喝水了吗

Lately, I’ve felt very weird asking people how they are doing. Everything is terrible and my. County is one failed court injunction away from breadlines.

So instead of “How are you doing,” I’ve started asking people if they’ve drunk water recently, as a way of expressing that I care about them and want to make sure they’re taking care of themselves too.

And I suddenly realized that I just reinvented the Chinese greeting 吃饭了吗，”have you eaten (rice)?” (Chi fan le ma, pronounced roughly as “chur FAHN luh muh”.)

So. 喝水了吗？ Have you drunk water? (“Heuh shway luh muh”.)

Not even gonna try to translate “don’t shrimp,” though.