my dad
Dad was English but lived in Amsterdam for 11 or so years before he died of cancer at the young age of 52. He undertook most of the chemo and radiotherapy treatment in a hospital just outside Amsterdam near Schiphol airport if I remember correctly.

For the first few weeks at the start of his treatment all the staff and other patients on the ward, assuming dad could only speak English, only spoke English to him. They never spoke in Dutch to him and more or less assumed he was an ignorant English man with no grasp of their language.

Nothing odd about that except my dad was a quite a bit of a character and had shaved all his hair off (his response to being told he will lose his hair due to the treatments), was drawing erotic and dirty bondage pictures for the nurses and smoking skunk out on the balcony. The other cancer patients basically thought he was a complete oddball acting inappropriately through to disgracefully. A couple of weeks pass:

Nurse: Hello Mr Sutit Senior Ive been told that you speak fluent Dutch
Dad: Um well yes, I do.
Nurse: In that case would you rather we spoke to you in Dutch or English?
Dad: Dutch would be fine...

As my dad tells it there first was an audible gasp from some of the patients as the realisation dawned on them that he had understood ever single bloody word they had said in the last two weeks and then it was so quiet you could of heard a pin drop...

still miss him
( sutit only the crumbliest, flakiest posts, Thu 12 May 2011, 21:02, 2 replies)

reminds me
of gramps. perished of a similar ailment but still waiting for the punchline - his sense of humour was as subtle as they come - could take days to work out you'd been had. i'm still working some of them out to this day :D
(salty_peters, Thu 12 May 2011, 23:15, closed)

Sounds like an ace bloke
and a real gentleman.
(Document Pocket, Mon 16 May 2011, 12:59, closed)