I was brought up in a Cantonese/Hokkien dialect speaking family, that is why I don’t speak Mandarin very well. I couldn’t read nor write them neither – and this pretty much includes my own Chinese name. It’s a shame… I know, but I’m sure there are plenty more people like me out there. A banana dude — yellow outside, white inside.

I’m about to relate a couple of embarrassing incidents that took place during my trip to China a few years ago

Incident #1
I was approached by a Chinese tour guide (let’s call her – CindyCrawford) about something. When CindyCrawford came up to me, I had just descended from a climb up to The Great Wall. It was a very cold afternoon *The conversation was reproduced based on my memory and limited knowledge on Mandarin, slight discrepancies are expected*:

CindyCrawford : “Ching wen … xiang mien hai you mei you ren?”
(translation: Excuse me, is it still cold up there?) — as per what I understand from the description.

Me : “errr… uuhh… yeah… xiang mien ‘quite’ ren …”
(translation: errr…uhhhh … yeah .. it’s quite cold up there..) — That was my half assed Mandarin. I was rather surprised, it’s fucking cold down here, for sure it would be colder up in the mountains. Maybe she just wanted to start a conversation, I thought.

CindyCrawford :[confused look] “Ni you mei you kan tau tha men ? [some sign language] .. ren?”
(translation: You seen them? Cold?) — Oh, she’s probably asking me if I’m cold … awww.. how sweet of her…

Me :”Oh… yeah… xiang mien hen ren … [show her a shaking hand sign]… xie xie”
(translation: Oh..yeah.. it’s very cold up there… thanks) — it was about 5 deg C up there. It’s fucking cold.

CindyCrawford : “Pu se .. wo se wen ni… ni you mei you kan tau tha men .. [pointing at tour bus .. then camera]?”
(translation: No, I’m asking you, have you seen them [pointing at tour bus .. then camera]) — something is not right. She was not asking me if I’m cold.

Shit, that was when I saw where did it all go wrong… She was actually asking if I have seen those people from my tour group, and whether they are still all up in the mountains. I apparently mistaken the word “ren” as COLD instead of PEOPLE. So, the whole thing was a boo-boo. She wasn’t concerned about my welfare after all. Fuck. It was downright embarrassing. I replied her back in a broken Mandarin (& plenty of sign language) that ‘those bastards are still climbing the fucking steep Great Wall, and The Great Wall sucks’.

Incident #2
Inside the tour bus:

Tourguide : “announcing through loudspeaker] “Wo men xien cai yau chue kan cak cik.”
(translation: we now are going to watch fried chicken) — again, as per what I understand from the description

Me :”What the fuck!? We are going to watch fried chicken??? What’s so different about frying chickens in China???”

My comments triggered a commotion of hysterical laughs from the entire tour group.

Again, the word “cak cik” the tour guide meant was ACROBATIC PERFORMANCE. I mistaken it as FRIED CHICKEN. Apparently, ‘fried chicken’ is pronounced as chaaaaa cheeeeeee .. the vowels are pronounced longer. To me, it sounded all the same.

For example, stars .. is called “xing xing” … which also shares the same pronunciation for gorilla & faith. Pardon me but, the meaning for all the 3 words here are all very different from each other, and it would be catastrophic to make any mistake on that :P

But then, ironically, it is part of my job nature to deal with Taiwanese suppliers almost everyday… and I don’t have any problem in communicating with them at all. Apparently, they could understanding the word “fuck” very well, and I guess that’s all it takes for them to understand a scolding or two.

Went out for lunch with Blackie, BigSnake and Veron at a local food court. We were immediately approached by a Chinese lady – “Any drinks?” – she asked in Hokkien (a Chinese dialect). BigSnake was busy looking around and was still in the process of figuring out what to eat for lunch, kinda half heartedly answered the lady in Malay – “Bagi milo ais satu gelas” (translation – gimme a glass of milo). His response triggered a hysterical laugh from me and the rest of us… and the lady herself was stunned. Pointing at her, I exclaimed “He thought that you are an Indonesian maid!!! muahahahah!!”. She was mortified.

Embarrassed by his mistake, BigSnake apologized to her, but I teased the lady again “Oh no, you’re not gonna let him get away just like this, are you?”. You can see the way she gave us that “I’m gonna kill you” look before she went away to process our orders. And we were fortunate indeed, as our milo-ais didn’t taste funny at all.

On our way back to office, Blackie started to talk about a few good restaurants, and then, indirectly hinted at me that how great it would be to have our lunch together, celebrating something. Sensing something amiss, I realized that they have found out about my promotion – yes, I have been promoted by Rob. I’m a level 2 engineer now. But then, that doesn’t mean it’s all good between me and Rob. No fucking way. I will still hate him like how I hate roaches. In fact, I deserved that promotion since last year… and it was a belated promotion. So, Rob still sucks donkey cock in my opinion. If killing is legal, I would have punched him to death by now.

Nevermind about Rob. The bastards got me this time… I will have to treat them lunch for that promotion. I thought I can get away with this – but seems like I was wrong :P
A good try nevertheless…

My house phone rang at 2.15am. It rang for quite sometime before waking me up. I gathered around 30% of my consciousness (which was just enough for me to figure out how to open the door, and walk to the phone in the dark) to pick up the goddamn phone. A very monotone female voice spoke something in the phone (like she was in a trance).

I asked “who the fuck is this?”. She began to murmur something unintelligible (that’s probably because I’m half awake that time). Then she said something about my mom… and something about my cousin too.

I kept asking her what is she talking about (I’m still very blur at that time) – she then mentioned something about my grandma (which had passed away on May) & something about possessing my cousin’s body. That was when I got really freaked out. As I tried to slap myself to sober up – I realized that the lady on the phone was actually my stupid sister – Beancurd. I asked “Is this Beancurd? What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you know what time it is??”

She kept uttering some garbage and her voice remained very monotonous. This kept going on for like 10 minutes, with the half awake me hurling cusses after cusses to her.

I forgot how the phone call ended but I know what had happened. She probably sleep walked and prank called on me. I told my mom in the morning and that was when my sister called in again.

This time, she sounded normal. Mom then told her about what she did last night – and as expected – she didn’t have a clue about the incident. She was sleep walking at that time. But my mom was trying to be superstitious about it – could it be my grandma who possessed Beancurd’s body and talked to me on the phone?

I told my mom – grandma had a hard time to even remember the last 4 digits of our house phone number, how could she have possibly made that phone call? It’s fucking ridiculous.

Actually, my cousin’s wife did get possessed last week. She went into a trance or hypnotic state and started to talk about things only my grandma knew. Weird, isn’t it? Are there really ghosts in this world? Or is my cousin’s wife trying to fuck with us?

Well, if it’s for the attention, she could have stripped herself naked and run around the neighborhood – she’ll get all the attention she ever needs. But no one knows if it’s really grandma doing all these out there. I mean, she is not suppose to come back because she’s already dead. It’s unnatural. Could it be that she still has some “business” left undone and was actually trying to hint us about it?

Well, grandma, if you are reading this, you can call me up in the afternoon to my mobile, but please, don’t do it in the wee hours of the morning. I needed the goddamn sleep.

I’m still very free today. Got nothing to do. Spent most of my time surfing and answering phone calls. One of them was made by BigSnake, asking me what the hell is Centrino. I told him it’s a brand of vacuum cleaner. Things like that.

Lunch with the usual bunch. Went to “the place under the bridge” to eat. The 3 old guys (Doug, LeRoy & Eric) were talking about their boss today. Apparently, their boss 3K (short for kiasu, kiasi & kiabo), is also a jerk. Rumored to be worse than Rob, 3K is the kind who would put his nose in anything you do. Micromanage – as they call it in our corporate world. And he’s a an asshole too. Anything bad you can imagine. He is the typical evil boss that all assholes in my company would worship like their religion.

Usually, the 3 old guys would just curse him around during lunch and I was already used to that. Heck, they even named my soft-toy dog (it’s a grimm) in my car as 3K… and occasionally, Eric would grab my dog and punch him in the face and yell – “motherfucker!”. My dog is like a physical dummy for him to vent out his frustrations …*I usually call my dog ‘crazyguy’ *

But today was different. Their rantings has advanced to a whole new level. Today, they talked about torture & some twisted plots to murder him. Doug started with something like cutting off his dick, sealing his sex life shut forever. And Eric continued, to peel his skins and rub plenty of salt on him… then coat him up in honey and let the ants devour him.

And they continued to add more ideas, each time with more grotesque imagination. I thought I was bad. But I felt really thankful today, for I wasn’t the one driving. Else, I couldn’t imagine what would happen to Crazyguy when their imaginations turn into action.

I think I’m gonna hide my dog up the next time I drive these 3 old guys out for lunch.

oo.. yeah. I’ve never felt any better. It’s like being reborn… the outing to the club was awesome!

Last Saturday night’s theme was — Steven S’s partner. My friend Ayamas brought along 1/2 dozen of his lady friends and wanted to intro one of them to another friend in the frat, Steven S (he has been single for YEARSssssss). That was why, everyone anticipated something to happen and watched Ayamas & Steven S walking confidently through that big crowd of clubbers… to that lucky lady who was dancing on the dance floor.

And with joy in our hearts, we toasted each other hoping for the best for our brother… but out of the sudden… in less than 10secs, we saw Steven S came running back looking pale and Ayamas followed suit from behind:

Me : “Eh dude … what happened lah?”

Steven S : “… nothing…”

Me : “I thought you’re suppose to meet someone and work out something with her?”

Steven S : “No ler … it didn’t work out”

Me : “Seriously dude… you were so excited a minute ago, …but look at you now, don’t want pulak?”

Steven S : “Well, why don’t you go and have a look yourself? You’ll understand…” *upset*

Me : “Errm … how many points?”

We have our own common metric system to rate attractiveness for the opposite sex… it’s a guy thing…

Steven S : “Don’t ask, just go see for yourself ler…” *upset x2 *

Ayamas overheard our exchange and intercepted,

Ayamas : “Eh… brother… come on lah. It is hard to find good looking girls who are still single nowadays… if you want people to intro… it will be like that lah…”

And the whole group of BODs took ‘a hike’ around one particular spot of that club – like a zoo sight seeing event – to look at the subject. Fast forward a few minutes later, back the table…

Everyone: *stunned* …

Me : “Damn … her hair’s so fucking tragic… so… 80′s … so high (picture Marge Simpson)… that must have taken a quarter can of hairspray to hold…” *shudders*

Luis : “Eh friend … how old is she? What happened to your taste?”

Ayamas : “Just give it a rest, ok?”

And the BOD moved on with the party with another mission failed in place.