My new name is Carlos Martinez

Why is this my new name? Because I've been getting very fed up with speaking English with Chinese people. Whenever you meet someone, they always ask 'where are you from' (in Chinese), which is fair enough. I tell them 'England', and they break into English. I cannot stand it. So recently I told a couple of people in passing that I was Portuguese, but today it backfired.

I was in one of the many small restaurants near my flat eating dinner, when 3 women invite me to join them at their table. Really nice and friendly, speaking Chinese, then comes the killer question. I said 'I'm Portuguese'. Then came the should-have-expected barrage of questions about Portugal. First a man at another table mentioned Macau [former Portuguese colony near Hong Kong]. I apologised, which went down well. Then they started naming Portuguese footballers. This was the first difficult question. Thirdly came 'What is the capital of your country?' I don't know how to say it in Chinese, so said it a (supposedly) Portuguese accent.

Further questions included :- your name? - Carlos Martinez. How many other languages can you speak? - Spanish, French (I got greedy), a little English. What foods do you eat in Portugal - fried breakfasts, potatoes, fish and chips. Can Portguese people speak English? - most of them, but me only a little. Is it easy for you to speak Spanish? - yes, very. What is your major at university? - international business. What is your country's population? - smaller than China's. Do Portguese people all have stubble? - yes, except for most of the women.

They worked for a cosmetics company called Anway, and they asked me if they have this in Portugal. I said no, they said definitely Portgual does, so I said, OK, maybe we do. Losing my grip on things, the final question came. Can you say a sentence in your Portuguese? Ooh shit. Shit shit shit. After lots of umming and erring, I decided I couldn't blag this one, saying I couldn't think of any appropriate sentence. I had finished eating, soI left, sweating and almost running out of the restuarant.

Because there's not so many foreigners around here, I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep this up. Some of the restaurant people already know I'm English. Maybe I should cut my hair, learn some Portuguese, don a sombrero (because everyone wears sombreros in Portugal), and throw myself into the role of Carlos Martinez!

Also today, my flatmates found a dog on the street and bought it home. They're currently feeding it rice.