In April 1996, my colleague and I were on a business trip to Seoul. We worked late hours to complete the project study within 5 days. One day, we were so much concentrated on the project schedule that we did not realize it was very late. When we came out of the office, it was almost 22h30. We were so tired that we wanted to enter the first restaurant on our way to the hotel and eat any available food.
It was a local restaurant. Staff only spoke in local dialect. Except for 2 tables, others were empty. We took the table next to the one with 4 elderly koreans discussing intensively in vernacular. After giving us the menu card, the waiter was standing restless waiting for our orders. He should have been cursing us for stretching his work time. The menu card was in Korean. We therefore attempted to strike a conversation with the waiter in English to get to know the dishes on the card but miserably failed. He just nodded his head for everything we said. My colleague looked around and noticed the generous portion of meat and vegetables stew just served to our neighbours. He had the bright idea of pointing out to that dish and asked the waiter to bring 2 plates of the same. The waiter bowed and walked to the kitchen shouting loudly our orders.
Suddenly pin drop silence at our next table. All four were staring at us as if we were aliens from some other planet. One of them threw a gentle smile at us, he got up and came to us. He asked in perfect English “Do you know what you ordered, are you sure you want to eat this local delicacy?”. I replied “I think we ordered a steak in sauce served with vegetables.”. He responded with the same smile “Yes, it is a steak but it is dog meat”. I looked at my colleague feverishly for a second, turned to the man and said: "Thank you very much. We will never forget your help". Then we stood up, waved a big No to the waiter and ran out of the restaurant.
We got to our hotel and went straight to bed. That night we did have neither the courage nor the appetite to go to another restaurant or order room service. We slept with an empty stomach.
That day, we learnt one important lesson:
-Never under-estimate and hesitate to ask for help.
We could have asked one of those next table gentlemen to help us in ordering our food. But we did not, because we hesitated whether they knew English or not.
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