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.