Saturday, 19 October 2013
Assimilation Part 2
Last week I failed at qualifying as a bona fide Tai Tai in Singapore because I am short, brown and continue to wear a selection of shorts and t-shirts from Primark.
This week I continued my determined assault to get in with the locals by trying out the two words in Mandarin I have learned from the children. It started ever so well and then backfired very quickly.
My efforts to assimilate into the local and expat community like some sort of subtle but pervasive flesh eating parasite, is really not working very well. I am making good in roads but keep tripping up. Obviously, looking like the help is not aiding my position amongst the locals as a "lady what lunches" and my efforts at shopping locally and speaking in Mandarin is making me look like a buffoon.
I am a determined chap and will continue to grind them down until I am treated as an equal amongst all the communities in which I foist myself.
My latest foisting I think has now resulted in someone developing a crush on me. Yes, unbelievable, particularly after last week's toes story.
This 17 year old youth who works behind the fish counter at the local Chinese supermarket is my new love interest and I can only assume that he thinks I am some sort of Desperate Housewife requiring my printer fixed when he has finished work gutting barramundi.
I have acquired this unwanted attention because I said thank you to him one day in Mandarin. He responded by bursting out laughing and telling his co-worker something in Mandarin about me saying thank you in Mandarin. Anyway, I felt like a bit of a fool but since that humiliation and because I am a fool I have continued to say good morning and thank you to the fish boys in Mandarin. As I said, I am determined and believe they will eventually not think of me as a joke if I persist.
Unfortunately this has gone wrong and he clearly thinks I am in love with him. As soon as he sees me now he constantly peeps over the counter to try to make eye contact which I initially avoided as I didn't want him to ask me to "go steady" or whatever kids do nowadays. But as I get excellent cheap fish from this supermarket I have to keep going there and just resigned myself to the fact I have a boy crush. He continues to smile, try to make eye contact and waits for those alluring words "thank you" in Mandarin to part from my lips before his little face lights up.
I did go there once with my husband and the children but it did not stop him grinning at me. I guess he thought I was their maid.
What can I do to fit in here and not just with the power Mum's I meet at my children's school, whom I actually fit in less with than the lady who sells eggs at the market. I think persistence is key here and I do hope I will increasingly be able to converse with the local people at the wet markets and Chinese supermarkets as I shop there regularly.
As for my new boyfriend, I guess I will know I have truly assimilated when we move from grinning and smiling to eventually meeting his parents. I do look forward to that day when he asks and I say no. By then, I will know that I truly belong.
Thursday, 10 October 2013
Assimilation Part 1
Last week, I had my first experience of what they call in this part of the world, "Tai Tai" and one hour later was knocked right back into my place.
Tai Tai is a Chinese colloquial term for a "wealthy married woman who does not work". In the case of my dear friend and I who hit the town the only part of that which is accurate is "married and does not work" and in my friends case, "woman". It is an interesting term as it is sometimes considered flattering in being referred to as a "lady" and yet also carries with it a subtle insult.
Anyway, our Tai Tai experience started as a coffee at my apartment followed by a stroll into town to have a pedicure. This was virgin territory for me having in 38 years never had anybody family, friend or foe near my feet. Firstly I am intensely ticklish and secondly after having the beautiful feet of an innocent child when I was a child I now have the gnarly, green hued thick toenails of a 38 year old who has done a lot of hiking and worn those stupid shoes that lots of short girls wore in the late 90's that were actually platforms disguised as nice shoes. This was my ankle buckling falling off the kerb phase that required me to always be holding on to someone when I walked anywhere. Furthermore as these were platform shoes nobody was going to fall for the fact that I was actually 5ft 7 as they would clearly see I was 5ft 1 wearing 6 inch blocks on the bottom of my feet. In order to make the illusion more impressive I wore trousers that were too long to cover the blocks. Of course, I then tripped over those.
I digress. My first pedicure was wonderful. We were given beverages and Hello magazine. Fodder for the bitter and vindictive mind. We sat next to each other and chatted away while some poor young lass tended my revolting appendages. If quasi modo was a toe then I have 6 modo's. My big toes look like a tortoise's head appearing from a shell. Lollipop toes if you will. Lindsay Lohan. Stem with a big head on top. My little toes are rotten through and through. And yet this young girl worked a complete miracle.
As I mentioned before about quasi modo, my middle toes are all hump and little head / nail. She managed to painlessly slice the skin back so I actually had more than a 2mm deep toenail that could be painted. She chopped away at the kettle chip passing for my little toenails and made them shapely and paintable. There was nothing she could physically do about the lollipops but you can't have everything.
The feet were then given a thorough pumicing, filing, creaming and massaging during which I squealed with laughter.
We were each given a basket of finger nails from which to pick what colours, styles we wanted. Initially, it looked like the sort of basket you would find at a serial killers house but once I saw that each one was painted pretty I realised it was the equivalent of a Dulux colour palette.
My friend and I made our selection had our toes painted beautifully and then had our feet put under some sort of portable disco which dried the nail polish to perfection.
Amazingly, when I slipped back into my Birkenstocks, I could hardly walk. My feet were so smooth that I was sliding in my sandals. It was like the natural velcro that I had grown on my soles these 30 years had been removed to be replaced by silk.
I decided that I could get used to this and intend to justify having a monthly pedicure on health grounds. As I am always in sandals my poor little feet are always exposed to the elements, the searing sun and the flooding rain. In fact last week my feet were stained orange for three days following a massive downpour that took most of the orangey clay soil off the flower beds on the pavement and provided me with a gritty foot bath. Luckily Singapore is very clean otherwise I would probably have needed both of them amputated.
So my initial foray into the expat Tai Tai world had commenced and as I sauntered through the shopping centre with my extremely lovely and very beautiful friend also from my hometown of Guildford, strutting my new toenails for the world to see, I felt rather swishy. Of course this came crashing down when I noticed, as we walked together, the various people from the shops handing out flyers for their products only seemed to be handing them to my friend and not to me. I suddenly realised and mentioned this to her that I think they think I am her maid and therefore do not warrant receiving their flyers.
Yes, I am a bore about the treatment of maids out here and yet I will continue to wear my shorts and t-shirts and not trade up to a selection of dresses from Mango to prove I am something other than what a lot of people here perceive me to be.
But in future and because I am slightly irritated, I might ask my friend if I can walk in front of her wherever we go, talk with my poshest English accent very loudly and try to find some of those 6 inch platform shoes from the 90s as I think being tall and dusky as opposed to short and dusky might enable me to get hold of some of those fancy pants leaflets that I so desperately want.
Tai Tai is a Chinese colloquial term for a "wealthy married woman who does not work". In the case of my dear friend and I who hit the town the only part of that which is accurate is "married and does not work" and in my friends case, "woman". It is an interesting term as it is sometimes considered flattering in being referred to as a "lady" and yet also carries with it a subtle insult.
Anyway, our Tai Tai experience started as a coffee at my apartment followed by a stroll into town to have a pedicure. This was virgin territory for me having in 38 years never had anybody family, friend or foe near my feet. Firstly I am intensely ticklish and secondly after having the beautiful feet of an innocent child when I was a child I now have the gnarly, green hued thick toenails of a 38 year old who has done a lot of hiking and worn those stupid shoes that lots of short girls wore in the late 90's that were actually platforms disguised as nice shoes. This was my ankle buckling falling off the kerb phase that required me to always be holding on to someone when I walked anywhere. Furthermore as these were platform shoes nobody was going to fall for the fact that I was actually 5ft 7 as they would clearly see I was 5ft 1 wearing 6 inch blocks on the bottom of my feet. In order to make the illusion more impressive I wore trousers that were too long to cover the blocks. Of course, I then tripped over those.
I digress. My first pedicure was wonderful. We were given beverages and Hello magazine. Fodder for the bitter and vindictive mind. We sat next to each other and chatted away while some poor young lass tended my revolting appendages. If quasi modo was a toe then I have 6 modo's. My big toes look like a tortoise's head appearing from a shell. Lollipop toes if you will. Lindsay Lohan. Stem with a big head on top. My little toes are rotten through and through. And yet this young girl worked a complete miracle.
As I mentioned before about quasi modo, my middle toes are all hump and little head / nail. She managed to painlessly slice the skin back so I actually had more than a 2mm deep toenail that could be painted. She chopped away at the kettle chip passing for my little toenails and made them shapely and paintable. There was nothing she could physically do about the lollipops but you can't have everything.
The feet were then given a thorough pumicing, filing, creaming and massaging during which I squealed with laughter.
We were each given a basket of finger nails from which to pick what colours, styles we wanted. Initially, it looked like the sort of basket you would find at a serial killers house but once I saw that each one was painted pretty I realised it was the equivalent of a Dulux colour palette.
My friend and I made our selection had our toes painted beautifully and then had our feet put under some sort of portable disco which dried the nail polish to perfection.
Amazingly, when I slipped back into my Birkenstocks, I could hardly walk. My feet were so smooth that I was sliding in my sandals. It was like the natural velcro that I had grown on my soles these 30 years had been removed to be replaced by silk.
I decided that I could get used to this and intend to justify having a monthly pedicure on health grounds. As I am always in sandals my poor little feet are always exposed to the elements, the searing sun and the flooding rain. In fact last week my feet were stained orange for three days following a massive downpour that took most of the orangey clay soil off the flower beds on the pavement and provided me with a gritty foot bath. Luckily Singapore is very clean otherwise I would probably have needed both of them amputated.
So my initial foray into the expat Tai Tai world had commenced and as I sauntered through the shopping centre with my extremely lovely and very beautiful friend also from my hometown of Guildford, strutting my new toenails for the world to see, I felt rather swishy. Of course this came crashing down when I noticed, as we walked together, the various people from the shops handing out flyers for their products only seemed to be handing them to my friend and not to me. I suddenly realised and mentioned this to her that I think they think I am her maid and therefore do not warrant receiving their flyers.
Yes, I am a bore about the treatment of maids out here and yet I will continue to wear my shorts and t-shirts and not trade up to a selection of dresses from Mango to prove I am something other than what a lot of people here perceive me to be.
But in future and because I am slightly irritated, I might ask my friend if I can walk in front of her wherever we go, talk with my poshest English accent very loudly and try to find some of those 6 inch platform shoes from the 90s as I think being tall and dusky as opposed to short and dusky might enable me to get hold of some of those fancy pants leaflets that I so desperately want.
Saturday, 5 October 2013
Life Through A Lens
The cultural and behavioural differences between peoples, countries and continents are certainly what make life so rich and unusual but also make us baffled and irate.
We took our children to the Sea Aquarium on the leisure island of Sentosa this weekend. The aquarium is absolutely phenomenal and my 4 year old who is ocean obsessed after getting a set of top trumps on deep sea creatures was beyond excited.
We had a lovely day which would have been perfect if we could have actually seen anything due to the five deep throng of people standing in front of every fish tank combined with their tablet PCs, camera's and phones taking pictures of every single thing in the tank before moving on to the next tank to do the same. I don't believe anybody actually looked at anything in those tanks with their own eyes.
My husband being a man of little patience lost his temper quickly as my four year old was shoved out of the way by a lady wanting to take a picture of a fish. He put his arm out in front of her and told her not to push our son using a few choice words, to which her response was "it's okay I am taking a picture" and he said "no, it is not okay to push a child so you can take a picture" plus a few more choice words. She then said "okay", took the picture anyway and said "thank you" with no hint of sarcasm and moved off to the next tank.
As I tried to find a bucket of cold water in which my husband could douse his steaming head I reminded him that shouting and screaming does not work here and the camera snapping folks of this part of the world will continue to snap away irrespective of how much he stamps his feet. Nobody is aggressive, just determined. But when you are being butted out of the way over and over again, the motives are frankly irrelevant.
The UK is a unique place in that we place great store by manners, polite society and our ability to queue for hours without getting even slightly stressed. However, a lack of manners, impoliteness and queue jumping or being inconsiderate of ones neighbour causes major patience loss within seconds. Unfortunately due to the "Generation Me" effect sadly sweeping the modern world, I worry that very soon everywhere will be standing in front of a fish tank holding a tablet PC above their heads while small children stand at the back unable to see anything.
The funnier part of this tale was this lady seemed to wander around with us from tank to tank and chat to our children as they oooed and aaaaed at the wonderful tanks of tropical fish and deep sea monstrosities. My husband was still developing piles elsewhere but I was all forgiveness, particularly when I saw this lady forcibly position her little girls head against a cylindrical tank holding jelly fish to take another picture. In fact she pushed her daughters head about three times against the glass to make sure she was in shot with the jellyfish. She then told her to stand on the other side of the tank and whacked her head into it a few more times before getting the money shot from a different angle. As we all know, cylinders don't really have sides.
Of course, with the exception of the inconsiderate determination of the photo obsessed folks of South East Asia we had to wonder when they actually looked at all these pictures. When pondering this fact all I could do was just feel terrible sympathy for their families at home who would be subjected to hours of boring photo montages of endless fish behind smudged glass squashed against a small child's cheek.
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