In graduate school I had a Turkish lab mate who would boast about his English. "The Turkish accent allows us to speak better English than Americans." The next day there was a note on my bench from him:
Bred,
The business office called.
Sali
At least he spelled my name the way he pronounced it. The same thing happens here. Often when someone hears my name they just start cracking up. Last Friday a lab upstairs celebrated their grand opening. Here is a conversation I have had more than once. (A side note: syllables in Korean are consonant-vowel-consonant or consonant-vowel. My name is pronounced Ba-rah-da-lee)
"Ah, excuse me. Your name tag says
Ba-rah-da-lee Baker," says a young lady who can barely control her laughter. "Can I call you that?"
"Of course. That's my name."
"You're a Bread Baker!" she exclaims as she nearly collapses from laughing. Their English is good enough to know bread baker, but it is not good enough to differentiate Brad from bread. Awesome.
I also have a pronunciation problem with taxi cab drivers. I work at the Korea Institute for Science and Technology commonly known as KIST. There is another institute, the Korean Advanced Institute for Science and Technology known as KAIST. My institute has a short i vowel sound. The advanced institute has a long i vowel sound. KAIST is more prestigious (it is advanced after all). KAIST is in the news more. Indeed, science is on the news so much here that the camera crews bring actors to play scientists when reporting on something at work. Absolutely amazing.
Anyway, everytime I tell someone I work at KIST, they say, "KAIST, very prestigious." This has led to my new motto, "F KAIST," which is always thought but never spoken (okay, sometimes spoken softly). But then one night I gave my business card to a cab driver to take me home.
"Oh, KAIST. Nay, nay." Nay is yes in Korean. He took me home no problem, and I realized it was a pronunciation problem just like my name. Most Koreans English isn't good enough to differentiate KIST from KAIST. Good, from then on I would just say I worked at KAIST and save everyone the effort of trying to explain the difference.
The next night I went to a dance club with a friend. The dance clubs here are amazing, but I am really too old for that scene. Still, dancing with Koreans is an absolute blast, so I went. The place was packed. My friend runs into someone he knows and they start dancing. I drink my beer wedged near two tables which gives me a place to stand as masses of humanity try to move to and from the bar.
"Hello," she said as she tried to get by.
"Hello," I am such a witty conversationalist. A few minutes later...
"Hello, again. I am trying to find my friends," she explained as she tried to retrace her path.
"Good luck," I said this time adding a smile. A few minutes later...
"I still haven't found my friends."
"I haven't seen them," I said as I watch her go back to the bar for the third time.
The table next to me ordered some drinks that came in an ice bucket. In a rather rapid succession this is what followed. A Korean woman came up to me, danced for about 10 seconds, rubbed my head, grabbed a piece of ice, put it in her mouth and kissed me transferring the ice cube in the process. And then she was gone. I just stood there in shock partly due to what had just happened and partly due to the fact that the ice cube was freezing. Apparently, an ice cube in the mouth can be rather debilitating. Fortunately, I was shaken from my stupor.
"Hey, I found one of my friends." Indeed she had. I found myself talking to two of the more attractive women at the club. Yeah, life makes sense. "So what do you do?" she asks me as we begin to dance.
"I work at KAIST."
Her eyes go wide. "You work over an hour away! Really? I used to travel back and forth from KAIST and KIST. That's a long trip.We are chemical engineers. I used to work for Pfizer."
I've tried to calculate the odds of me telling the first person I work at KAIST to be a chemical engineer at a dance club who had worked at both KAIST and KIST, but my head nearly explodes. This place is absolutely crazy... in a good way generally. Indeed, I might blog in the near future about an actual experiment since I am meeting more and more scientists.
