omg, my chinese DAMN FAIL!
i had to call up crystal jade to change my reservation details and the convo went something like this:

crystal jade auntie (CJA): hello, [restaurant name in chinese].
me: 我。。。我。。。 *pauses, thinks hard, cmi chinese, switch to english, hopefully they understand* i actually made a reservation for 8 people...
CJA: 几时的

then the rest of the convo went smoothly in chinese :)
but it involved some very simple words only.