"Oh really?" the girl says to me -- with the "r" stretched so painfully the word sounds as if it has been ripped from the back of her throat.
Her eyes, too, seem to expand as if being pushed from within, by a brain cortex that now throbs with warning. "Nerd alert!" it wails. "Break conversation and escape to toilet now!"
All I did was to answer her question, perhaps the most common poser placed from one expat to another.