Showoff

Today the Chinese Consulate called me. In halting, but impeccable English, the service agent asked me to call him back. I call him back and he says 喂 and I say 你好. Bad move. Once he recognizes that I can speak and I can hear, he just goes all out. At first I saw it as an opportunity to practice my Chinese but it turned into something like this (all of this is in Chinese unless otherwise noted):

CC: Blah blah blah blah... ok?

Me: Um... I'm not too clear, what happened?

CC: (in English) You filled out the death certificate instead of the marriage certificate.

Me: Uh... ok... so what do we do?

CC: Blah blah blah blah... ok?

Me: Um... I'm still not clear.

CC: Blah blah blah blah... ok?

Me: Uh... ok.

I'm pretty much an idiot. This was one of my cardinal rules that I broke. The rule is, if someone doesn't know you speak Chinese, don't. It's easier to listen to poor English and speak slowly than it is to force someone else to listen to my poor Chinese and have them speak Chinese slowly. I remember being an Olympic mascot with the Tailess Squirrel Nerd and the guy helping us was obviously from the motherland. TSN starts speaking to him in Mandarin and I immediately thought "Uh oh..." Sigh. So now I don't really know what happened. I'm hoping that he said, "I'll just correct this for you and authenticate this for you." I'm going to have to call on Monday. And only use English. That's what I get for showing off. And the guy probably wasn't even impressed.