My boyfriend is an extremely Malaysianised white person. He speaks like a local, and by local I mean with the correct tone, accent and all, not just peppering his conversations with the occasional “lah”.
Once, we were queuing up to pay for our groceries at Tesco when a chinese couple at the counter decided to whip out their calculator. Already holding up traffic due to their huge amount of shopping, my BF huffed out a rather loud, “Macibai!”, instantly attracting attention from the others in the queue. You can imagine their reactions upon discovering that the ever popular cuss word originated from a 6’5″, blue-eyed, menacing looking white man.
Or that time when I was trying to order a vegetable dish at a restaurant but for the life of me, couldn’t remember the name in cantonese. After seeing me struggle for a couple of minutes, the BF looked at the waitress and said, “Por lei sang choy!”. My entire being crumbled in humiliation, the waitress grinned at me in amazement first, then followed by a mischievous smile as though asking if I were chinese.
How about those times when I couldn’t differentiate kopi-o-peng from kopi-peng. Yeap, that’s right. The BF enlightened me.
It’s true that sometimes while in bed getting ready to sleep, I’d turn to him and it’d suddenly struck me that I’m dating a white man, “OH MY GAWD, YOU’RE WHITE!”.
“Yes, I am”, he’d nonchalantly respond.
There are moments though, funny moments where his whiteness would escape a little. Like that time during a drive to Penang for a short getaway, he suddenly exclaimed with excitement about a certain jungle.
“Wow!!! What a beautiful jungle!”
As it turned out, it was an oil palm plantation. I think I probably laughed for over 20 minutes.
# – Beautiful jungle. Not!
How about that time when he asked if I like some “lor” right after a hearty dinner.
“Balitung? But we just ate dinner!”
# – This is popular local seafood, ‘lor’. Pronounced as the english word “law”.
“Mango “lor” lah”, he answered.
Of course, he had meant the dessert, ‘mango lou’.
# – This is the popular Hong Kong dessert, ‘mango lou’. Pronounced like the english word “low”.
On a totally unrelated note, we were chatting about installing roman blinds in the new house and he suddenly asked me if I knew how to make roman blind. I told him no, cause I’ve seen someone blogged about making one before and it looked damn difficult.
Caressing my arms, he tenderly assured me it’s very easy.
“Just jab him in the eyes”.