Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen

The following was published in the Sunday Times on 15 June 2008:

Chicken and Duck Talking
by Colin Goh

One sweltering evening last week, the Wife and I were watching TV when the doorbell rang. Opening the door, we were surprised to see a short Hispanic man with craggy features that made him look like he’d been invented by Tolkien. It was Lou, our gardener.

Well, not exactly our gardener, and technically not a gardener either. We’d rented a house that came with a garden, which Lou had been hired by our landlord to mow. After several months, however, our landlord decided we should take over paying for Lou’s services.

The Wife and I thought this was fair. We’d been using the garden for backyard barbecuing, and also enjoying watching the wildlife passing through it daily: numerous cavorting squirrels, different species of birds, fireflies in the late summer, and a mangy old tomcat we’d nicknamed “Rapist”, as we’d once caught him in flagrante delicto with a very nervous-looking young tabby.

So, we agreed. “Great! I’ll send Lou your way!” “said the landlord. But Lou didn’t show for several weeks, and we promptly forgot all about our new mowing obligation as we went home to Singapore for our annual trip.

When we returned to New York, however, we got a pointed reminder: our yard was now overgrown, with weeds reaching up as high as my thigh. It had also become a KTV lounge for cats: every night, Rapist and friends would treat us to their rendition of the soundtrack to ‘881’. Not coincidentally, I suspect, Lou picked that time to reappear.

“Buenuthardthhhh,” he said, and I looked at the Wife. We were suddenly reminded that negotiating with him wasn’t going to be so easy. Not because he was difficult – Lou was an amiable chap – but because he was completely incomprehensible. Firstly, he always spoke extremely fast, and secondly, his tongue was fatter than Jamie Oliver’s. Between the speed and the spit, one could only assume he was speaking Spanish. We’d once seen him arguing with the landlord, and it was a classic demonstration of the Cantonese idiom “gai tung aap gong”, meaning a chicken and duck trying vainly to communicate with each other.

In fairness, we were probably as unintelligible to him, as he couldn’t speak English while our Spanish was limited to a few niceties - “cómo estás?” (how are you?), “muchas gracias” (thanks a lot) – and some salty invective stashed away for emergencies – “besame el culo, cabron!” (kiss my butt, you goat!).

But Lou came prepared for the linguistic difficulties. “Vrrrm, vrrrm?” he mimed pushing a lawnmower.

“Vrrrm, two weeks, cuanto?” I asked, raising one hand and rubbing my thumb against my fingers (the universal sign for “how much?”).

“Nono, patellapattellapatellaquarthththth,” he said (or at least that’s what I heard), raising four fingers, followed by “hunnardollththth.”

“I think he wants to mow four times a month for a hundred dollars,” said the Wife, flipping open a Spanish dictionary.

“That’s a lot. It’s not a big garden,” I said, turning back to Lou, and re-raising two fingers. “No, no, dos! Uno mes, dos vrrrrm! Forty dollars, one month, two times?”

He shook his head. “Nonono! Cortelthéthththpedquarthththth!”

“That’s already more than the landlord pays you,” I said, which was the truth. The Wife and I had already agreed to give Lou a raise, as the summer promised to be punishingly hot. (That and the fact that on several occasions, Lou had referred to the landlord behind his back to us as “El Cheapo”.)

“No dos, no,” Lou gesticulated, indicating the height of the grass by raising his hand to the level of his nipple. “Hierbapthththth, el gato patellapatellapthth!” To our alarm, he then adopted a crouching posture and started meowing, “Raaoww! Raaaow!” and next proceeded to wiggle his fingers around his backside. “Poot! Poot! Poot!”

“I think he’s saying that if the grass grows too high, the cats treat it like a toilet,” whispered the Wife. I was just dumbstruck.

“Uno mes, tres vrrrrm, fifty dollars?” the Wife raised three fingers, counter-offering a compromise.

Lou paused, then smiled. “Hokay! You… friend! Amigo! Cortelthéthththped, todoththlothth thábadoththth, carécarécaré, feefty, friend!”

“No El Cheapo?” I asked. Lou grinned, spreading his arms wide. “Nonono! Amigo!”

We wrote a short note recording our understanding, got him to sign it, and we shook hands. The next day, our grass was back to normal, and the cats were gone.

I couldn’t help but think: everyone keeps banging on about how we must all speak perfect English for international business, but Lou managed to secure improved terms from an ex-lawyer with qualifications in three jurisdictions without a word of it.

Admittedly, he did so by impersonating a defecating cat. There’s got to be a message in there somewhere.

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