Since the weather sucks…

A little travel ‘humor’ for those who haven’t dealt with roonserbice…

TANJOOBERRYMUTTS

The following is a telephone exchange between a hotel guest and room-service in a hotel… I may have had a very similar one a time or two, since then I’ve gone down to the restaurant…

ROOM SERVICE: “Morrin. Roon sirbees”.
GUEST: “Sorry, I thought I dialled room service”.

ROOM SERVICE: “Rye. Roon sirbees… morrin! Joowish to oddor sunteen???”
GUEST: “Uh… Yes, I’d like to order bacon and eggs”.

ROOM SERVICE: “Ow ulai den?”
GUEST: “….. What??”

ROOM SERVICE: “Ow ulai den?!?… Pryed, boyud, pochd?”
GUEST: “Oh, the eggs! How do I like them? Sorry.. scrambled, please”.

ROOM SERVICE: “Ow ulai dee bayken? Creepse?”
GUEST: “Crisp will be fine”.

ROOM SERVICE: “Hokay. Ansahn toes?”
GUEST: “What?”

ROOM SERVICE: “An toes. ulaisahn toes?”
GUEST: “I… don’t think so.”.

ROOM SERVICE: “No? Udo wan sahn toes???”
GUEST: “I feel really bad about this, but I don’t know what ‘udo wan sahn toes’ means”.

ROOM SERVICE: “Toes! Toes!… WhyUoo donwan toes? Ow bow Anglish moppin we botter?”
GUEST: “Oh, English muffin! !! I’ve got it! You were saying ‘toast’… fine… yes, an English muffin will be fine”.

ROOM SERVICE: “We botter?”
GUEST: “No, just put the botter on the side”.

ROOM SERVICE: “Wad?!?”
GUEST: “I mean butter… just put the butter on the side”.

ROOM SERVICE: “Copy?”
GUEST: “Excuse me?”

ROOM SERVICE: “Copy… tea.. meel?”
GUEST: “Yes. Coffee, please… and that’s everything”.

ROOM SERVICE: “One Minnie. Scramah egg, creepse bayken, Anglish moppin, we botter on sigh and copy… rye ??”
GUEST: “Whatever you say”.

ROOM SERVICE: “Tanjooberrymutts”.
GUEST: “You’re welcome”

YMMV, and your ‘toes’ may be burnt or cold, or both… And don’t ask what the ‘jelly’ is. You really don’t want to know…

h/t Frito

Comments

Since the weather sucks… — 26 Comments

  1. The sacrifices you world travelers make. Reminds me of a conversation at a Tennessee FBO involving an earl shed. Silly me, thought it was pronounced “oil” shed.

  2. Unfortunately, most of my real-world interactions go along something like that.

    The hearing aids were wonderful. They have built-in equalizers and all sorts of nifty features, and the audiologist showed me how they properly correct for all the bumps and dips in my hearing curve.

    Alas, they’re not particularly useful in my daily affairs, because most people can’t speak anything resembling English. They *think* they do… though they can seldom remember what they just said. I think I understand why so many of them hate to hear themselves on a recording…

    • I found hearing aids to be wonderful in a quiet room. Unfortunately, my hearing loss comes with a ton of tinnitus, which is exasperated by background noise.

      So places that amplify noises, like all those places with ‘industrial’ interior roofs, like a lot of restaurants, stores, and unfortunately, the open construction of churches, just wipes out my hearing.

      I actually have good hearing, as long as the place is quiet.

      Oh, well.

  3. Reminds me of a test I was running involving a Chinese guy in the control room a Czech guy at the equipment, and me in the middle running coms. Felt like an interpreter at the UN in a “Who’s on First” bit.

  4. Or a Chinese grad student teaching Thermodynamics 101. He could not pronounce the words “entropy” and “enthalpy”. They both sounded like “ensalpy”. Very confusing to this engineering student.

  5. Thank you! I’ve been searching for this to Noah Vale for some time!

  6. Chico Esquela, is that you? 🙂

    Grrr, IT. Last time, I was tempted to go full COL Blimp on them, right down to the demand for tea at a proper temperature, you rotter. Would have made me feel better, because the problem wasn’t getting fixed anyway.

  7. WHEW – glad I only went to civilized places like Canada, Japan and ROK on OCONUS ‘adventures’ – I don’t count places like noo joisee, noo yawk, shykago or any where in kalypornia as ‘civilized’.

  8. What TRX said, and I have what were the best the VA had to offer (top of the line anywhere) the day I got them. And I’ll tell you it doesn’t matter if you change batteries every hour on the hour, they simply will NOT translate gibberish into meaningful communication!

  9. All- Thanks for the comments, and no hearing aids don’t help… Sigh…

    Posted from my iPhone.

  10. Sounds like a comedy bit by Rap Replinger, an ethnic/dialect comedian in Hawaii back in the Dark Ages (1980)… His Poi Dog album has some hysterical and totally non-PC bits..

  11. Fellow I once knew said it took him a couple weeks to realize the econ. prof. was trying to say “resources.” He’d spent those weeks wondering what racehorses had to do with anything.

  12. From a classroom in a university:

    Professor: You must go down to the bookstore and buy the studysticks, then you take the studysticks and –
    Mad Jack: What now?
    Professor: I said, you must go down to the bookstore and buy some studysticks. You know the bookstore?
    Mad Jack: Yes, I know the bookstore. What am I supposed to buy again?
    Professor: You go to the bookstore and you buy some studysticks, then you take the studysticks and… yes? Question?
    Mad Jack: What size?
    Professor: Eh… what do you mean, what size?
    Mad Jack: Do the studysticks come in different sizes?
    Professor: No. What you are, joking?
    Mad Jack: No, I’m not joking. What do they look like?
    Professor: What?
    Mad Jack: The studysticks. What do they look like?
    Professor: They look like studysticks.
    Mad Jack: What –
    Professor: Studysticks! Studysticks!

    Impatiently, the professor siezed up a piece of chalk and wrote on the board: S-T-A-T-I-S-T-I-C-S.

    Professor: Studysticks! See?

    HeadDesk… HeadDesk – HeadDesk.

  13. When in college in Louisville KY, I had the misfortune to attempt to learn Japanese from an adjunct “professor” who was an engineer at Toyota, whose first non-Japanese language was Brazilian Portuguese, who learned English in Brazil, from a native Brazilian, and who had been infected with a Southern accent from the workers at the plant.

    He was also illiterate in formal Japanese. I came in early and found him was writing a letter to his parents using a Kanji calculator on the desk so that he could express himself in Japanese.

    No. It did not work well. Even when I tried a self-help course along with the class.

    JPDev – John Sage

  14. Called my daughter’s hotel in Edinburgh Scotland one time. Found myself staring at the hand set and “I know She’s speaking English but I can’t understand a word of it….

  15. Oh yes! Professor Tseng, teaching us nuclear physics and electronics at the 200 level, kept talking about “flea charge”, took the gathered body of students about a week to figure out he was discussing electrons and how they move in semiconductors

    And boy does that little phone exchange hit the mark for 1980’s in the PRC or computer support with India.