Lost in Translation

A short tale about sweet revenge - yeap, I loove it!

A few days ago, Omar and I went out for dinner at the local subway close to Omar’s house. Well, I should actually say I went for dinner, and Omar just sat and ate all my cookies. He actually thought I bought them for him, but they were really for me :o( (He was nice enough to buy me another one though, so no harm ;o)

Anyways, we go in and I ordered my usual: 6″ tuna salad on honey-oats bread with no cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, jalapeno peppers, banana peppers, olives, honey mustard, and s&p. Mmmmmm … you’re getting a rumbly in your tumbly aren’t ya?! For my drink, I went with the usual: a glass of water. The attendant handed me a large cup and pointed me to the fountain area.

So, I looked for the little white thingy sticking out and pushed on it and went to the seat. Enjoyed my sandwich, talking with Omar about this, that or the other and I finally took a sip from the glass. MAJOR EEEEK FACTOR!

I shrugged it off thinking that maybe this some high-end French oriented Subway that serves Perrier in the fountains, instead of regular tap water. Drank a few more sips and really didn’t like it so I left it.

I guess we were in a hurry and left as soon as I had eaten and Omar had bought me my cookie, and himself a juice. Back in the car, I just happened to mention that man, that water really sucked back in there. So Omar just randomly asked me if I took the contents of the small white button, and I said yeah, what else would I take - that’s water! The look that followed was priceless - it was a mixture of mirth, unsuppressed incredulity and a bit of pity jumbled together.

When he was able to speak again (a second later, really) … I think the following was uttered: uh, you know what that liquid was right? And I’m like of course, it’s water. Uh, no it’s not … it’s soda water, they have that to make your soda feel more soda-ey when it fizzes out. Whatever, you’re on crack, that was water. I cannot believe you don’t know this, you American. OH NO YOU DIDN’T … that’s like a double whammy insult, lol.

All you US folks, am I insane? Have I always been consuming soda water from the restaurants? I swear we have a water button to get water from at ALL soda fountains in ALL restaurants. Please tell me I haven’t lost my mind - these Arabs need a reality check for real!

So of course, Omar is having way too much fun with this and proceeds to talk up a storm likening my totally unfortunate situation with a story of some folks he met who had come from the rural outskirts in Riyadh somewhere and him and his cousins had taken them to MickeyDs. There, the kids and the parents were all awestruck by the technology and the ordering system, and how everyone was getting a kick out of the po’ folks’ situation. Psssh … how rude!

I’m driving listening to this guy who I thought was my friend … the things you realize sometimes :oD

We get back to Omar’s place and I had to fax a proof of my wedding card to the printers and since Omar had been taking care of this for me, all the stuff was in his place already. I called up Mr. Moin and told him to please confirm that the fax was received successfully. I signed the proof and Omar very casually, like an expert, faxed the document over.

2 seconds later Mr Moin calls up and says Sir, we only received a blank sheet of paper. Omar and I just exchanged a look and it was one those “you-had-to-be-there” kinda situation, but it was absolutely hilarious.

The best part was I didn’t have to say a word to rub it in … here he is, Mr. OAS … the IT guru, with his big bad fax machine-printer-scanner-moon rover combo machine … *aaah* too good!

This ones for ya smartass!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 8:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.