A picture is worth eight words

Even the cartoon world's cutest dog has no tolerance for bloodsuckers. My kind of dog. But what exactly is a "mosquito catching machine?"

Exchange

This morning, I caught a minibus to the train station as part of my normal commute to the office. Today's driver was a fairly young, red-haired guy in sunglasses whose driving was Formula 1 inspired. A few minutes after I got on, he stopped for an old lady, who carefully and slowly ambled onto the bus. She swiped her Octapus card (basically, an add-value commuter card) in front of the fare scanner. It made the "Something's screwed up, better break out the wallet and deposit exact change and sit your ass down in the nearest seat before the driver slams his foot on the gas pedal and sends you, your socks, and whatever you're carrying in your hands flying into the rear windows of the bus" beep. Fortunately for her, she had already sat down before the ghost of Aryton Senna once more possessed the driver.

Safely braced in the seat directly behind the driver, she scans her card again. Same beep. The driver breaks his cool, shaded demeanor and says to her in Cantonese between slaps on the shifter, "Your card has no money left on it."

"That doesn't make sense" she replies, and scans her card yet a third time. The same (now annoying) beep graces the eardrums of the rest of us enjoying the race... er, ride.

"You can scan it 10 times, it'll still be out of money."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah."

*************

Now, as a Westerner, one would read this exchange and think "Golly ("Bloody 'ell" if you're a Brit, "F*ck" if you're from either coast of the US), that driver is rude!" But, in fact, he registered almost no emotion as he spoke to this lady, and for her part, neither her face nor her tone indicated the least bit of annoyance at his "snide" remark. It was so matter-of-fact, so neutral that you could have thought they were talking about the weather or the virtues of double-sided tape.

Cantonese is remarkable, linguistically speaking, in that you think sometimes the person talking to you is annoyed or mad when in reality, they are just offering you some pickled duck tongue to eat.