I’d been away on a walking weekend in the mountains of central Taiwan (along the Cross Island Highway from the east coast to the west, starting from Taroko Gorge), and picked up a flat piece of stone — very dark grey, almost black, slate-like.
When my Chief Geologist boss at Conoco, Dr. Richard Page, asked me about my weekend, I showed him my newly-acquired friend, and said to him, “It’s nice, isn’t it?”
When my Chief Geologist boss at Conoco, Dr. Richard Page, asked me about my weekend, I showed him my newly-acquired friend, and said to him, “It’s nice, isn’t it?”
Ever so quick-witted, his immediate response was, “No, it’s schist!”
He was punning on the sound “nice” (gneiss is similar to schist and slate) as well as correcting me (the piece I'd picked up was indeed schist, not gneiss), thus killing two birds with one stone. (Ha, pun!)
He was punning on the sound “nice” (gneiss is similar to schist and slate) as well as correcting me (the piece I'd picked up was indeed schist, not gneiss), thus killing two birds with one stone. (Ha, pun!)
From that day on, we (the Chief Geologist, the three geologists and I) would use the word “schist” instead of “nice”, which always raised eyebrows because people would think we were about to use the swear word "sh*t".
(Taiwan 1976)
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