Buenos Dias Blablabla

Janvier: Attendance check!
January: Hmmm?
Januar: What's this about?
Janvier: We seem to have a new feller who'd somehow joined us.
Yatyue: Really? How can? Who?
Janvier: Come on, out here, you.
Xavier: Hola.
January: Whoa! Where did you come from?
Xavier: But I have always been here, amigo.
January: No you've not!
Janvier: All right, details now.
Xavier: Xavier Soler, at your service. That is pronounced, 'Cha-vi-air So-lay'.
Janvar: Hmmm. Sounds like a fan of yours, Janvier Soldat.
Janvier: Just because the name sounds similar doesn't mean the same thing.
Lanuarius: So what seems to be the problem with Xavier?
Janus: Oh yes, it was Xavier who had us in a bit of a spot when we were in Barcelona.
Lanuarius: Oh, were there troubles in Barcelona? I do not seem to recall them.
Janvier: You were probably too busy admiring the architecture and reminiscing about Europe.
Januar: Oh you meant that bit of awkwardness.
Janus: Every single day.
Xavier: Que?
Janvier: There you go again.
Yatyue: Haiyo. Shy only sometimes.
January: It was actually quite fun.
Januar: Yeah. Awkward but interesting. Still, how did Xavier came about?
Enero: Actually, it's me. Eh heh.
Janvier: Now it clears up. Had your bit of fun in Barcelona, eh?
Enero: Well you weren't any better in Brussels and Paris, we remember.

In preparation for our Barcelona trip we had brought along our Time Out guide and we also downloaded an application from iTunes - lastminute.com's Spanish guide. Very handy, both of 'em.

Now asides from our Spanish colleagues, the locals were notably friendly too. Always a cheery "Hola!" as we went about. So naturally we "Hola!" back. Just like how we'd go "Hiya!" when in Glasgow. Back here it's anything from "Zhou san," to "Elo," to just a wave of the hand.

So one morning as we were entering the pickup van that takes us all to our office, we greets the driver. The driver greets us back, and launches a long spout of Spanish (or Catalan) that made no sense to our limited vocabulary, what more the rest of our colleagues who aren't Spanish. We only understood his 'hola' and 'traffico'.

The driver probably understood that we all "no entienda el español" when the whole van was rather quiet after his friendly banter. And probably some of us were nodding our heads slowly with that uncertain smile one normally has when in a situation like this. But the rest of the journey that morning was rather uneventful thankfully.

The other incident involved our cab to Barcelona Aeroport. As we didn't manage to cover all Barcelona we had the cabbie make a detour to the Arc de Triomf for us to take some photos before dropping us off at the aeroport airport.

Janvier: Er, primero, er L'arc de Triomf, y... (somehow thinks in French, because primier is first, and deuxieme is second, and was thinking how to put it in Spanish) ...dosieme (and fails splendidly, checking back the Spanish app it's segundo)... er Aeroport.
Cabbie: [Quickfire Spanish].
Janvier: Er, (gives up, thrusts camera into cabbie's face) photo! Photo!
Cabbie: Ah! Photo!

Thankfully from there it was easy for us. A quick "Uno momento!" while we scarpered to take photos, and then, "Terminal B" when asked where he should drop us off, and no more Spanish.

Yet somehow, we think we'd be far better off in Spain than we would in Hong Kong/China. At the least, we could read some of the words.