* OK, so every culture has it’s sayings.
  In El Salvador it was ‘poco a poco’ … little by little. If I
had a dime for every time I heard that …
  In Senegal it was (in the Fulakunda dialect) seeda, seeda
helbinta maayo … little by little the lake fills. Which is
about the exact meaning as ’poco a poco’.
  Here in Romania it is ‘aşa şi aşa’ which means … so - so.
  The other day I was playing around and listening to a
Mandarin Chinese lesson. In the lesson I heard the
saying … so - so. Upon hearing that I thought … I could
really use that here seeing as so - so is such a dominate
answer to the question … How are you?
  So I spent about 5 minutes learning the Chinese version
of so - so.
  Now armed with this phrase I set out to the grocery store.
That is place that 100% of the time you are going to hear
so -so as the reply to the question ... how are you.
  So … upon entering I asked in Romanian … how are you? Of
course I get the answer … aşa şi aşa. So I said “so you guys are
ma ma hu hu today”. Everyone in the place looked at me like I
was nuts. I told them ‘ma ma hu hu’ (the a and the u needs a little
accent on top but I don’t have it on my keyboard) means …
aşa şi aşa in the Mandarin Chinese language. Ma ma hu hu is
pronounced … ma ma who who. Also ma means horse and hu
means tiger. I explained to them the meaning of the words so
… horse horse tiger tiger … in Mandarin means so - so.
  It appears to be spreading exponentially as I have heard
someone I didn’t know, say it to another person.
  What was accomplished? A few laughs with people in another
country from another culture. Which on a personal note made
my day more than ma ma hu hu.