An International Friend Who Couldn't Find His Crowd

The two of us turned around and saw a young man with dark brown skin, thick eyebrows, and big eyes greeting us.

His eyelashes were so very long that he looked like an oversized doll.

The moment Bai Zhigao saw someone greeting us in English, it was as if an electric current had shot through him.

In a trembling voice, he asked excitedly, "Wotcha yore naym?"

I couldn't understand why he was so excited. Only much later did I learn that Bai Zhigao had come from an even more remote rural area than I had. Outside English class, he had practically never spoken English.

This was his spoken-English debut...

The dark brown, oversized doll blinked those long eyelashes and looked at me in utter confusion, hoping I could translate what Bai Zhigao was saying.

I was just as confused. I had no idea what had gotten into him.

With considerable uncertainty, I asked him, "Was that... English you just spoke?"

"Of course. You can't even understand English that simple?" he shot back scornfully.

His extreme excitement had tightened his vocal cords, making his voice sound positively shrill.

Before I could say anything, he repeated it. "Wotcha yore naym? I'm asking him what his name is!"

In disbelief, I checked with him. "Did you just say, 'What's your name?'"

"Yes, yes!" Bai Zhigao was so excited that his voice cracked. "So you know that phrase too!"

I genuinely couldn't understand his joy at that moment.

Fortunately, the oversized doll understood that sentence. He said softly, "My name is Najajeputeladisa."

Zhigao and I stared at him blankly.

The oversized doll was smart enough to realize at once that we couldn't remember his name. Considerately, he said, "You can call me Naja."

I figured foreigners probably had trouble remembering Chinese names too, so I introduced myself by saying, "My name is He."

Wary of Bai Zhigao's English pronunciation, I introduced him as well. "His name is Gao."

"I can also say, 'Wair ar yoo frum!'" Bai Zhigao declared in that shrill voice, impatient to show off.

I was utterly speechless. What kind of accent was that supposed to be?

Naja turned those big, liquid eyes toward me for help again.

"Speak Chinese!" I said helplessly, shooting Zhigao a glance.

To my surprise, Bai Zhigao wasn't happy about that. He scoffed. "You can't even understand 'Wair ar yoo frum'?"

He rolled his eyes and informed me in a condescending tone, "I'm asking him where he's from."

I didn't even have the energy to mock him anymore, so I started talking to Naja directly.

It turned out he was from Sri Lanka.

He was the only person in our class from that country.

He had come to Singapore because of his older brother.

"My brother holds an ACCA qualification too. He's a senior executive at a listed company." As Naja spoke about his brother, his face filled with admiration, and stars seemed to shine in his big, liquid eyes. He explained, "My brother hopes I can earn this qualification too and establish myself in Singapore."

Seeing the blind admiration on Naja's face brought home to me even more strongly just how valuable an ACCA qualification was.

As I chatted with Naja, I interpreted back and forth between him and Bai Zhigao, and the three of us soon became good friends.

Bai Zhigao was extraordinarily excited to have made a foreign friend he could practice his spoken English with.

There were very few Sri Lankans in Singapore, and he was the only friend I knew from Sri Lanka.

Later, for reasons too embarrassing to mention, I had no choice but to give up that one friend too, but that was a story for another time.

Making good friends on our very first day of school was an enormous stroke of luck for us.

At the same time, however, it was terribly unfortunate.

All three of us were rather introverted and not much good with words, especially around the opposite sex.

From the first day of school, we had found our own kind and stuck together. Things stayed that way until we left the school.

From beginning to end, we never got much of a chance to flirt with that great, teeming crowd of temptresses.

It felt as though we'd missed out on the entire world.