Dysfunctional communications: 04 (Gary Ward)

 

An appeal for energy adjusters to go and work on someone in hospital was made to the healing charity that I've been involved with.

    The message sent out to the charity's WhatsApp group was brief, saying something like, "Can someone go and give energy adjustment to someone in intensive care?"  

    Then, the information:  "Gary Ward, XYZ Hospital, ABC Road, London".

    I responded with, "Is Gary Ward the name of the patient or the name of the hospital ward?"

    Back came a text from an officer of the London branch of the charity, "You are not allowed to go and do energy adjustment without the permission of the charity."

    Huh??!!  Who said anything about going??  She was so keen to blast people off that she put 2 and 2 together, and came up with 5.  

        Reminds me of Dino the dog who was adopted at the French farm:  barking as soon as he heard the other dogs on the farm bark, with no idea what he was supposed to be barking at or about.  Just join in the barking for the hell of it.  A student of mine who'd lived out in the Far East once said that people there "do like to scold people".

    It's also bad publicity for the charity, as people get put off working with them.  Good heart, bad mouth.

(London, 2024)

Dino in blog Aptly named dog:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2012/01/aptly-named-dog-france.html

Dysfunctional communications: 03 (Why have we been pitched to the front of the queue?)

Dysfunctional:

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In psychology and interpersonal relationships, it specifically refers to a flawed communication pattern that fails to convey information effectively and instead triggers misunderstandings, conflicts, alienation, or psychological harm. This type of communication commonly occurs within dysfunctional families, romantic relationships, or workplace teams.

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One of the soup kitchen places is run by Mother Teresa nuns who try to get people to attend the pre-dinner service.  Not obligatory, one can still be let in for the meal next door.

    The first time I attended the service, we were led out of the chapel at the end and taken to the front of the queue standing outside the gate.

    I asked aloud of those people who'd attended the service, "Why are we standing at the front of the queue?  Might we not be suspected of queue-jumping?"  (Because things can get ugly.)

    Hong Kong soup kitchen veteran said, "You'll be taken through the gate, then into the canteen for the meal."

    Huh??!!

    I said, "That wasn't what I was asking about.  I was asking why we've been pitched to the front of the queue when these people have already been in the queue.  I don't want them to think we're jumping the queue."

    The soup kitchen veteran said, "The nuns will come and open the gate, they will lead us into the canteen, where we will sit down for the meal."

    Huh??!?!!???  (How do people use their ears???)

    I said, "That wasn't what I was asking."

    The soup kitchen veteran then said, "OK, I'LL SHUT UP THEN!"

    Well, it'll certainly be less perplexing than giving a non sequitur response.

(London, 2026)

How to get a seat on the train (London)

Met a 94-year-old Thai lady early on last month at Ladbroke Grove Tube station.  She had a heavy shopping trolley of food as well as a big plastic bag, so I escorted her all the way home on the Tube (changing Tube lines along the way) to her front door.

    To help her out financially and to inject some variety into her life, I've since been showing her how to access free meals, with free food to take home:  surplus cooked food from the meals (which would get binned anyway as Health and Safety rules won't let the suppliers store whatever is uneaten), as well as fruit (heavy items like banana and sometimes even a whole pineapple) and veg (potato, carrot), tinned food, etc.  

    One day, I gave her one of my supermarket hessian bags for carrying all that food home, as it's very sturdy.

    It is something like 2ft / 60cm across and 1ft / 45.7cm high, which looks nearly half her size (she's under 5ft / 1.52m tall).  The print on the outside is that of sweetcorn (on the cob), so it's bright yellow and very eye-catching.

    A few days later, she told me that she started noticing a change in commuter reactions.

    Since she acquired this new travel kit, people on the Tube have been offering her a seat much more quickly because of this high visibility, thinking she is carrying a big load.  (It’s mostly empty when she travels alone to these soup kitchen meals.  When it’s full, I'm the one carrying it for her all the way to her station, often to her front door.)

    Yes, yes, as pointed by the friends I've told this story to, people should be offering her a seat anyway full stop.  My blogs, however, are mainly for raising a smile to the reader's face (while I'm sharing observations into everyday life), so the point here is more on how much quicker the huge, bright yellow bag is able to produce results than her looking 94. 

(London, 2026)

PS:  In case you're thinking of using the same trick, remember you'll have to look 94 as well...

Chinese sayings: 58 (絕甘分少 / 绝甘分少)

絕甘分少 / 绝甘分少

jué gān fēn shǎo

"reject sweet share not-plenty"

(AI) Denying oneself delicacies to share the scarce with others.

This saying is about being unselfish.  

    It's from Siman Qian of the Han Dynasty [206 BC – 220 AD] (漢代 司馬遷的《報任安書》（又名《報任少卿書》/ 汉代 司马迁的《报任安书》（又名《报任少卿书》).

    That how I was brought up as a child:  put other people first, offering the food (scarce or not) to other people first (especially if they're older than you), leaving yourself last.

    That is why it riled me so much, back in the late 1990s, to witness the white British then-boyfriend of my Malaysian student (later colleague when I gave her some teaching hours on my evening programme) running his chopsticks through the fried noodle dish to pick out the already-few pieces of squid (expensive and rare) for himself.

    If he'd been trying to fish them out for my student (later colleague), it might not have been so bad, as that would at least be an unselfish act (even though he was trawling the noodles with his used chopsticks).

    So, it was my upbringing that made me see red over his selfishness, more than his poking his used chopsticks among the noodles.

    He had turned up for a class meal on both occasions when he was not a member, being only spare luggage as the boyfriend.  Obviously to take advantage of sitting at a meal of ten dishes, and paying only a tenth of the bill.

    Two students complained to me later that by the time the dishes got to them at the end of the round, there wasn't much food left for them.  

    I'd been seated at the serving end, but passed on each dish every time it arrived, without taking anything, letting the other people at the table have a go first -- such was my upbringing.

  

    The squid-fisher was seated three chairs away on my left, so he was No.4 at the round table of 10.  His bowl was absolutely groaning with food spilling over onto the plate beneath, as he was piling food onto his bowl faster than he could wolf it down.  

    In hindsight (yes, my brain is terribly slow when it comes to possible conflict), I should've taught him a lesson by offering the subsequent dishes in the other direction around the table -- but, knowing the others, they'd have left enough on the plate for everyone to have a share.  Still, it would've left the squid-fisher less food by the time the plate reached him, and they'd have got something for themselves.  And I'd have a nice memory to bring a smile to my face.  Silly me, didn't think of it at the time...

    

    A more recent source of the red flag for me is a Hong Kong woman (in her 70s, no less, therefore old enough to know how to behave) seated at the same table for the soup kitchen meal.  

    Each table has a table monitor (volunteer worker).  Ours (at the Ladies' Table) would come with snacks for us to nibble while waiting for dinner to be served:  biscuits, an Indian snack called Bombay Mix, etc.  Whatever she managed to get from the food bank.  

    One day, I was seated next to the table monitor, so I was the first to be handed the plate of Bombay Mix.  This one had almonds in it, which is rare.  

    My childhood teaching saw me instinctively not taking anything for myself but passing on the plate to the person on the other side of me -- the HK woman.  She brazenly raked off most of the almonds (expensive and rare ingredient) before passing on the plate.  

    When it came back again to us (table of 12), the HK woman polished off the rest of whatever almonds were left.

    The parents of that white British squid-fishing chap and the almond-raking HK woman obviously never taught them to think of other people...

Linguistic False Friends: 05 (Backside) (Pakistan)

 

At the end of the 37-day film shoot (following an American multi-millionaire amateur motorcyclist from Shanghai along the Silk Route/Road to Xinjiang), we crossed over to Pakistan to catch our plane back to London from Islamabad.

    The first night in Pakistan would've been in Gilgit, but a landslide forced us to divert to a different location for the night.

    The next day, as we sat in the long queue of vehicles waiting for the road to be cleared, our driver said to the motorcyclist's girlfriend (who'd come out to join him for that stretch, having been banned from following us on the whole shoot, as it was strictly work), "Memsahib, the water you were drinking last night at the hotel -- it is from the backside of this mountain."

(Pakistan, 1988)

Linguistic False Friends: 04 (You're not listening) (Pakistan)

 

Listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme one day, I heard the Pakistani interviewee (in Pakistan) saying, when the connection broke:  "You’re not listening."  What he meant was, "Can you hear me?" or "You can't hear me."

Dysfunctional communications: 02 (Asking for sage) (London)

I received a text from a Malaysian:  "Can you see if there's any sage on the allotment?"

    I've been helping out a few people on their plots at a large allotment site (176 plots of varying sizes) in east London, weeding and watering.  In return, I get to help myself to the veg and fruit, which I share with friends.

    This Malaysian has been making special requests like, "Can you see if there're any conference pears / Victoria plums?"  It's easy enough for fruit, as it's usually half a dozen or so.  (More than that would be a bit heavy to carry, e.g.)

    The sage request, however, is a different matter, given that it's a herb which can be dried and stored for future use, so she might be wanting 20 or 30 leaves.

    With so little information to go on, and no reply to my text asking for clarification, I went ahead and worked on the most obvious assumption, and picked half a dozen leaves.

    Well, it turned out that she actually wanted the sage not for cooking but for planting, so the six leaves were the wrong offering.  She wanted sprigs of a certain length, with stems of a certain thickness to ensure they'd grow.

    Why on earth didn't she say so in the first place??!!  Just one text spelling it out would've saved a lot of wasted time and effort:  "Can you see if there's any sage on the allotment? If there's any, can I have 5 or 6 sprigs x inches long, with the stems at least the thickness of the finger to ensure healthy growth."

    An equivalent would be asking me, "Can you see if there's any beef at the butcher's?"  (A Tuesday group Mandarin student suggested a first response, "So what?")  What kind of beef:  stewing beef, minced beef, brisket, steak?  If she wants me to get her some, I'll need to know how much: a pound, a kilo?  And so on.  Spelling it out in the first place would save a lot of to-ing and fro-ing.  Pointing this out makes me the baddie.

    This is someone who does not spare time and effort going over the same story repeatedly, sometimes at the same sitting.  I can understand the need to repeat a story if the telling is for letting off steam, but not spelling out the details when one's needs are so specific is simply inefficient communication. 

(London, 2026)