In understand if people in another country have difficulty understanding my accent. Strategies I’ve tried is to speak slower, to speaker clearer, or try to use similar sounding words. I tried booking a table at a popular place near work and repeated my name and number at least fifteen times. The people there handed me to about three different people and they at least finally took my number down.

The booking remained as my number here in Pune as 9923xxx. The number must have stuck because of the waiters cheerfully bade me farewell on my way out, “Thank you 9923.”