camwyn | ... ... ..!

I got. A phone call. From my penpal.

The one in Wuhan. In mainland CHINA.

o.o

~.~

~.o

o.O

!.!

^^^--------------- roughly the sequence of facial expressions I went through when I realized that no, the slightly broken English on my CELLULAR PHONE was not in fact my friend Kin-Hon. (Cantonese ancestry, Malaysian born and raised, speaks Malay, something that I think is Fukien dialect, and a bit of mangled Mandarin - he's better at English than Mandarin. WAY better.)

That was quite possibly the absolute last thing I expected when I looked at my cellphone and saw 'Number Unavailable' on the Caller ID section of the display. I'd given him my cell # so that he could send text messages, but I'm not sure I can receive 'em. Either he tried and failed, or he just went straight to voice. He's really pretty good with spoken English - a bit more understandable than written - but I blanked out when he asked if I could speak any Chinese. All I could do was blurt 'wo bu jidao!'. At least my pronunciation was comprehensible to him...

Well, now. This is shaping up to be an interesting week already.