I CAN’T resist sharing this funny incident, which took place in our centre last week (Eric, forgive me please 😂). Empire Code has a big pool of Mandarin-speaking parents at our Tanglin centre, and the majority of the Education Team is pretty proficient in conversational Mandarin, well, all except Eric.
A bit of background about our Head Of Operations: he is Chinese, looks Chinese, and his parents migrated from Hong Kong ðŸ‡ðŸ‡° to Sweden 🇸🇪 before he was born. As a result, our dear Eric can speak fluent Swedish, English, and Cantonese and a smattering of Thai. He claims he’s fluent in Thai after spending a few years living in Bangkok, but we all know his 8-year-old Em is way better in Thai than he is 🤣.
So, last Friday (which was no different from any other Fridays), Eric happened to be in the Empire Code Tanglin centre, taking a zoom call with Jasmine about our centre’s relocation. Then, a Chinese parent walks in, sees Eric and naturally starts speaking to him in Mandarin (as he looks Chinese after all). However, the only Mandarin words Eric can say is his name. However, to give credit to Eric, he was able to think quickly on his feet, and he promptly rotated his laptop 💻 to face the parent, so that Jasmine could converse with the parent in Mandarin via Zoom. As he found the entire situation hilarious, he even took a photo of the conversation!
The entire team had a good laugh about this, and Eric loudly proclaimed that he will start attending Mandarin classes again. So next time you meet Eric, please speak to him in Mandarin, but don’t say you read about it here! Â