When all else fails, just say "beef sandwich"

this is a story repeated to me by Matt and the other male English teachers:

they were sitting at a table in a terrace area of Sharjah (called Al Qasba), and noticed the precarious position of a huge umbrella teetering overhead. of course they were worried about the possibility of being impaled (or flattened) by a falling (or flying) umbrella. so, for safety reasons, they asked an attendant custodian if it would be possible to to remove it. unfortunately, this particular fellow was skilled in neither Arabic (not that it mattered) nor English. so he just cobbled together the few words in English that he knew:

"Hello. Hotel. Beef sandwich."

and then he did nothing about it. a bit later, after i arrived, the umbrella swayed and finally toppled over, nearly squishing a couple of kids! if only we could have decoded what he meant by "beef sandwich." perhaps we could have avoided catastrophe.