observations are accurate) we will have to be more cautious in future!

Normal Service is Resumed

A series of problems have conspired to keep me from writing the blog for almost two weeks. The first was lack of internet access courtesy of AOL, but more of that later. We had a very stressful few days before we finally got back online, but then I was ill. I don't know exactly what was wrong, no doubt the doctor would say it was a 'virus' but whatever it was I felt absolutely dreadful and I spent several days in bed. I am feeling better but I hope nobody else gets it because it really wiped me out.

On a Thursday morning two weeks ago our internet connection failed at about 8am. It seemed that no internet signal was reaching the router but our telephone was working perfectly, so I wondered if there was a problem with our cables. I popped out to buy new cables but when I tried them there was still no signal, I even tried a different router but still there was nothing. I got the line checked and there was nothing wrong with the line, so there was no alternative we had to ring AOL. Robbie rang them first, but he had to give up on the call after half an hour because the man would not deviate from his script and was no help whatsoever. I hate having to talk to call centres in foreign countries at the best of times, but AOL have taken poor service to an all time low. 


Anyway after over two hours of being passed from one unhelpful person to the next totally useless person I was reduced to tears of frustration. Not one of them spoke good enough English to understand me and I had extreme difficulty understanding them. To make matters worse they kept putting me on hold and playing dreadful music down the phone. My blood pressure must have been off the scale! They couldn't solve my problem, they didn't even seem to care about it. At one point they told Robbie that they could not check our internet signal because their equipment was broken and they had no idea when it would be working again! I told them that I had suffered enough and I wanted to leave AOL - NOW!! They treated me with total contempt and disconnected my call, but after calling back and queueing for an eternity they finally gave us the mac code needed to transfer to another provider.


We now have a better and faster internet service at less than half the price charged by AOL and as an added bonus  their call centre staff speak and understand English! So normal service has been resumed and I will be able to bring the blog up to date.

Bad Planning 28.11.07

Well, once again it seems I can't win! Sam occasionally tells me off for embarrassing him by writing about him on the blog, but Emily was grumbling at the weekend because I haven't written about her for ages! Hopefully today's entry will put that right.

Emily seems to have settled into university life fairly happily, she is working very hard and always seems to have a deadline to meet. Her English course demands a lot of reading, she has always been an avid reader but I think she finds it hard to muster much enthusiasm about one or two of the set books. When I saw her at the weekend she was struggling with 'Mrs Dalloway' and she gave me a very complicated explanation about the style of writing and why she finds it hard to get into. It made me very grateful that I am free to read whatever I like these days. I'm a bit like Sam in some ways because I often prefer to read non fiction books, but I enjoy crime fiction of various kinds, Kathy Reichs is my favourite these days.

Emily is doing French as her second subject, and that requires a lot of reading too. Some of the French reading material looks really grim, but I'm probably being unfair, I hated French when I was at school but it was a compulsory subject up to 'O' Level so I just had to grin and bear it. I don't know where Emily got her flair for languages from, but it certainly wasn't me!

We are lucky because we see Emily most weekends. I think she misses Oreo more than the rest of us, but it is always nice to see her and to catch up with her news. On the subject of missing things, Oreo will be missing his manhood very soon, I rang the vet today to make an appointment for the 'deed to be done'. He will be six months old on 20th December but it doesn't seem long since he first came to live with us, he was such a cute little kitten. 20th December is also Sam's birthday (a bit of bad planning on my part!) and he will be a teenager at last. He has been telling me that he is almost a teenager for so long that is has almost become his theme tune. I have always felt sorry for Sam because his birthday and Christmas are so close together, but we try to make it special for him. I feel a bit sorry for myself too, because I have 5 family birthdays very close to Christmas, including Sam's and Emily's, it is a very expensive time of year!

Sweet and Innocent! 02.10.07

Emily left the following message about her first couple of days at university.

I registered with my department today and my supplementary subject got sorted as well so :D i am doing french as long as all is well. i got my safety bus pass today, and i have signed up for the english society and the concert band - it's one of those things where you go along and see if you like it and then join so :) i might need my flute though in this case! I've ordered my bus pass and just need to pick it up on friday. it's okay in the meantime though because the bus day saver is only three pounds - i used it today! :) i love you all and miss youuuuu!!! i hope my baby oreo is okay too!

Oreo is ok, but he nearly drove me mad earlier on. He had a very energetic few hours and when he had given up on tormenting the dog he started on me. He ran up my leg to steal my breakfast, kept stealing the washing as I sorted it into different loads, jumped right into the kitchen swing bin and kept hanging on to the iron lead while I was ironing. In the end I shut him out of the room and he kept jumping up at the door handle trying to get back in. He is a determined little devil. Finally he settled down and by the time I took these photos he look all sweet and innocent!