Wednesday, December 01, 2004

A funny guy

Today while in front of the Ukrainian Parliament building, the Rada, I heard a man talking into his cell phone in a thick British accent telling someone on the other end that the crowd wasn’t all that large and he would call them later. He was a short man standing next to a guy next to a video camera on a tripod. This guy’s accent was the British kind where the Ls are pronounced like Ws. Things like “wowd” though there is still some bit of an L there I think.

Anyway, I walked over to this fellow English speaker—pause for Churchill: "Two peoples separated by a common language”—and said to him, “Isn’t this wild?” He responded rather therapeutically, “I don’t know, is it?” Having inserted myself this far, I didn’t retreat. “Well, I’ve been living in it for about 10 days now.”

I happened to be carrying a camera to take some pictures and he glanced over at it and said, “Who are you with?” I said, “A consulting company here.” He said something I think like “oh” and went back to punching buttons on his cell phone.

I thought later that what he said must have been some kind of code. And I think I deciphered it. It meant, “Are you my peer so you can talk to me?” It looked like my answer was unsatisfactory.

These types of people just make me laugh.

No comments: