should i be more patient with chinese immigrants who can't speak english?

probably, seeing as i was born to two of them.

there's this chinese grad student in my lab whose english is pretty shit-poor. to his credit, he's trying to learn the language, but the problem is that he doesn't understand some basic instructions, which, in a laser lab, can be rather hazardous. it's also hard to ascertain sometimes whether he does something because he doesn't understand the language, or because he's just plain socially inept. he is, after all, a physicist. he seems incredibly reliant on one of our lab's postdocs, who appears to have infinite patience. i both admire the postdoc's unflinching and unwavering commitment to help this putz out and am so, so grateful that i'm not in his position.

this chinese grad student -- known around the lab as 'sky' -- appears not to have learned my name, despite having worked in the same lab for a good six months. it takes about 10 times as long to get a concept across to him, and i'm not talking complicated physics-type concepts. concepts like, 'uh, you're not supposed to go into the laser lab without safety goggles. these. gog-gles. you must wear. wear goggles. no wear, then burn eyes out. gog-gles.'

anyway, i had a phone conversation with sky that went as follows:

'hello, nanolab. nori speaking.'

'enh... hello.'

'hi.'

'enh... is murray...enh...there?'

'nope.'

'enh... not there?'

'no. he's gone.'

'enh... gone?'

'yes. gone. he isn't here.'

'enh...who is this?'

'it's nori.'

'enh...are you murray's...enh...friend?'

(???) 'um...i guess so.'

'enh...is he...enh...will he come back?'

'i don't know. but i don't think so. his bike isn't here.'

'enh...bike? oh. enh...murray not come back.'

'no, i don't think so. i think he's gone home.'

'enh...home? okay. bye-bye.'

i hang up. twenty minutes later, he barges into the lab sans goggles and asks if murray's here. does he think that repeatedly asking will make it so?

apparently, as my sweetie's told me he's witnessed sky trying to fax a document to a number which was evidently wrong, and sky's strategy was just to keep faxing it to that number multiple times.

...

then he sends this e-mail out to the entire department. the whole department (this is totally unedited):

Sorry for bothering all of you,
      Now I am a graduate student working on nanostructure fabrication in AMPEL.This project will use a combination of a AFM and a borescope. But I don't know much about borescopes. It would be useful to make me get some information such as working distance, magnification, resolution etc., in advance, because I need to see a very tiny pattern on SOI surface, around a order of 7~8 microns, to be imaged with this sort of thing.
      Please tell me if you konw Who has such tiny device and where I can take a look? Thanks
Tian Si
Physics & Astronomy Department

my buddy SW writes an e-mail to a small group of us as follows:

To everyone@everydepartment.ubc.ca:
Sorry for bothering all of you,
Now I am a graduate student working on my thesis.  I don't know much about what I am doing.  It would be useful to make me get some information on what I'm doing such as doing some work, looking things up in books, on the internet, this sort of thing.
Please tell me if you know who will do all my work for me.
Thanks
Scott Webster

genius.

...

in other news, it's 0428h and i'm in my lab. it'd be a bit better if i were getting results, but after a frustrating day of one delay after another, i'm getting jack shit. it'll make the supervisor happy, i'm sure. i'm not entirely sure why the system's not behaving itself -- all i know is that i'm really really tired. after our spectrometer computer got devastated by a virus, the supervisor's all paranoid about connecting it to the network. i am without internet during scans, when i need it most. it was most likely some dumbass downloading a corrupt attachment to begin with. just having it hooked up to the internet isn't all that big a risk.

that computer has to work on windows NT 4.0 (shittiest...operating...system...ever.) because the software used to operate the spectrometer is hopelessly antiquated and won't work on anything more contemporary. as a result, the system is full of security holes and susceptible to viruses of all types.

it never ceases to astound me how backward this lab is. really. cutting-edge photonic crystal research, right here.