You are currently browsing the daily archive for April 11th, 2008.
Wake me up on my off day! Ever! Unless you are my aunt waking me up for something urgent, that is.
Was woken up by a friend today, asking me something about tenses and grammar. *Smacks forehead* So she thought I was working. But I told her on Tuesday that I had off till Friday. Never mind that she can’t remember but couldn’t she check the shop, which is just next to hers?!
1300. Woken up and couldn’t get back to sleep! I could have slept longer! It’s been eons since I slept in late alright!
She’s been regularly asking me to correct her sms-es and online conversations with her friends and boyfriend. Like I’m some kind of walking dictionary. I don’t really mind actually if I’m not busy or anything. But it’s getting a little much isn’t it?!
If your English isn’t fantastic, wouldn’t your friends and boyfriend know? I mean, it’s not like your friends would look down on you just because your English isn’t perfect right? It’s not as if they only befriend people who converse in Oxford-certified English.
Besides, it’s not as if her English is atrocious. It’s just some problems with tenses, which most people who speak mainly in Mandarin have problems with. It’s understandable. Why the need to send a message with perfect English when it doesn’t affect the other party much?
It just boils down to her not wanting to seem inferior, thus the need for her to create the impression that she is able to converse in very good English right? Pardon me if I’m wrong but this whole incident just gives me this impression.
I think it’s rather pretentious honestly. I guess everybody to a certain extent, always tries to make a good impression of themselves to others but I thought that only applies to strangers or people you meet for the first time and want to know better? Why carry on that pretense even with your friends? Wouldn’t they know you well already? Well enough to know that your English isn’t perfect and for you to know that they don’t care because theirs most probably isn’t anyway?
I’m not mad at her for treating me like some dictionary or English teacher. I’m more mad about her waking me up! Ha! (which I’ve gotten over anyway by having a nice nap in the evening). But it just seems absurd to me, this whole situation. I don’t get it at all.
Inferiority and superiority. What you lack in a certain aspect, you make up for in another aspect, no?
