From the foreigner’s mongoloid features, it is easy to place him as someone from South East Asia. He is too brown–‐skinned to qualify as Japanese, Korean or Filipino. Or, even Chinese. He could be Malaysian, Indonesian or Thai. Then he could be from Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam too. Suddenly, he felt a bit annoyed. It wasn’t as easy as he thought. He decided to deploy his sure–‐fire method. A conversation. He could pin down accents at ten meters. He had once surprised a second generation American woman by guessing her German–‐Polish ancestry. Which really wasn’t that difficult. Even people with the most impeccable of accents have a tendency to slip during unguarded moments. The trick is to watch out for these moments. He wasn’t too confident about Asian accents but that wasn’t going to stop him.