I do not possess an enormous vocabulary of Chinese words. Of the words/phrases I understand, I am only able to verbalize 40% of them, at most. And if you think I abuse the grammatical laws in English, your ears may shatter at my attempt to form coherent sentences in Chinese. And you'd probably squirm while watching me attempt to thank a person in Chinese.

For inexplicable reasons, sometime long ago, someone decided it would be great to have two different ways of saying "Thank You". One for when someone does something for you, and an entirely different one for someone who gives you something. Don't ask me which is which because I've been on this earth 21 years and I still haven't figured it out yet.

To me, it's as confusing as having two distinct answers to the question "2+2=?".

So you can imagine the dread of me finally manning up and walking into my Chinese-run hair salon. Yes, if you're wondering, it was my fear of speaking Chinese that delayed me from going to get a haircut all along. I really wasn't going for the bum/ugly/mullet look, as some have commented.

And of course, being the professional barber this man was, he asked me very politely, in Chinese, how I wanted my hair cut. Of course, I'm sure he was capable of understanding perfect English and I very well could've told them exactly how I wanted it to be done, in English, and saved myself a lot of trouble.

But isn't it awkward, and to an extent, rude, when someone asks you a question in one language and you answer in another? After-all, I'm Chinese, and I need to save face. So instead, I went ahead and mumbled and jumbled my way through a couple of sentences, pausing every few seconds to catch to appreciate the new level of low I have descended to in my quest to be understood in Chinese.

And the best part is, whatever I said must have amounted to "Hello, I'm in the profession of making kids laugh at me, a clown if you will, so I'm gonna need you to go ahead and grab a bowl, put it on my head, and cut around the bowl in order to yield the dorkiest, most horrific, image you've ever seen, and I will pay you seven fat dollars for it".

If you don't see me for a while, I hope you understand. Must I remind you of the aforementioned ancient Chinese philosophy of saving face?