I met one of the coolest, most out­spo­ken peo­ple the oth­er day. He was a Chinese man, I’m guess­ing in his ear­ly 60’s, who was an asso­ciate of my uncle’s. Somehow, he kept thank­ing my uncle for favours with­out mak­ing things awk­ward (I’ve always been a ter­ri­ble thanker, which is part of the rea­son I’m hes­i­tant in receiv­ing gifts). He spoke with a boom­ing voice, and used English expres­sions mixed in with his Cantonese dia­logue, the way Russians would use French in the 1800’s.