An intercultural experience that made an impression on me happened during a youth exchange in Malaysia. I was a Chinese student helping my father at the local 99speed market with the grocery shopping. Until we hit the check out counter everything went smoothly. A Malay woman on the other end of the counter was speaking to me in her language and I knew I was in over my head. But I knew her words were gibberish, because I didn't understand the language. I answered with something entirely random, as I did not know how to respond, only knowing that the pressure of the moment demanded an answer.
She kept scanning items again, until she got to a bottle of cooking oil before I understood. She was just asking if the oil too was part of what we had bought. Suddenly, there was an elderly Indian woman who popped out in the front of the line, saying that the oil was hers.
The cashier continued to talk to her colleague in Malay, or so it seemed — a tone that perhaps showed some anger or frustration. I spoke a language I didn’t understand, and there was no tension, no feel of uncomfortable selffulness in the air. I couldn’t make out the actual words, but her tone, made me feel that I had done something wrong. In fact, maybe she was just tired of all of it, or maybe it was her fault, or maybe I was. To make matters worse, they lacked understanding of the other person completely.
Not a very serious event, yet I still remember it, very vividly playing in my mind. At 18 years old, I still think about that moment, how it transpired, and I am still not sure what to make of the place I felt so wildly out of place in at that moment in time. Beyond the misunderstanding, it marked me because it showed how expediently faults can happen when crossed up in languages and countries.
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