arghhhhh some people

Am I being discriminatory? Yes I am.

you know, the problem with stupid people is that there's absolutely NO USE trying to talk sense into them, or to take a more egalitarian view, to try get them to even SEE where you're coming from. and since they can't SEE where you're coming from let alone conceptualise it, they just....stop at point B when you're talking from point C. They just can't go past a certain point, so their logic becomes circular or pedantic.

It's like how a 2D drawing could never conceptualise 3D really, and how we in 3D could never really concieve of a fourth dimension...really.

So anyway, I'm interning at a company and everyone knows interns are at the absolute pond scum level of the pecking order. But well, sometimes, I swear, I'm smarter than the some people higher up (and since I'm not persecuting ANYONE by saying this since every bloody person in the 500-strong office is higher up than I am) . Where this person got by years of experience, I certainly don't begrudge them. It's certainly not easy to survive in this cutthroat industry and what they doesn't have in IQ I'm sure they more than make up for in many many other ways. I'm not even 100% positive if I myself can survive. It takes a certain type of person.

BUT today, that person had the most....silly conversation with me.

"So. Where are you originally from again?"

"Singapore"

"Oh. I always thought you came from Hong Kong"

I laughed. "Oh no, I can't speak a word of Cantonese!"

"What language do you speak then?"

"English"

"At home? Like your parents"

"English"

"Yeah right, so why do you have an accent?"

Geek cuts in (he's a real geek, but he's honestly the coolest person in there- not to say the rest of them aren't cool- they are- he's just the coolest) "yeah. Singaporeans all sound American"

"Singapore's official language is English. All our legal documents are in English"

Person looks bewildered and shocked for a moment.

"but why do you have an accent?"

"Yeah. it's a Singaporean accent"

"That's BULLSHIT! There's no such thing as a Singaporean accent"

"Yes there is...." I'm half amused "...Americans have an American accent, Canadians have a Canadian one, South Africans have a South African one, Singaporeans have a Singaporean one"

Person sits there, and you can literally see the cogs in person's brain working furiously. It's like the thought of Americans having an accent has never occured. I almost wanted to add and Aussies have an Aussie accent too- but didn't want to throw person off.

Person finally pronounces- "no! but you have an accent! there's no such thing as a Singaporean accent!"

I step out of the taxi, and try to cut some slack "if it makes you feel any better, I can speak Mandarin really badly"

Geek has given up. I give up too.

NB: I honestly don't think this person meant any harm. Person definitely wasn't being racist and mean. Also believe person isn't 100% Anglo and I've heard quite a few close friends of person's going "that's such a wog thing to say/do" so I'm doubly sure it wasn't meant in that way. Also a very forthright person.