baby, what's in that satchel?

once again i'm reminded why i shouldn't let my mandarin get any worse than it already is. yesterday one of dad's friends called. the conversation went a little like this:

me: hullo?
guy: hullo 请问 吕先生 在 吗？
me: oh erm. 对不起他不在。但是你可以打给他手机。

so far so good. maybe i'm on a roll.

guy: oh! ********* 不是他手机号码？
me: 不, 这是我们家的号码。

ya .. ok sounds like a primary 2 textbook conversation example, but still getting message across. so we're doing well, team.

guy: oh. 那么你可以给我他的手机号码吗？

[insert creaking noise as i try thinking of number in english and try to translate into chinese simultaneously]

me: .. um .. 国际号码 ... 六一 ... [here the system begins to fail] 四 二 ... 二 二 .. [insert gibberish and random combinations of numbers]

so i kindof ended up giving him the complete wrong number that probably went something like 422232867826. i know it's just numbers, which is like the most basic thing ever and a 2 year old could probably do better than that, but it didn't help that he was repeating after me which got me a bit confused. so then i had to call dad to tell him "some guy who spoke chinese called and asked for your number, but i think i gave him the wrong one". and he had a good laugh, then proceeded to call every single only-chinese-speaking person he knew. i'm pretty sure they had a laugh at my expense too =_= .. again.

so if anyone wants to engage me in a bilingual conversation, i wouldn't mind the practice as long as you don't laugh at my pronunciation.