In Reply to: "All the girls wanted to know"? posted by Oldtimer on July 13, 2006 at 16:24:47:
You described what I went through in Japan and Mexico as "unwanted attention, but it's not hurtful". This sort of thing is actually what chinese american is whinning about. read it again.
"I get people speaking pigeon English and using sign language on me for half-an-hour while I speak without a trace of an accent; I get patronized; I get people trying to impress me with a Thai phrase, a Chinese phrase, a Korean phrase, a Japanese phrase; people mention they know another Chinese person called “Lee something” and ask me if I know him; they assume I eat with chopsticks, practice martial arts, know herbal infusions to help their erectile dysfunction and ask me for advice; they think I am industrious when actually I am lazy; I get credited with things the Malaysians or Vietnamese and even the Arabs do or did; people tell me mixed up generic Asian anecdotes and expect me to be identify with them."
Sounds to me like mostly innocent, infantile stuff and not "no tichee, no laundry". That's why I said "deal with it".
Oh yeah, and the attention wasn't because Jesus and the angels had blond hair and blue eyes--I don't think any of those prostitutes in Japan were thinking about Jesus and in southern Mexico my feeling was that they just couldn't get over how unusual our looks were. It was like we were from Mars not heaven.
And the Peruvians thought Debs kids were literal angels? HA! Take some of those witnessing tales (like Deborahs) with a grain or shaker of salt and allow for a lot of confused thinking and mistranslation on her part :>)