Accent

Less than three weeks until I go back to Sydney and I need to start working on my accent.

I've had two interviews about work this week. One was with a postgrad student writing on homelessness. The other was with a reporter and a celebrity columnist from HK's premier English language newspaper. By 'celebrity columnist' I mean a very famous columnist, not a columnist that writes chiefly about celebrities. Having said that, I may be a celebrity after the article comes out (probably this week).

It sounds like the newspaper is going to do quite a special on the asylum seeker issue. They even took about fifty photos of my colleague and I sitting back to back, turning our necks to put our heads side by side in a pose reminiscent of an ABBA video.

Anyway, the newspaper reporter told someone else (who told me) that I was 'the most un-Australian sounding person she had ever met'. I was recovering from the shock of that when the student asked me if I was South African!

Seeking a third opinon I went to a friend from Sydney who gave me the following response ' Your accent is something between Indian English and Chinese English'.

Aiyaa bhagwan!