A scene in the American TV series Frasier featured Seattle-based radio psychologist Frasier (played by Kelsey Grammer) and his psychologist brother Niles sitting in their usual café, talking about something. A chap at the next table was so obviously following their conversation that Frasier said to him, “Why don’t you pull up a chair and join us?”
This was exactly what happened to me in 1975 when I was working in Taipei for Conoco Taiwan. Minus the prompting bit.
My colleagues had taken me to a famous beef noodle place, Chia Chia Beef Noodles 佳佳牛肉麵. We were speaking in English, which was (and still is) very common in Singapore between people of Chinese ethnicity (ditto between those of Malay/Indian ethnicity) but something totally unheard of, even inconceivable, in Taiwan, perhaps right to this day.
A young man at the next table was so curious about this, and probably keen to learn some English too, that his eavesdropping visibly progressed in stages.
After the initial quick, startled jerk of the head around to see who were speaking English at the next table, he then turned his head to partially face us, so as to better catch what we were saying, looking at us out of the corner of one eye.
Not getting very far with that, he then started leaning more and more towards us.
In the end, he actually turned round completely and pulled his chair up to our table to sit at our table between me and Peggy, nonchalantly looking from one to the other as we chatted away!
(Taipei, Taiwan, 1975)
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