chicken

Me and a platoon of my engineering colleagues stumbled into a chicken rice shop for lunch today. Although it’s a chicken rice shop, the place actually offered a variety more of local fast food - eg. various choices of noodles, rice vermicelli’s, “wan than” (a type of shrimp/meat balls wrapped in dough), etc. A typical Penang’s multi menu feasting place.

Planning to have a really quick lunch, the 7 of us quickly settled down onto a medium sized round table and flagged the old waitress to take our order. She seemed quite happy by the sight of our presence - as if it’s a rendezvous with her long lost gay lover. And because we intend to be quick, each of us ordered just a plate of flat rice noodle and a bowl of “wan than”.

That was when the happy face of a friendly lady turned into a surprised old hag. Her friendly lispy voice suddenly turned into something that resembled a full grown male primate crossed with a really old buffalo - bellowing some comment of dismay :

old hag : “Is that all ?? Is that all you guys want to order ??”

Being a suave guy, I politely replied her with a short explanation

me : “Yes aunty. That’s all. We’re in a hurry. Thank you.”

Apparently, the explanation does not satisfy the old lady. She started to gripe something that was beyond our comprehension, followed by another question to all of us

old hag : “I thought you guys gonna order some chicken ?? Everyone here orders chicken… you guys are weird”

She sound agitated. Again, I politely declined.

me : “Thanks aunty, but we’re really in a hurry. We’ll just stick to our original orders please..”

old hag : “Damn, I thought you guys going to order a whole chicken with that crowd … bla bla bla”

She continued to bitch about her chickens while walking away into the kitchen to process our order. We took no offense about her rude demeanor as we’re a bunch of understanding youths. Old people are not very much different from psycopaths so … it’s ok to let them be.

We’re doing our usual chat about girls when suddenly, the old psycopath hag returned to our table, standing beside me and was kinda staring at me. It freaked me out needless to say. She stood there staring for what must be like a whole 5 seconds, before she was able to gather her thought to ask me another weird question

old hag : “You really don’t want to order our chicken ? They are very nice …I’m not kidding you”

Alright, that was my limit. I snapped. She reminded me of a desperate credit card guy that I used to lambaste on the phone - which pisses me off. I decided to stop the polite-guy act and tone up a bit

me : “aunty, you heard me very clear - no chickens. Please leave us alone”

old hag : “our chickens here are famous … you should try it.”

me : “your chickens are famous eh ? so, what’s your chicken’s name ? see if I know the name…”

That hag became stunned when I actually asked for her chicken’s name. I bet she has never encountered any of her patrons asking her chicken’s name. Then one of my colleague Wilson added more confusion to her jammed mind …

wilson : “aunty … don’t force us to order chickens lar … you want to be a pimp is it ?”
(”to order chicken” is a slang in hokkien for “whoring”)

She immediately disappeared into the kitchen and never bothered us again. Some people are just plain weird.