Working as a supplier to the gaming sector involves a hectic travel schedule. For me, the merry-go-round starts in the middle of January and I don’t usually get off again until October.
The next trip on my calendar is to Asia, which usually hinges around the iGaming Asia conference in Macau. We invested substantially in the region a few years ago and it provides a good opportunity to bounce around a few countries in the region and meet clients old and new.
When I visit a country, I’ve believe in making an effort to speak the local language. By and large I’ve been successful, although I have to admit that I’ve found Cantonese a bit of a stumbling block.
I hit a bump in the road the first time I visited Hong Kong 10 years ago, when I tried to get a taxi from the airport into town. If you spend much time in the UK then you will find Hong Kong roads and signage have a familiar feel. Everything is marked in English and residents even drive on the left, which of course is right. Don’t let this lull you in to a false sense of security though, this is China so it would be presumptuous to assume that local taxi drivers speak perfect English.
If you don’t speak Cantonese then it really is pot luck when you queue at the taxi rank. On a good day it all goes swimmingly well, but other times you will fall into the territory US president Jimmy Carter found himself in 1977 when he gave a speech in Poland about his desires for the future which was translated to his baffled audience as “I desire the Poles carnally.”
The hotel names don’t help either. I was staying in the Mandarin Oriental on this trip and after 10 minutes of repeating the hotel name and (I kid you not) trying a Chinese accent to see if that worked any better (it didn’t), I eventually managed to find someone who could write it down for me and we were off. The “W” hotel is just as challenging, which is why I stay at the Grand Hyatt.
Since I’ve worked in the technology sector all of my life, I have inevitably experimented with translate apps on my phone with varying degrees of success. There is a really good one which lets you talk in English and translates out loud in your chosen language. It works pretty well in most countries, although I think it might be less than perfect in Cantonese, given the horrified look I got from one taxi driver. The other slight downside of this approach was my data-roaming bill which I will only describe as “surprising”.
After a couple of years, I’ve starting to pick up enough to make myself understood so I’m a little less reliant. Probably a good job too as we’re hosting an industry event just before iGA and I will be talking about data centres, networks and fixing latency problems so having a few phrases in the sock drawer are going to help immensely.
If you regularly attend iGA or Hong Kong in general, then try spending a couple of hours a week to learn a few phrases. It goes an awful long way.
