Cyril and Kumar were talking about the defrost feature of the freezer in our lab.
Me: Hey hey, English please :D I can't understand lar *grin*
God knows how rare and how hard it is for me to manja like this for the sake of a serious issue like this which has been on my mind for the past 2 months.
Cyril rejected the idea and laughed it off.
Me: But I can't learn from my surrounding working environment if I can't understand what you guys are discussing in Tamil.
Cyril: If you're asking me to change that means you're a dictator! You dictate what language I use to communicate.
Me: No, I am asking if you would take the initiative to speak in English when you guys are talking about lab stuff so that I can understand and learn, too.
Cyril: You can ask me to translate for you.
Me: But isn't that more time-consuming? I have to ask you to translate for me everything about lab stuff every time you talk about them in Tamil. I will miss out so many things to learn simply because I have to depend on translation.
Cyril: Hey, I am being kind to you already by willing to translate for you. I can choose not to bother at all!
That is part of our conversation. Today is the day I finally plugged in my courage to bring up the language at work place issue to them, after two months plus of working with them, with the presence of other colleagues as well. In case you don't know, I have debated with myself on this issue for countless of times already, and cannot get pass the idea of creating more conducive working environment vs serving the whims and dictatorship of the majority.Call me kia su, because that's probably how Chinese are in terms of learning. Being the only Chinese there, I shouldn't have expected to be understood.
So back to the conversation above. Guess what was the response from other Indian colleagues present?
Laughter and scorn.
I rest my case.
3 comments:
man... *hugs* hang in there cher! hang in there! *throws the fella out of the window* i'm so proud of u for having the courage to stand up and speak up to them on this. u noe, phps not all of them r lk that. maybe its js 1 or 2 who's the boss and the rest follow, even tho deep inside they feel bad.
when things cant go the way we wish them to, we stil gotta stand up and brush away the hurt and smile. keep smiling k cher no matter wad. u stil need to love ur job for what its worth. u musnt let that spoil ur every days and get to u too much that it builds negative emotions or it'll affect you strong enough to affect what you love doing.
Thanks, Vin. Yes you are right. I need to stay focus. Being an emotional person as you know me, it's been a challenge for me to (1) keep quiet for 2 months! and (2) remember Matthew 25:40.
Thanks for your words of comfort and encouragement :)
*hugs* God's with you. :)
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