Kong-Fu-Wa

The fact that I've always been mistaken for a chinese girl is not something new.

I remember as a young teenager, while taking a bus from Simpang Pertang where my father used to work, to the town of Kuala Pilah, the bus conductors often amused me with:
'lei heui pin-to?'
(where are you going?)

I usually ignore them, or, if insisted for an answer, I will embarrasingly say I don't understand chinese.

Over the years, I encountered a few more misunderstandings, that I made a conscious decision to join an adult cantonese class in the evening after office hours.

As adults, the first few words that we learnt were naturally either bad ones or how to curse and swear at other people.
The lou-si (teacher) usually obliged.
I have quite a vocabulary of them, however, my all time favourite is still that single Tamil quote.

Scenes from our hillarious cantonese class sometimes went like this:

lou-si: 'Ceng man, nei kiu mi ye meng?
(may I ask, what is your name?)
student: Ngo hai Ahmad.
(my name is Ahmad.)
lou-si: 'yi-ka, nei mhou sam?
(right now, you are not very happy?)
student: 'lou-si,toi-m-cui, ngo msyui fook'
(sorry teacher, I'm not feeling well)
lou-si: 'lei yau heui tai yee-sang?
(have you gone to see the doctor?)
student: mei, ngo hai keng par tar djam!
(not yet, I'm scared of big needle!)

Lou-si was so happy that her student could string simple sentences out of some words learnt in class that day and turned to another lady.

lou-si: 'Aminah, nei hau mah?'
(Aminah, how are you?)
student: 'Hou, yau sam.'
(I'm well, thank you)
lou-si: 'Nei hai kit mkit fan? Kei to sai lo kor?'
(Are you married? How many children have you?)
student: 'ngo mkit fan cor..myau sai lo kor'
(I'm not married yet..., don't have any children)
lou-si: 'tim kai nei mkit fan'?
(why have you not gotten married ?)
student: 'ngo hou keng par tar djam'!!
(I'm so scared of the big needle!!)

Although our answers sometimes caused red faces, lou-si was happy nevertheless that we could be innovative with whatever few words that we could remember.

Of course now that I go around wearing the tudung, no one speaks to me in cantonese anymore.
As a result, I've forgotten (mkei tak cor) most of what I've learnt.

However, I could miserably practise my dribblet of kong-fu-wa at the night market by asking:
'sin saang, ceng man, niko kei to lui?'
(Mr., may I ask, how much is this one?).
The usually enlightened hawker will say:
'wah, nei sik kong kong-fu wa!!!'
(wah, you can speak cantonese!!!)
mama irma: 'ngo sik kong siu-siu lor....'
(I can speak only a little bit lah...)

With that, I never failed to get a spontaneous discount , no matter how small, from the night market hawker..