你一直在玩

I was not surprised at all, when C sent me a message via MSN yesterday afternoon: “Please don’t talk to me tomorrow”.
“You wish!” I replied.
“I will not speak tomorrow, except for online talk.” C continued.
“I shall talk to you tomorrow.” I was determined, in a brave way.

And here comes the English-speaking-only-day, finally, after so much uneasiness and uncertainties. Today is the day, when all small talks in Chinese are constrained to instant messengers, or…geographically, in the bathroom(s).

We knew the boss was getting serious about it, when she held up a tiny paper box(regular shape, not piggy-like), announcing “5 rmb per Chinese sentence.”@_@, It WAS a money-collector! My wallet must have shaken frantically at that time.
I guess this American lady has always been quite unhappy with our small talks and laughs every day, while she could only sit there in the block next to ours, barely understanding anything in Chinese. Then she came up with this horrible idea, that there should be one day in a week when everybody could only speak English…

Extraordinarily silent…I can hear mouse clicks, and if you put a clock here, I bet we can all hear its ticks! Nobody talks.

Desperately, we turned to things other than verbal communication for help.
Good point no. 1: When I arrived in the morning, E mouthed “zao” to me, and I mouthed the sound back. Yeah, we don’t SPEAK Chinese.
Good point no. 2: Then I looked at S: she was sitting there giggling. I looked right into her eyes…raised my eyebrows a little bit, and made a face. Wow she got it! Indeed, using eye contact is a key point.
Good point no. 3: Chinglish. As early as Wednesday, we started to conduct some research in the field of Chinglish, and we really dug it a little bit too deep…Now I’ve grasped the following sentences and will be able to use them whenever possible: “give me see see” “no give” “people mountain people sea” “one car come one car go two car pengpeng people die “…
The last but not the least, the safest way to keep our wallets intact is…DON’T SPEAK! As C said today:”Sorry, I can’t speak! I’m chewing a gum!”

heart flower angry open…aren’t we?

OK, a song from No Doubt: Don’t speak.