Last night, my lady friend and I went out for sushi. Turns out the place was run by some Chinese folks and our waiter came over and in about 10 seconds was chatting with my date in rapid-fire Mandarin.

And he had really great hair.

Bastard.

Still, the meal was good (kind of hard to ruin food you don’t even have to cook, though), and I left him a decent tip. It’s not his fault I’m thinning on top. And, you know what? He grew up speaking Mandarin. The rest of us have to work at it.

That being said, as much as I was able to follow a portion of the conversation, ultimately I was lost.

Why was that? Was I simply intimidated by the Guy With Good Hair? Was I too busy plotting his demise to properly focus on what they were saying? Nah. My problems there were two-fold.

1) Environment  - Even in the best of circumstances, I’d have trouble plucking out the meaning of a dialogue between two native speakers who aren’t making any effort to slow down or annunciate. But in a restaurant? With the music piping in and a lot of crowd noise? Come on. I’ve been studying for a year and a half. Give me a break.

2) Vocabulary - I just don’t have it yet. Plain and simple. I’ll get there eventually, but for now, there simply words that I could hear but simply haven’t learned yet. There’s nothing to be done for that but to keep plugging away.

Of course, I am getting vital real-life practice here, which is hard to come by in, of all places, Florida. This isn’t New York or San Francisco. Or Shanghai.

I’ll take what I can get.

Tomorrow’s another day. Let’s see what else I can cram into this skull of mine.