After an afternoon luncheon event, I went to ta-bao (packet) "chap chai peng" (mixed veg rice) at a near-by hawker centre before heading back to the office.It was close to 4pm and famished so I must have exuded some kind of "chirpiness" when merrily placing my orders. I remembered I said something like "Fan da-bao" (packed rice in box), "fan bu yong jiang duo" (less rice), "ji, ru dan & shi chuan cai" (chicken, soya egg & sze chuan veg).
At the end of it, the hawker commented "Wa, ni hua yu jiang de zhe me hao" (your spoken mandarin so good). I was thnking to myself "what you talking about, I just hosted a chinese new year luncheon which I conducted 40% of it in mandarin).
"Ni shi na li ren" (which part of the world you from). Then it don on me she thought I wasn't chinese. To cut the long story short, she refused to believe I am "ben di ren" (local chinese).
Think my sis will find stories like this very familiar.Lol
5 comments:
hehe... the hawker's real funny.
You very international look...last time "huana gia", now even more varied, :D. Just like good old Dad - people used to wonder whether Mom was married to Indian, Thai or Philipino :D:D:D
Sis
Did the hawker ever say where she thinks you are from? Any place in SEAsia is ok leh.
yah.. any 'fave' nationalities that you got mistaken for? and any that got u a little annoyed?
my husband has a hybrid of aussie and singaporean accent, so lots of people ask whether he is from hong kong. no offence to hongkongers, but he gets pretty annoyed each time people ask him that while i snigger on the side.
WG-:)
Sis- yes, I'm sure u remember the macdonald story "got pork u know".Lol
SL, EDPJ-usually philipino or Indonesian. In this instance, she insisted that I was from Philippines. When i told her i am local, she said I lied! eyes roll!
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