Ni Hao Ma?

Don’t you just love it when you enter a store in your neighborhood shopping mall and this lovely sexy salesgirl comes over and says “Qing wen wo yao zhen me bang ni ne?“ Wait! Did she just insulted me or just trying to tell me my fly’s open? Should I just walk away disgruntled or do I need to check my bird cage?

It’s difficult being a Chinese but not being able to speak Mandarin. I’m a Hokkien, and in Penang that’s all that is needed. Or so I thought.

Many people have asked me why. And now with this blog, I can just tell them the web address and they can read it up themselves. I’m not so much into repeating myself. It gets tiring saying the same thing over and over again. Again, like I said, I’m not so much into repeating myself. Seems like every guy I meet, at some point or another, would ask me about this handicap of mine. I hate that cause I’m not so much into repeating myself.

Wait a minute; I would have to be repeating the web address like a million times. Hell, there’s just no winning. Bah!

It all started when I was young. My family doesn’t speak Mandarin, so the only place for me to learn was in school. I can still remember. There’s a Mandarin class after school on Fridays. On one fine day, sometime in standard four, I decided to join. I knew the other kids have a huge head start over me as I can barely write my name in Mandarin, let alone say a complete sentence. So I took up the courage and had a go at it.

I walked into the class, and I saw my friends there as well. I took a seat, giddy at what I would learn there. How I would go home and proudly converse with my siblings and see their faces when they don’t understand a single word I say. I would just stand there and laugh, finally even though being the youngest; I have some knowledge/skill that they don’t. Imagine the power. Imagine the prestige.

So, class started and the teacher walked in. Suddenly, everybody said “Lao Shi Wu An”. WTF was that? Anyway, I remembered that it was done in a very chaotic manner. If this was a synchronized greeting event, they’d get an even zero. The teacher said something, as if in displeasure and wanted a livelier greeting. So they said it again. I had no real idea what was being said, but I assumed it was “Good afternoon, teacher”. So instead of just standing and keeping my mouth shut and looking like a snob, I Milli Vanilli-ed the words.

Then the teacher greeted them back and started yapping. I was lost. All I could do was to look at my friends and see what they were doing, and mimic their actions. They stood up, so did I. They sat down, so did I. They took their exercise books out, so did I. In other words, monkey see, monkey do. After about 10 minutes, I finally decided enough is enough. I gathered all my courage, packed my things into my bag, and told the teacher that my school bus was here and I had to leave. The teacher excused me, not even wondering how the hell I could have known my bus was there when the class was at least a hundred meters away from the parking lot and has no view whatsoever of it.

I ran out into the school field, feeling the kind of freedom only a caged bird let loose could describe. Frolicking in the sun and playing with my other friends who were not in the Mandarin class. I’ve got time; the school bus won’t be there until at least an hour!