Minority Report

"ni chi liao ma?"

It struck me only recently that I have come to be the minority developer of company I currently work at. I guess I missed it during the comings and goings and the extended hours, but over time the entire collection of developers has ended up being of chinese origin save one - yours truly. Now before you go off on the wrong curve, let me say that i don't consider myself a racist to any degree. There's evidence enough in the fact that I have been the minority of the group for a couple months know, and only recently realizing it. They're all great co-workers and we get along just dandy. The language barrier is the only real downer.

Management encourages everyone to speak english whenever possible. This is not only for the benefit of the employees who can't make heads or tails out of Mandarin, but also for their own benefit at practicing the speech that 99% of our clients use. English is, after all, the world's "business language". Still, when they're talking amongst themselves, the developers often find it far easier to quickly get their point across in their native tongue. Each and every one is a direct immigrant from China, after all.

Still, it means that every day I'm exposed to the speech, which sounds like complete jibberish to my untrained ear. My fondest memory is when one of my coworkers needed to ask me something once, turned to look at me, and then posed the question in chinese. He didn't realize his faux pas until I gave him a "what did you just say" look.

I've started a small notebook with a few phrases they stopped to teach me. Basics that everyone knows like "how are you?" (ni hao) and "thank you" (xie xie), as well as a few less commonly known phrases like "work's done" (xia ban). They've given up on any written forms (I suck at calligraphy), but I've gotten some interesting stories about life back in China, and their own views on the government legislations there. And I love it when they bring in imported foodstuffs and let me have a try at it. I'm not too big on the seaweed or green tea, but I love the Chinese New Year egg cake and thier variation of rice krispie (both names escape me at this moment in time).

In the end, it's a bit funny to think that when I first joined the company we had a single asian dev, and that over the course of just a few years, the population has inverted.