Robertson Tribe Updates

I have a love/hate relationship with McDonald’s here in HKG. It’s nice to have a piece of “normal” in a life of really, really different, especially for the kiddos.

However, when you don’t speak the language, ordering can be a challenge. They get my order wrong every.single.time. Then you have to convince them to put it all on one tray, or at the least two, because I can not manage three or four trays with all the kids while I navigate the busiest McD’s ever. They hate to pile things up on the trays. They just keep pulling out more and more trays and get upset with me when I reach over and pile stuff up on the tray. Finding a place for all of us to sit together is another issue, and we usually end up sharing chairs or I stand, or something equally fun.

I met my friend and her daughter at the mall the other day, and for reasons unknown to me, my first choice of restaurants was closed for remodeling. They were open the day before (!!!!), but closed the day I met them. Ugh. One of my crew will eat noodles or rice (and enjoy it, that is) but the rest are still getting used to the Asian staple. That narrowed down many of the choices in the food court. Needless to say, we ended up at that “Scottish place”, as my friend called it, trying to use code. We managed to find a cluster of seats where we could sit and I prepared myself for battle at the order counter. When I got there, joy of joys, I got a supervisor/trainer who spoke quite a bit of english. The angels sang…I’m quite sure, for I heard them in my head. She got my order totally correct. It truly was a miracle. People, that just doesn’t happen to me. After piling my food on two trays (some things just can’t be changed), I walked back to the table triumphantly, only to find that other customers had cut into our area and taken three seats. That is common here. A seat is a seat, no matter where it is. It was ok though, because they got my order right!!! Everyone enjoyed their meal, and I went home with a smile on my face.

As I was cleaning out my bag after returning home, I found my receipt from that “Scottish place”. I looked closely at it and realized the items were all written in english AND chinese. HELLO?! I thought to myself, “I can save this treasure, stick it in my wallet, and hand it to the next person who waits on me since my children get the same thing every time we go”. Are you following me here? Thanks to my “cheat sheet”, we will get the right order every.single.time.

Brilliant, eh?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 6:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.