NO ON PROP 54

"Cantonese, Line 1!"
"Mandarin, Line 2!"

So tonight I helped out at a phone bank urging voters in San Francisco to vote against Proposition 54. It was located at the offices of Chinese for Affirmative Action in Chinatown. We were specifically calling Chinese voters in the City. I, of course, speak no Chinese (neither Cantonese nor Mandarin) or any other language except for a little Spanish. So when we would get a caller on the line who didn't speak English we would, for those of us who didn't speak anything else, say "Cantonese? Mandarin?" and they would say one or the other. We would then yell out to this one guy in the same office who was fluent in those languages (and english-- he's trilingual, i'm so jealous) and he would run around, often up and down stairs, and pick up the calls we had on hold.

A little chaotic. A little crazy. A lot of fun. The other interesting thing I noted about myself is that if someone doesn't speak English and I'm trying to tell to them to hold, I jump into Spanish. "Un momento, por favor." Which of course makes no sense because they don't speak that language either. But I guess it made sense in my lingual mind somehow.

"Cantonese? Mandarin? Un momento, por favor."