Thursday 27 December 2018

What pub customers say: 2 (London)

I was asked to help out on a Wednesday closing shift.  As it was mid-week, we didn't have the doormen, so it was my job as the closing-shift staff to tell the customers when it was time for them to drink up and leave.

I went for the short version.  Instead of saying, "You have ten minutes to drink up and leave," I just went around saying, "You have ten minutes," as it'd be understood in general.


One of the tables had three Spanish customers in their thirties: two women and a bloke.


The man responded with a big cheeky smile, "YES PLEASE!"  From his facial expression, I didn’t get the impression he had in mind "ten minutes for drinking".


When we made eye contact, I knew I was right.  We both burst out laughing.


(London, 2018)

Saturday 22 December 2018

Benny the beluga whale (London)



A beluga whale appeared in the Thames in September.  Theories abound as to what it was doing there, so far away from its natural habitat.  

Four months on, it’s still there.  A recent newspaper report says it looks like it’s decided to make the Thames “its playground”.

When it first appeared, people gave it the name of Benny (presumably to sort-of alliterate with “beluga”?).

BBC’s Radio 4 has a weekly current affairs quiz show, called The News Quiz, with celebrities making up the two teams.  They insert witty side comments, injecting light-heartedness into what would otherwise be a dry show, so it’s more an entertainment programme than a real test of the participants’ knowledge of the latest happenings.

The week Benny the beluga whale appeared in the Thames, this piece of news was, naturally, one of the items.

A male participant asked, “Why the name Benny?  How does one know it’s a male?”  A female participant’s immediate response was, “Because it got lost, but wouldn’t ask for directions!”

(London, 2018)

What pub customers say: 1 (London)

Was moving the high chairs for the high tables back into place when I heard a customer saying to his friend, “Oh look, she’s almost as tall as the chair!”  

Still laughing days later.

(London, 2018)

Thursday 20 December 2018

Serendipitously inspired (London)

I was sweeping up the autumn leaves in the front yard on Monday when a Jewish next-door neighbour came over to chat.  Said he’d seen me working in the back garden before.


He said he and his brother run a construction company, called Mega, so I asked for a business card.  Looked at the surname — Margolis — and asked if it meant anything.  He said, “Diamond.  Ruby.”  I said, “A gem.  Like your company name backwards.”  If he had a chair to fall off, he would’ve, that very moment.  It’d never occurred to him before.


He said Mega was made up of M for Margolis, E for his name, G and A for his brother’s.


(London, 2018)

Saturday 8 December 2018

No common sense (London)



Wood Green Tube station on the northbound Piccadilly line has three escalators.  

Normally, the middle escalator is at rest.  

The down escalator is closest to the southbound platform, which makes sense, as people going from Wood Green are more likely to go south (heading for Central London and Heathrow Airport) than go north (with only five more stations after Wood Green).  

The up escalator is closest to the northbound platform, which again makes sense:  people disembarking at Wood Green would be more likely to be on the northbound train from Central London, as evidenced by the huge crowds spilling out from the northbound train, especially at peak hours.

The previously-down escalator is recently under some sort of refurbishment, so it’s all boarded up.

For some reason, instead of letting the middle escalator take on the down-moving role and leave the up escalator as it was, someone decided to switch it round, so that the escalator nearest to the northbound platform is now down-moving.  This means that people coming down, who are more likely to catch the southbound train, end up cutting across the now-up escalator for the southbound platform, and people getting off the northbound train are cutting across them to get to the middle escalator, which is now the up escalator.  

The result is two streams of passengers interweaving with each other.

The station actually put up signs on the boards alongside the now-shut escalator, saying: 

QUOTE To help you travel through the station more quickly UNQUOTE

The left hand obviously doesn’t communicate with the right hand here.

(London, 2018)

Thursday 22 November 2018

A blast from the past (London)

Yesterday, I went to Totteridge and  Whetstone (second last stop at the northern end of the Northern line, in Zone 4) with my student Sharon because she suddenly had a call (even before we started the lesson) from her daughter's school, saying the daughter had nits, so could Sharon go and pick her up and take her home (so as not to pass it on to the other kids).  

I said I'd go with her, so that we could at least do some Chinese on the journey.  After she dropped me off at Totteridge Tube station, I decided to jump on the bus as the weather suddenly cleared up and it was a nice sunny day, and I had no teaching until 5pm.  Also, I love bus (/train) journeys.  

It turned out to be a treat: the whole place really felt rustic, with big houses and lots of ponds by the road, all private, really like being in a village.  I took the bus to the end of the bus route, which was Edgware, from where I was going to take another bus to a big supermarket to get some sesame oil and soya sauce for Sharon.

As I sat at the Edgware bus station waiting for the onward bus to the supermarket, something went "Ping!" in my head:  

"I've been here before.  It was at night, when someone gave me a lift from somewhere, and dropped me off here to catch a bus home."  

Can't remember who it was, can't remember where we'd come from (probably somewhere outside London), nor when, but the visual image of the bus station at night, with its bright lights and its layout, came to my brain screen most vividly.  

As the bus drove out of the station onto the main road and I looked back, it was indeed as I'd seen it those many years ago when we approached it in this person's car.

Funny how memory works.

(London, 2018)

You know you're getting old when… : 04 (London)

...your old (in age and in length of friendship) friend Valerio says (talking about a friend of his falling in love and getting into silly situations because of it):

QUOTE he is close to 60... I don't think the episodes you mentioned happened to you at his age... UNQUOTE

I note that Valerio used the past tense ("happenED to you at his age"), which is a clue, for anyone who might not know my age, to my being older than 60.  Haha.

Monday 19 November 2018

Late-night bus journey home (London)



My old friend and the most avid reader of my blogs, Valerio, said after hearing about my “Food from heaven” adventure (blog of the same name):  “Here’s another good point of your job: your commuting to and from the pub seems to provide a lot of material for stories…”

Indeed.

When I first transferred to the Wood Green branch of the pub, I’d just pull my jumper over my work top after the closing shift, and get on the night bus — first the N29 to Manor House, then the N253 for the last two stops to my house.

On one of the N253 journeys, I noticed the driver looking fairly intently at me as I was getting on, even turning round in his seat and craning his neck at the next stop when I went and stood just out of his direct line of vision.  This freaked me out a bit, thinking he probably fancied me.  

I’d been approached before by men on buses and at bus stops, striking up a casual conversation, starting with asking if I was going home from work, then moving on to whether I wanted to go for a cup of coffee or a walk in the park, but they’d all been earlier: around 9/10pm, a sunny late afternoon for the-walk-in-the-park one.

This level of interest at 3am by the bus driver was a bit too intense for my comfort.  After I disembarked, I dawdled around the bus stop, waiting for the bus to move off, as my house is by the main road, only ten yards from the bus stop, so I didn’t want the driver to see where I lived.  He, on his part, wouldn’t drive off immediately either.  And so, there we were:  each idling at the bus stop, in a kind of a stalemate for a while.  This only confirmed my initial judgement of him.  Hes persistent, I thought, and making his interest very obvious.

The next time, it was a different driver.  This one actually asked, also turning round in his seat and craning his neck, “Where are you going?”  What a strange question!  Why did he want to know?  What’s the matter with all these male drivers, I thought.

Another post-shift night, as I was waiting for the night bus at 3am, I happened to look down and noticed that because I hadn’t taken off my work apron — which had a big pocket in front and into which I often stuff spare paper napkins for wiping up greasy spills — I looked about eight months pregnant.

Penny dropped:  those bus drivers were probably wondering what this heavily pregnant woman was doing, being out and about at 3am.  And an Oriental woman at that too, which is unusual, as Oriental woman don’t go gadding about at 3am.  

Also, because it was a different driver each time, they hadn’t seen that I was still eight months pregnant three months later.

I now make sure to remove my work apron when I finish my closing shift.  No more staring from the drivers after that.

(London, 2016)

Update 031218:  Another penny's just dropped.  The drivers might've been worried that I might end up giving birth on their bus, hence the level of interest!


* See also "Catching the last Tube train" and "How to expedite matters"


Saturday 17 November 2018

Sanity-challenging conversations: 10 (London)



Six customers, who’ve been coming now and again, turned up tonight: three are the social workers for the other three.  The female social worker said, as I walked past their table, “Can you take orders for our food.”  It was not a question  she was asking me to take their food orders.  I said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to go to the bar, or order through the app on your phone.  I don't take orders for food.”  She said, “Oh no, I don’t do the phone app thing.”  I said, “Then you’ll have to do it at the bar.  I only deliver food, we don’t take orders at the table.”  She said, “I know.”  Huh?!?

I delivered two dishes to Table 43.  The five occupants said, no, not for them.  The elderly couple next to them said it was for them.  As I put the dishes down, I said, “You’re Table 44, not 43.”  The man said, “No, it’s 43.”  I said, “It’s 44.  Have a look at the disc at the corner of the table.”  He said, “It’s 43.”  I pointed at the disc, he moved his face closer, and said, “It’s 43.”  His wife shook her head.  When I next went back to that area, the man said, “It looks like 77!”  I was quite tempted to say he should get his eyes tested.


Update a week later (241118):  Can you believe it!?!  Customer at Table 77 tonight said the food wasn’t for him.  Eventually tracked down the rightful owner — at Table 44.  He’s a man about 30 years younger than the elderly gentleman above.  Maybe the elderly gentleman from last week sent him to shore up his case?

(London, 2018)

Monday 5 November 2018

Give someone an inch and they’ll take a yard: 1 (London)



In the last month or so, a woman in her 40s has started coming regularly to the library I spend a lot of time in myself.  She must also have noted the fact that I’m a regular myself, because one day she asked me to look after her rucksack while she went to the loo, saying, “You know me.”

A couple of weeks later, on my Saturday night pub shift, I found her sitting at one of the tables in the raised area, which is out of the direct view of the bar area.  I later discovered the significance of her choice of seating area: she is a homeless person, with a shopping luggage trolley type of contraption all loaded up with plastic bags of her belongings, sitting a bit of distance away from her — presumably so that the staff wouldn’t connect it with her and decide to make her leave the premises.  Out of pity, I didn’t draw my colleagues’ attention to this non-paying presence.  After all, it wasn’t busy at the time, and it was cold outside.

Last week, I was watching a Chinese TV period drama on YouTube on my computer at the library when she asked me to look after her Huawei Tablet.  (So, she might be homeless but she has a Huawei Tablet!)  She said she was going to the loo and would be a couple of minutes, five at the most.  I agreed.

When she came back from the loo, she asked me to mind her things for another five minutes while she nipped out for some coffee, but she was away for ten.

Yes, she openly drinks her coffee in the library, just as the other regulars (a group of Greek, Cypriot and/or Turkish old men) openly and loudly chat in a group around a big round table, treating the place like their local café.  (I have a sympathetic angle on this, as old people can get very lonely, so it’s nice that they have a social corner of their own.) I’d even occasionally found people eating a takeaway in there (ribs and chips, or something equally strong-smelling).  On more than one occasion, I’d spotted a woman in her 50s plucking the hairs on her chin with a pair of tweezers by one of the bookcases as the light there is good.  Another regular — a woman in her 70s with Parkinson’s — openly eats her sausages while doing her crossword puzzles.

This morning, the homeless woman approached me to look after her rucksack again, saying, “Can you look after my bag for two minutes?”  I hesitated, saying, “Umm, I need to leave soon, to go and teach.”  She said, “Just two minutes.”  I reluctantly said OK but stressed that I really had to leave.  She then went and spoilt it all for herself by saying, “Maybe five minutes?”

That was when I decided she couldn’t be trusted.  She had already done it to me once before, saying she’d be gone five minutes but took ten.  (No, she didn’t explain upon return why she’d been gone longer than she said she would be.)  Today, however, I had to go and teach, so I couldn’t afford to be late, especially since it’s a group of three students.  I’m a seriously responsible person:  if I’ve agreed to look after someone’s things, I don’t up and leave when I need to go, even if they don’t come back at the promised time.  She, on her part, doesn’t seem to have the same sense of responsible behaviour.

There’s a Chinese phrase for this:  得寸进尺 dé cùn jìn chǐ / “get inch enter foot” — to go on further to take a foot after getting an inch.

Aesop's "The boy who cried wolf" also comes to mind.

(London, 2018)

Saturday 3 November 2018

Food from heaven? (London)

After my closing shift last night (finishing at 2.35am), I arrived at Manor House at 3.30am to change to the bus for my house.  

There, on the pavement, was a torn paper bag, with most of the contents scattered about:  carrots, courgettes, onions, bananas, apples, pears.  I looked around.  No one about, not anywhere near the bag and its scattered contents, for me to determine the ownership.  So, I started to pick up each item.  

A young man then came along and helped me retrieve them, even from as far away as a yard from the spot.  He must
ve thought Id dropped the bag, split it, and spilt the contents.  (Oh, split and spilt in the same sentence, fairly close to each other!  That would drive a dyslexic or spoonerism-afflicted person crazy.)  

Luckily, I hadn
t stayed for a post-shift drink at the pub, or hed jump to another wrong conclusion: that Id dropped the bag because I was tipsy.

So, I arrived home at 4am, with a bagful of fruit and vegetables out of nowhere.

(London, 2018)

Monday 24 September 2018

First thing seen upon waking up (China / Toulouse)



One of the episodes in The Heart of the Dragon was about Chinese science, featuring acupuncture, among other things.  

A rabbit’s nose was exposed to a heat lamp, and the time taken for the rabbit to turn away was recorded.  Then, acupuncture was applied to one of its meridian points — the heat-bearing one, presumably — and the rabbit’s nose was once again exposed to the heat lamp.  This time, the rabbit was able to withstand the heat for a bit longer.  The experiment was to prove how acupuncture could take the place of ether as an anaesthetic.  

For the human experiment, an old woman (in her 80s?) who’d been blind for a few decades underwent an eye operation, using acupuncture instead of ether.  Our British film crew went to the hospital to film the bandage-removing ceremony a few days later, to record her first reaction to being able to see again after such a long time.  So the first thing the old lady saw when she opened her eyes were these human beings with big noses, pale skin, hairy bodies and faces, and blue/green eyes.  She must’ve thought, “How the Chinese race has changed in the last few decades!”

Throughout this 12-day visit to France, I was helping an ex-student in Lisbon proof-read a handful of articles on tea that he was editing for a magazine he’d set up (called eighty ˚).  Back and forth, back and forth went the questions, comments and suggestions, sometimes for a few hours in one stretch, sometimes late into the night.  I certainly always checked last thing at night and first thing in the morning to see if he might’ve left more amendments for me to read.

On the day I was flying back to London, I got to Toulouse airport really early.  Sat in front of one of the Departures screens, to make sure I didn’t miss the call for checking in.  Dozed off at some point, and woke up to see the screen saying there was a flight to Tenerife on VOLOTEA.  Couldn’t believe my eyes.  Never heard of Volotea, so I thought I was dreaming after 10 days of reading tea articles!  It turned out Volotea was the carrier — a Spanish carrier.

(China, 1982; Toulouse, 2018)

Monday 17 September 2018

Singing to animals (Scandinavia / Singapore)



Have just watched a video of a Scandinavian woman summoning her cows with a high-pitched tune.  It’s called Kulning cow singing.

My father used to whistle a certain tune — four notes, his own invention — whenever he fed the crocodiles.  

One day, he decided to jump into the pond to clean it out, instead of doing it in safety from the other side of the low brick wall surrounding the crocodile enclosure, with all the crocodiles having been chased up onto the dry land area of the enclosure.  

My father was enjoying cleaning out the pond so much that he forgot himself and started whistling that same tune.  The crocodiles, thinking it was feeding time, came down from the dry land area and went for his ankle.  His yelling and shouting could be heard from across the road, “You stupid animals!  Don’t you know who your master is?!?”

Four stitches.

(Scandinavia; Singapore 1960s)

Thursday 13 September 2018

The super goalkeeper (France)



I'm staying in a tiny village, St. Amans, in Tarn et Garonne (NE of Toulouse), in a bohemian house.  Three cats.  One dog: Kali, a shaggy black and white dog.

Kali is a SUPER goalie.  

Even as you're adjusting your foot  one tiny fraction of an inch to the left or right; or half circle; or full circle to face the opposite direction  she'll immediately jerk her head and body in that direction, or run around to the other side, in anticipation of your being about to kick the (tennis) ball that way. 


No matter how many times you do this to try and wrong-foot her before you actually kick the ball, she responds instantly and tirelessly every single time, all the way until you actually kick it.  (And after all that, I'm such a useless footballer that the ball doesn't get very far...)

I'm getting one of the housemates to do a video of this and put it up on YouTube. 

Her goalie skills come in useful, too, when catching the figs I've been picking from the two trees and throwing to her, wolfed down in half a second.

Kali is 11 or 12 years old.  Google says, "Depending on the breed and size of the dog, 10 to 12 years is considered late middle age and the beginning of the elderly years."  Wow, a near-elderly goalkeeper, and so sharp as well at that age!

I’ve just realised, as I'm writing this, that Kali is a sheep dog. No wonder! Her reactions to my foot movements are like how a sheep dog would react to the slightest movements of the sheep while trying to herd them in a particular direction or into the corral.

In the 1964 Disney musical Mary Poppins, the nanny invented a word for the children: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I'm now shortening it and applying it to this wonder goalie dog: Super Kali.

(France, 2018)

Thursday 30 August 2018

Giving them a dose of their own medicine: 3 (China)




The Gentle Giant did his Year Abroad in Tianjin for his Chinese degree in Zurich.

Being Swiss, he found the Chinese habit of spitting particularly revolting, with the pre-spit hawking even more disgusting, because the noise is making the hearer anticipate the gob.

He decided to take revenge.  

One day, he picked this man coming from the opposite direction as his victim.  

When the man was within earshot, the Gentle Giant started to hawk exaggeratedly, long and loud, just to prepare the poor man for what was about to follow. 

Then, as the Gentle Giant and the man had just passed each other, he made the sound of spitting, loudly, in the direction of the man’s back.  The poor man jumped up in alarm and quickly looked behind him, to see if the gob from this tall Westerner might have landed on the back of his shoes.

The Gentle Giant got a lot of satisfaction from this silly game:  “NOW you know what it’s like!”

(China, 1980s)

Giving them a dose of their own medicine: 2 (China)



American Gayle, one of my evening students, went to Nanjing to teach English for a year.

She told me when she came back that people would stand in front of her, waggle a finger up at her nose, and say, “哈哈哈,外国人!外国人! / hāhāhā, wàiguórén! wàiguórén! / Hahaha, foreigner, foreigner!”

This annoyed her so much that she decided to fight back.  

At 5’ 8”, she towers over a lot of Chinese people, so she’d point a finger down at their face and say, “哈哈哈,中国人!中国人! / hāhāhā, Zhōngguórén! Zhōngguórén! / Hahaha, Chinese person, Chinese person!”

(China, 1980s)

Giving them a dose of their own medicine: 1 (Switzerland)



When the Gentle Giant (my Swiss boyfriend in the 80s) and I first met, one of the things that we found we had in common was how Sino-centric we thought the mainland Chinese are in calling Westerners 外国人 wàiguórén / “external country person” / foreigners when they are in the West.

One day, when I was over in Zurich, we were walking by the river when we saw two mainland Chinese men coming from the other direction.  We looked at each other and knew immediately what we were going to do to them:  as the two men walked past us, we muttered, “外国人! 外国人! / wàiguórén! wàiguórén! / Foreigners! Foreigners!”  After we passed them, we turned round, folded our arms and stood back to watch their reaction.  Sure enough, they’d suddenly registered that they’d heard “foreigners, foreigners” in Chinese, and turned round to see who’d uttered it.  The Gentle Giant and I then pointed at them, repeating, “外国人! 外国人! 你们就是外国人。/ wàiguórén! wàiguórén!  nǐmen jiù shì wàiguórén!  / Foreigners, foreigners, YOU are the foreigners”.

Whether the message had sunk in or not, or for how long, we had our bit of fun all the same, giving them a dose of their own medicine.

(Switzerland, 1988)

How to make yourself unpopular: 2 (London)



During a conversation with a mainland Chinese chap, he referred to the Brits as 外国人 wàiguórén / “external country person” / foreigner.  I said, “Actually, in Britain, you and I are the foreigners, not the Brits.  You should at least use the neutral term 西方人 xīfāngrén / “west direction person” / Westerner.”  

The next time this chap talked about the Brits, his mouth started to make the ‘w’ shape (for wàiguórén / foreigner), but he stopped himself in time and changed it to ‘x’ (for xīfāngrén / Westerner).

As they say, a teacher is never off-duty…

(London, 1987)

How to make yourself unpopular: 1 (London)



As pointed out in the blog Logic-defying thinking, I have found mainland Chinese people to be Sino-centric in their view of life.  

They refer to China not as 中国 Zhōngguó / “middle kingdom” when abroad, but as 国内 guónèi / “country inside” / within the country, domestic [flight, e.g.].  For example:  国内的东西比较便宜 guónèi de dōngxi bǐjiào piányi / Things within the country are cheaper”, i.e., things in China are cheaper — when commenting on prices in London, say.

They also refer to non-Chinese people as 外国人 wàiguórén / “external country person”, i.e., a foreigner.

In my opinion, both of these terms are correct when used within China, but not when they are abroad.

I was once invited to a party thrown by a Malaysian chap who’d grown up in Beijing, so some of the guests were from mainland China.  I’d arrived with Charles Aylmer (Cambridge University Library).  

When we went over to the Chinese group, Charles introduced himself in Chinese.  Greatly pleased to have found someone outside their group, especially a Westerner, who could speak Chinese, they said, “我们是从国内来的 wǒmen shì cóng guónèi lái de / We’re from within the country.”  

The little demon in me just couldn’t resist trying to wean them off this Sino-centric attitude, so I said, “啊,你们是英国人 / Āh, nǐmen shì Yīngguórén / Ah, you are British.”  They looked totally puzzled.  I explained, in Chinese: “你们刚刚说你们是从国内来的,你们现在是在英国,那么国内就是英国,所以你们就是从英国来的。/ You’ve just said you're from within the country.  You're now in Britain, so ‘within the country’ is ‘Britain’, therefore you’re from Britain.”

They refused to speak to me for the rest of the evening.

(London, 1987)

Logic-defying thinking (Spain)



Metro (newspaper) 140818: QUOTE A pensioner claims her holiday to Benidorm was ruined, because there were ‘too many Spaniards’ in her hotel.  Freda Jackson, 81, said: “They really got on our nerves because they were just so rude.  One evening a Spanish guy nearly knocked me flying and he just walked off without even apologising.  The entertainment in the hotel was all focused and catered for the Spanish — why can’t the Spanish go somewhere else for their holidays?’ UNQUOTE

This story reminds me of the Sino-centric attitude of Chinese people, especially mainland Chinese people in my experience.  

When abroad, they still refer to China as 国内 guónèi / “country inside” / within the country, domestic [flight, e.g.].  

Also, when they are in the West, they still call Westerners 外国人 wàiguórén / foreigners, when they themselves are the true foreigners.

(Spain, 2018)

Saturday 2 June 2018

How to have fun on your pub shift as a menial worker (London)


Tables got moved / put back in the wrong places, so I ended up going to where they were meant to be but couldn't find them and had to ask aloud, “Table 23?” while carrying the heavy and hot plates of food.  One of the two customers at Table 82 in the middle row said, “You've asked me that more than once now. Why don't you just check your map?”  I said I did, but the table was not where it was meant to be, asking, “Am I annoying you?”  He said yes, so I said I'd complain to the manager (about me annoying him). 

Went and told the shift manager about him, then went back and told him, “I've just complained to the manager about me.”  He didn't know what to say. 

I went away from his table smiling, instead of getting stressed out by him and his lack of sympathy for what we have to go through in carrying out our duties.

(London, 2018)

Sunday 20 May 2018

Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to China (London / China)



During Queen Elizabeth II's visit to China in October 1986, BBC TV’s Breakfast Time broadcast live satellite pictures every morning of her movements.  They asked me to be present in the White City studio, so that should something go wrong during the live broadcasts, e.g., loss of sound or picture, I’d be on hand to speak to the Chinese side as live satellite time was hugely expensive.

The first four days went by without any need for my services.

On Day Five, when the Queen was in Xi’an, visiting the terracotta warriors site, the director/producer on duty that day wanted to speak to the sound man of the BBC film crew.  

BBC Director/Producer, via radio, to the Chinese side:  Can you get Mr Jones, please?

Chinese side: (A few seconds’ silence, then hesitantly) Prease, can you repeat?

BBC: (more slowly) Can you get Mr Jones, please?

Chinese side: (Another pause, then hesitantly) Prease, can you say it one more time?

BBC:  (Enunciating each word slowly)  Can you get Mr Jones, please?

Chinese side: (Slight hesitation)  What is Mr Jones?

At this point, the director/producer called me over.

Me:  请你叫 Jones 先生来。qǐng nǐ jiào Jones xiānsheng lái / Please call Mr Jones over.

Chinese side:  Oh, Brian!

It was the “get” that confused them, as presumably they couldn't understand how one can "get" a person!

(London / China, 1986)