So what'll it be, Hon?

Hardly anyone speaks in English in Hong Kong. No one tells you this when you move here. But it's the sad honest truth. My assistant, S. doubles as my Cantonese coach. She actually just writes stuff out for me (my address, "One order of white rice, please."). I don't understand the logic involved in the inflections of spoken Cantonese, so I've given up trying to learn.

Got home a bit early today, so I walked around the area. Saw a tiny place selling roast goose and duck and my heart broke. Yet another place I can't walk into (without a yellow sticky from S.). But I was hungry and thought, what the hell. The worst thing that can happen is that they won't understand me or I walk out of there with roasted pig's entrails instead of duck (which is not necessarily a bad thing).

I walk up to the lady at the counter. She looks at me and yells, "Hong ching long a ling ding" (or something like that). I guess that was Cantonese for , "So what'll it be, Hon?"

I meekly say, "Hello."

She responds with quizzical look. I get this all the time. Everyone thinks I'm Chinese.

After a couple of seconds she figures out I'm a gweilo and responds with, "Yes? What you order?"

I walked out with a quarter duck (plum sauce on the side, please), and white rice, all with no help from S.