How do you do?

Three years ago before coming to the UK, I attended an "English at Work" course. I remember having lots of fun in wordplay and learning about the English etiquette.

One of the lessons we had was responding to greetings.

Mrs Ong, our English teacher, asked everyone in the class "How do you do?"

The first person responded "I am fine."

She repeated, "How do you do?" round the class and almost everyone came out with different responses. "Fine and you?", "Fantastic!", "Great!" and "Yea, not too bad". If I remember correctly, I said, "I am fine, thank you"

Mrs Ong laughed. "That's not the correct way to respond", she pointed out.

"That's American actually. In Malaysia, we learn the British English and the British way in responding to "How do you do?" is "How do you do?"" she added.

The class was amused.

"How can you respond to a greeting with another greeting?" I thought.

Mrs Ong rehearsed with the class, "How do you do?"

"How do you do?" we responded.

"Right, that's how you should respond. Keep that in mind. It's very easy to make that mistake!"she ended.

This weird English lesson has made me remember of Mrs Ong ever since. This morning at work, I remembered Mrs Ong. What else? I remembered "How do you do?"!

As usual in the office, everyone would greet anyone. Still fresh in my mind, I started my first greeting to one of my British colleagues, "How do you do?"

He said, "Yea, not too bad, and you?"

Of course, Mrs Ong was right. This is further confirmed by the Indians.