Learn to speak English
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Someone posted some inappropriate comments on my wife's blog yesterday. Feel free to read it for yourself before continuing on with my post. I've already posted a comment as a rebuttal of sorts to this woman's words, but I feel inclined to post on the subject in general. I'll probably end up offending a lot of people, but I probably do that a lot already.
To: Ariyanna Geigen
It seems you are implying that English speaking people are not very tolerant of people speaking other languages? Well, why should we be? It's one thing to be a tourist and spend a limited amount of time in our country. It's another thing to live in our country and still not learn the language. No one can be expected to learn English or any language within a few weeks or even a few months. But if you decide to live in our country, you should be expected to speak our language. If someone is working in our country, chances are they live in our country. And if you live here, you had better learn to speak English, bottom line. I don't know what world you live in, but where I come from, the world doesn't revolve around me. I don't expect the world to cater to my wants or needs. I spent two years in the Philippines and I learned to speak Filipino within six months. Was it easy? No way. Did I want to give up? Of course. Honestly, it was probably the most frustrating six months of my life. I couldn't communicate with anyone. Everyone made fun of my pathetic attempts to speak their language. I couldn't expect everyone to start speaking English as soon as I got there. I had to work hard until I got a handle on it. I didn't start crying because someone was rude to me. That's life. Suck it up and deal with it. If someone is honestly trying to learn our language, fantastic! The problem I have is with the people who have been here for years and don't even try. Everyone expects us to cater to them, because we do. And when we don't we're "rude Americans." Speaking of the woman in Heather's post, I don't know how she got a job in a customer service position. If the majority of people who came into my store were English speaking, I wouldn't hire someone who couldn't speak English. Whoever owns that A&F could have lost a sale because of the communication barrier. Would I expect someone to hire me for a Spanish speaking position? Hell no! Anyone would laugh at the thought. But because we're America, we're expected to conform to everyone else. Screw that. I'm sick and tired of having to wait through Spanish options whenever I call a business. You're in our country, speak our language. No other countries conform to everyone else, why should we? Call me insensitive or a jerk, but I didn't expect people to speak my language when I went to their country and neither should anyone else.
Lastly, in response to your comments about the "hard life," you need to lose the idea that all Americans have it easy and everything is given to them on a silver platter. I've worked my butt off since I was legally old enough to have a job. I stopped "working" for two years to be a missionary in a foreign country. That was probably the hardest work I've ever done and I didn't even get paid any money to do it, in fact I had to pay for it myself. I still work hard to provide for myself and my wife. We didn't get those flip-flops because we won't wear anything that's not an over-price piece of crap. We got them because they were the only option we had. You don't know me and you don't know my wife. Acting like you do makes you look ignorant.
posted by Matt @ 10/26/2005 11:04:00 PM,
Viva Las Vegas
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
I couldn't resist, I had to use that title. So in celebration of our two-month anniversary (what we've dubbed our two-monthiversary) Heather and I took a trip to Las Vegas for the weekend. Our monthiversary was actually on Thursday the 20th. On Friday I took a half day off from work and we left for Vegas. I won't expound on the obstacles that we faced as we left for Vegas. I'm sure Heather will go into those details on her blog. We'll just suffice it to say that there were obstacles, and leave it at that. We got to Vegas Friday evening. We stayed at a La Quinta about 8 miles from the strip. It's not the most fancy place in the world, but we liked it. It was nice and it wasn't too expensive. We were excited to find out that Vegas has a restaurant called Pick-Up Stix. It's an Asian food place that has really good stuff. We ate there on our honeymoon in San Diego. I highly recommend the House Chicken if you ever find one of their restaurants. We spent Friday night walking the strip. We watched the fountain show at the Bellagio, it was amazing. I got some nice pictures. Then we went to Caesar's Palace and found the mall inside. We spent most of our time in the mall looking for a place that sold flip-flops. Heather wore some shoes that started hurting her feet. Finding flip-flops in a mall is apparently more difficult than one would think. We finally found some for $18 at Abercrombie & Fitch. They didn't even have them on the floor, we had to ask and they got them out of the back. This is another story I'm sure Heather will go into detail about. We ate at The Cheesecake Factory for dinner. By that time we were both dead tired, I think it was almost 1AM. We started walking back to the Monte Carlo where we parked. Keep in mind that it takes about 10-15 minutes to get through the mall and the casino to get back out to the strip. We walked all the way out of Caesar's Palace and were in front of the fountains at the Bellagio when I realized I left my camera on the table at The Cheesecake Factory. I called them and they said they had it. We walked all the way back through the casino and the mall back to the restaurant (which is at the very end of the mall, by the way), got my camera and proceeded to walk back to the car. We finally got there and drove to the hotel. It was pretty late by then.
I'll add a couple photos to this post later. And stay tuned for the next installment.
posted by Matt @ 10/25/2005 04:39:00 PM,
Downtown Philly
Thursday, October 13, 2005
So, I've decided not to finish my last story. It would just be another rant like the first, so I'm just gonna keep it to myself. I'll tell you about my recent trip. Last Wednesday, I took a trip to Philadelphia for the annual ADA Trade Show. These things are usually held in a convention center and everyone in the industry has a booth to show off their new stuff and to try to sell crap to dentists and others in the industry. Pretty boring stuff. If it had been a car show or a computer expo or something like that, it would've been much more exciting. I was put in a room with someone else from my company that I didn't know. That could've sucked, but he turned out to be a cool guy. I wasn't going to the show as a salesperson, I was only there for technical support. I spent most of my time standing around. You have no idea how long an 8-hour day can be until you've spent one doing practically nothing but standing. I was pretty much in a bad mood the entire time. The show lasted 4 days and I was ready to leave by the morning of the first day. I didn't want to be there in the first place, I was volunteered for it. And I missed Heather. It was hard being away for that long. But, here are some things we did to entertain ourselves while at the show:
- Glued quarters to the floor. This wasn't as effective as it should be. The floors were carpeted, so if someone tried hard enough, they could usually rip the quarter right off the carpet. It was still entertaining to watch people try and fail.
- Taped a $1 bill to the tile floor of the booth across from us. Only a few people tried and failed before someone ripped the whole thing off and then put the tape back where it was on the floor.
- Threw the mini footballs we were giving away all over the place. One guy even tried hitting a sign all the way on the other side of the building until one of the security officers asked him to stop.
- At the end of the last day we took crap that we were giving away and tried to trade for things that other booths were giving away. We got some Trident gum samples, some pens and some other crap. The coolest was the pen that lights up.
- Spent a ton of money on food. The company allots you up to $45 a day for food. You can eat pretty well off of $45 a day.
- At night if I wasn't out getting something to eat, I was back at the hotel watching episodes of Firefly on my laptop. Great show!
posted by Matt @ 10/13/2005 08:41:00 AM,
