Half full or half empty: 02 (London / Singapore)

When I was made redundant at age 58, I was traumatised.  The betrayal factor aside (pushed out by conniving rather than the budgetary constraints put forward by them), I was too young to retire (and claim my tiny state pension) but too old to get back into mainstream (no PhD, no publications).

    An ex-student was working for a pub chain, so I asked her to make enquiries for me.  She said it was brain dead work, just dispensing drinks, delivering food, collecting empties.

    I did get in, more than a year after the initial enquiry, and found it an easy enough way to earn something (albeit peanuts at minimal wage levels) for paying my bills, especially at my age and without any experience as a waitress.  Even the physical side of it, walking six miles in my eight-hour shift, was treated as paid gym sessions, as I put it to customers who commented on how hard I worked, as I seemed to be the only one pacing the floor, they said.

    This half-full attitude help sustain me for six years, adding to my tiny income pot, which is better than nothing.  (I have no work pension.)  Kept me fit too.  Got me out of the house.  I had lots of laughs with the customers.  The interaction kept my brain active.

    This attitude stems from my childhood days.  Upbringing (家教 jiā jiào / “home teaching”) is so important for later life, I’m finding increasingly as I get older and observe the bad behaviour of people.  Blame the parents, I often think.

    Sundays at home when I was a child would tend to be party-food days, i.e., not the routine rice plus four or five dishes (meat, veg, fish).  Party food would be things like poh piah (薄餅 báo bǐng / “thin pancake”, the S.E.Asian version of spring rolls) or fried rice vermicelli, a nice change from the norm but with lots of ingredients to get ready, and lots more work.  For example, bean sprouts would need the roots pinched off (even though they were clean), therefore as many hands on deck as possible, or the ingredients wouldn’t be ready in time.

    The way we did it at home was: put the huge pile of bean sprouts in the middle of the table; parcel out big handfuls to each person at the table (the women, of course); then “ready steady go” and we’d start the “race” to see who could finish her pile first.

    There was no rush or pressure to it, nor proper score keeping as such, even though it sounds like a competition the way I’ve put it here.  The “race” was only a bit of fun injected to make it less monotonous than just sitting there, nipping off root after root after root.  The adults would chat, we children would listen, it was all relaxed and fun.

    To this day, I still look upon such repetitive, so-called brain-dead chores as relaxing and meditative.  That’s definitely half full.

(London, 2012–2018; Singapore, 1960s)

Chinese sayings: 15 (人棄我取 / 人弃我取)

人棄我取

rén qì wǒ qǔ

“people abandon I take”

This was originally about buying grain when it is at a low price (the “people abandon” bit is about the grain not being in demand / sales stagnating), and selling it when the demand goes up.

(baidu.com says it first emerged in 西漢·司馬遷《史記·貨殖列傳》/ Biographies of Merchants, in the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian, Han dynasty.)

    It is now used for referring to not competing with people (for something), happy to take whatever people don’t want.

    This reminds me of Freddie, the Administrative Assistant at Conoco Taiwan, a native of Hunan.  He had been in the air force of the Republic of China, fighting alongside the Americans in Vietnam against the communists.  

    One day, he told me, an American came along with a whole box of watches for handing out for free.  One of the watches fell out of the box in the jostle, so nobody wanted it.  Freddie thought, “It’s free anyway, so I’ll take it.”  He said, when he told me the story in 1975, quite a few years later: “Those who’d got one of those watches said theirs had given up the ghost.  Mine’s still working — perfectly.”

    In this day and age, this saying could be applied to recycling:  picking up things other people throw away and re-using them.  Very green.

Repeating things: 02 (Singapore, Taipei, London)

A couple of days after my arrival in Taipei to take up my new job, the Singapore office rang and said they’d like me back on secondment.

    The paperwork for the Taiwan-bound oil rig and workboat(s) had to be got ready, as well as the visas for the Singapore-based workmen (geologists, geophysicists, engineers, etc) who were going to work on the rig.  The Taipei office had nothing to do in the meantime, as drilling couldn’t be commenced, so they might as well give the work to me rather than get someone in the Singapore office to do it.

    I was to work under Mr. Jones, the Chief Engineer who’d be going out to Taipei himself.

    Mr. Jones (his full name: Evan O’Neill Jones, nickname Casey Jones) was rather fearsome.  He had bushy eyebrows that stood out.  He was ultra-efficient (and demanding).  He had a Texan accent (which I’d never come across before).

    Every morning, I’d wait for him to buzz me to go and take dictation (Pitman shorthand) for all the correspondence related to getting everything ready for drilling to start in Taiwan.  

    He’d have a pile of files (often 10, if not 20) stacked up in front of him on his desk.  The dictation would start: "File 1, letter to Mr X of Company Y.  Dear Mr X, …."  When this was done, he’d place the file face down in another pile (so that it’d all be in the same order when it came to filing the letters) and move on to the next file.  Once all the dictation was done, he’d let me go back to my office to type them up for him to sign later, and he’d get on with his work for the Singapore office.

    Mr. Jones’s Texan accent was a problem for me at first.  The moment I couldn’t catch a word, I’d ask him to repeat.

    Soon however, I discovered that he’d repeat things anyway — having worked a long time as an oilman talking to rigs on the radio.  

    For those who might not know, the typical radio-speak is: “Good morning, John, good morning, John.  How are you this morning, how are you this morning?  Over.”

    So, I stopped asking him to repeat anything.  Just sat back and waited for the repeat to come.  

    He was so impressed by me that whenever his secretary in Taipei (who was from Hong Kong, and the only other person in the Taipei office who could do Pitman shorthand) went on her annual leave, he’d borrow me from my Chief Geologist boss.  

    When the Taipei office shut down after two years (didn’t find any oil) and he was transferred to London, he asked if I’d like to go with him as his secretary.  (No, couldn’t get a work visa for me as I was not highly specialised enough as a secretary to get one as a foreigner.)

    I paid him a visit the moment I arrived in London (to study).  Whenever his Scottish secretary Beverly went on her annual leave, he’d ask me to stand in for her.  I wasn’t on the books of the employment agency used by Conoco, so they would instruct the agency to register me just for the few weeks that Beverly was away, because Conoco couldn’t employ me directly as a temp.  The agency found it odd that someone should come and be on their books just for a few weeks each year, then disappear for the rest of the year, but they got their commission, so they were happy enough with it.

(Singapore, 1975; Taipei, 1975-6; London, 1977-8)

Repeating things: 01

A colleague at the office in Taipei had the habit of repeating what she’d said — immediately after she’d said it.  

    Sometimes, it’d be a joke, so I can understand why she’d want to say it again, because she found it so funny that she wanted to run it through a second time immediately, for another laugh.  

    If it was an instruction, I can understand why too: just to make sure the listener gets it right.  

    Often, however, it’d be nothing particularly interesting.  

    If she were to repeat it a while later (a day/week/month later), I can put it down to memory, but no, she’d say it again straightaway.

    Later, however, I discovered that she wasn’t the only one, and that in fact it’s a fairly Chinese trait. 

    It is irritating to me to have things repeated (unless it’s in the spirit of teaching, especially language), if not insulting, as if I wasn’t able to understand it the first time.

    As an interpreter, however, I find it rather useful.

    During my first couple of interpreting stints, I’d stop the Chinese speakers whenever I couldn’t understand them (not difficult with the range of accents found in such a vast country) and ask them to repeat.

    Soon, I discovered that they’d repeat things.  They’d say something once, then say, “就是说 / jiù shì shuō / That is to say / In other words” and go back over what they’d said — not necessarily for important things that they wanted to ensure that the listener would understand.  

    So, I learned to leave the gaps (in my note-taking), wait for the “就是说”, go back to the gaps and fill them in during the second round of the same thing.  

    I now teach this trick to my students to give them confidence — they often panic/despair when they fail to catch everything in the first reading of their Listening Comprehension exercise.  I tell them that it happens to me too, and they feel much comforted.

Four-digit lottery (Singapore)

Google: Quote Toto was established to control widespread illegal gambling in Singapore during the 1960s. Unquote

In the ‘60s, people in Singapore were playing a form of four-digit lottery with numbers chosen by themselves.  All I knew at the time as a child was that it seemed to be run by private groups, as it was all a bit hush hush — I’d get sent by the grown-ups to a side door of someone’s house (the syndicate head?), hand over the slip of paper with the permutations and other instructions (how many days/weeks to be repeated, etc.), plus the money.

    The inspiration for the four digits could be anything, most commonly a new born baby/puppy/kitten.  Each digit would be written on a small square of paper, scrunched up, thrown in the path of the baby/puppy/kitten.  Whichever number was grabbed/sniffed by the picker would get written down, in that order or switched around in different permutations for more chances of winning.

    We lived by a main road, on a straight stretch.  One day, some roadworks were being carried out in the section outside our house.  When they went off for the evening, the workers placed a barrier around the hole they’d dug, and hung a little blinking light on it.  Around 3am, a car came speeding down that straight stretch.  The driver (probably young and male) saw the barrier and light too late, swerved last minute and the car flipped over onto its top, with a loud bang.  It woke everyone up, we all rushed out to take a look, talked about it for a few minutes, and went back to bed.  

    My brother somehow managed to sleep through it.  When the lottery results came out, the four digits were the same ones as the car’s registration number but backwards.  My brother was very cross when he heard about the accident later that evening, saying if he’d seen that the car had flipped over, he’d have taken down the number and reversed it — and won the lottery!

(Singapore, 1960s/70s)

Talking for everyone else

I’ve heard of pregnant women “eating for two”, but there’s also “talking for two [or more]”.  This takes a number of forms.

1. Talking for self, and for one’s children.  When I went back home for a visit after a 14-year gap, I met my eldest sister’s two daughters (aged six and four at the time) for the first time.  I thought I’d get to know them by asking them questions like “How old are you?” and “What hobbies do you have?”  For each question, my sister would step in and provide the answer.   Eventually, I had to say, “Do you mind?  I’m not so much interested in the answers as trying to break the ice.”  I can understand, to a certain extent, why my sister should’ve done that:  she might’ve been playing the protective mother role, in case the children were feeling a bit awed, but it ended up making me feel bad, telling off an elder which is not an acceptable thing in the Chinese culture (face and all that). 
2. Talking for self, and for one’s spouse.  In my experience so far, it’s more often the wife answering for the husband — so far, two wives I’ve come across.  In one case, the wife is the one who knows me longer, so I can sort of understand why she should be answering for the husband as he knows me less well.  In the second case, the wife is new to me, having married the chap some 20-odd years after I’d known him (he was a student of mine on my evening course).  Both husbands are in their 80s, which makes me feel that the wives (one 82, one 61) are almost treating the husbands as being too doddery to conduct a conversation in their own right.  (Which I find a bit insulting.)
3. Speaking for self, and everyone else present.  This form takes place when a guest of theirs comes to visit.  Again, trying to break the ice, I ask the guest things like where s/he lives/works, and like the mother example in (1) above, the hostess jumps in and speaks for the guest, even though the guest speaks good English and is a grown-up (with a university-age daughter).  (And actually, the hostess does not speak good English herself, which makes it even more insulting to the guest…)
4. Speaking for the speaker.  This is jumping in and finishing off the sentence for the speaker — practically always with the WRONG ending.  Feeling that I have to give him/her face, I can only employ one of the following: (i) say, “No,” and carry on with my sentence; (ii) go silent until they finish off the finishing off of my sentence, then carry on as if I hadn’t heard the butting in with the wrong version; (iii) get riled and say, “Please don’t finish off my sentence for me,” which was what I did one day for the first time — and felt a baddie for the rest of our meal together.  (It’s unfair that I should be made to feel the baddie…)

Philip* (London)

 [*not their real names]

Philip, like Emma*, was another case of knowing some Mandarin already before he came to do the full-time degree course, therefore not an absolute beginner.  This was probably why he was a bit complacent about his school work.

    He was late on more than one occasion for his 9am class.  When he said he had to go and get an alarm clock, I offered him mine, saying he could have it on long loan until the end of his course, so that he could save on a bit of money.  (I also taught him my method of using my bladder as an alarm clock, which so surprised him he nearly fell off his chair, wondering if he’d misheard me.)

    After a term, like Emma, Philip also started a relationship with someone, so his attention was somewhat diverted from his studies.

    The full-time degree course students at this particular university do their Year Abroad in Year 3.  I was the invigilator for one of the Year 2 modules Philip was sitting the paper for.  

    It was obvious to me, even without walking down the aisle, that Philip was unable to answer the questions on the test paper.  He sat there, trying to look busy, with nothing to write down.  I could see that he was suddenly realising that the chickens were coming home to roost for him, as he looked terrible.

    At one point during the two-hour paper, he got up to go to the loo.  As the invigilator, I had to go with him.  Even from outside the door of the gents, I could hear him throwing up.  This happened again half an hour later.

    At the end of the exam, I took him to another room to have a quiet chat on the side.  His face looked like he was expecting a lecture.  Instead, I said to him, “You should apply for Extenuating Circumstances.  I will back you up, as I was witness to your being sick in the loo.  If your application gets approved, you will be allowed to do a re-sit in August, which will give you time to catch up before then.  If you don’t put in an application, you won’t be able to go on your Year Abroad, which means having to hang around in London for a whole year as there’s no Year 3 for you to join.”

    He’s now a teacher himself — in China.  He wrote in a FaceBook message something to the effect of, “I now try to teach like you.”  I don't think he meant just the Chinese language side of it.

Cultural chameleon (Singapore / Peru)

I was born a dark baby (not my four older siblings), and was often spoken to in Malay by Chinese bus conductors in Singapore. (In the 60s, fares were paid by the distance, so the conductor would ask me, “Berapa?”, which is “How much?” in Malay.)  

    My father's cousins (one girl, one boy) look Maori/Hawaiian.  She had brownish red hair.  In the 60s in Singapore, dyeing one’s hair reddish brown was not yet the fashion, so she'd dye it black so as not to stand out.  Her brother had the physique of a Maori/Hawaiian (tree trunk legs).  They both had a broad nasal bridge, thick and darker-colour lips, deeper-set eyelids — all the features of an Indigenous person like a Melanesian or Polynesian*.      I seem to be the only one in my generation to have inherited those features.  An old RI (Raffles Institution) schoolmate (1971-2) who now lives in Sydney used to tell me I looked like a Chicana (Mexican Indian).  In Peru, I'd get charged local prices without having to open my mouth — couldn't speak enough Spanish anyway….

    I was in a square in Cuzco one day on my second visit, chatting to a Dutch tourist when this local chap came and joined us.  Turned out he was touting for individual-guide business.  At one point, he turned round and addressed me in Spanish, asking me for more details about myself.  He thought I was like him, a local touting for individual-guide business as well!

    I'd teamed up with John, an American who was in Bolivia for some project and had gone over to Cuzco for the Machu Picchu trek.  He ran into a Peruvian woman who'd worked with him in SanFran some years back.  They chatted in English, swapping their latest news.  I stood to one side.  She then turned round and apologised to me in Spanish for leaving me out of the English conversation, thinking I was Peruvian!

    On my first visit to Peru, Nick (English, blond, blue-eyed, spoke fluent Spanish) and I were in a camping equipment shop in Cuzco, getting gear for the Machu Picchu hike.  Nick did all the talking, I stood to one side. A Swiss couple (who could speak fluent Spanish because they'd been travelling around S.America for quite a few months already) were in the shop at the same time, getting quoted for all the different items (tent, sleeping bag, cooking utensils, etc).  After that, as we were leaving, they caught up with us in the street and asked to see the list of prices we were quoted — consistently cheaper by 50 US cents for every item. They wondered why, when it was the same shop and they were there at the same time.  Then, all three of them turned round and looked at me, "It's YOU! You look local, so you got quoted local prices without even opening your mouth!”  No wonder John the American called me a cultural chameleon.

• Google:  Most Polynesian countries trace their linguistic and genetic roots back to ancient Taiwan and Southeast Asia, among others, while residents of Melanesia are largely descended from ancient indigenous populations in what is now Papua New Guinea.

(Singapore, 1960s; Peru, 1986, 1987)

The taiji group (London)

One year, a group of four turned up for the Beginners Chinese course. They’d been doing taiji together somewhere, and decided they wanted to do Chinese.

    The students had to learn to write Chinese characters right from the start.

    One of them, Chris Welch, was a professor of space engineering (now in Strasbourg, Google tells me).  He was away one week, missing my lesson.  A fax arrived from Austria, where he was attending a conference, with the message on the cover page saying, “Apologies for absence from class.  Please find my homework herewith.”  On Page 2, five handwritten samples each of the characters for 你好 nǐ hǎo / “you good” = hello, how do you do

你你你你你

好好好好好

    Another chap in that taiji group, David, arrived late one evening for class.  I happened to be standing by the door while teaching, and saw him (through the glass pane in the door) approaching the door, so I turned the lock.  David pounded on the door, “LET ME IN, LET ME IN, I HAVE PAID MY FEES, YOU CAN’T SHUT ME OUT!”  (A note here: you can tell which students go to the pub with me after class, as they’re the cheeky ones.)

(London, 1990s?)

Going to the pub (London)

A student from 25 or 30 years ago has moved back to London and re-established contact.  She was telling people that they used to call me The Dragon Lady.

    This reminds me of something the students said.

    I used to go to the pub with the students after the lesson ended at 9pm.  (My classes were evening classes, attended by mature students, some even in their 70s, if not 80s.)  The students found that over a drink or two, I’d become quite a different person: I actually laugh.  They then said to me, “Why don’t you go to the pub BEFORE the lessons?”

(London, 1990s)

Injections

A friend was talking about his acupuncture session: that the needle felt like a nail going in.  This reminds me of my own experience.

    One year, I got myself organised early enough (November) to get my hay fever jabs arranged at the GP’s.  I’d always missed it until it was too late (season had started), so I was proud of myself.  The pack of 6 duly arrived at the GP’s.  The lady doctor (Dutch, I think) said, upon opening it, “Oh, the needles are so big! I’m sorry this is going to hurt.”  My reaction when it comes to jabs is to want it over ASAP, so the last thing I want is to have my attention drawn to it. She then said it again when she was actually doing the injection, apologising that it was going to hurt. The same thing happened again for Visits 2 and 3. I never finished the course.

    When I tried to donate blood on a regular basis in the 2000s, my first visit was an agonising one with the person taking ages and being unable to find a vein in the crook of my left arm, then going for the right arm but it was so small that they didn’t fill a whole bag within the time limit.  The regular blood donation idea was abandoned after the same thing happened all over again in a second visit.

(London)

The other side of the coin

I cycled for nine years in London in the 80s.  There were some hairy moments when drivers would overtake way too close, or cut in too soon — just to give two examples.  I often thought that drivers should be made to go and be cyclists for a while, just to experience it from the other side.

    A wheelchair-bound student asked me in 1992 if I could go with her to Madrid — she didn’t have the courage at the time to go on her own (she now goes all over the place totally unafraid).  She was post-beginner level in Spanish and felt that she needed to practise her Spanish more, which she thought she’d get by being there for a week.  We were both volunteers for Amnesty and they have an office in Madrid, so she decided we’d go and work there for a few days.

    It was when we were there that I was made to realise how high kerbs are.  What we take for granted, especially when we’re young and fit, suddenly is an incredible height when you’re trying to heave a wheelchair (complete with a fully-grown occupant in it) up a kerb.  Those kerbs in Madrid felt like they were at least six inches high.  And, aged 70 now, my legs and knees are also making that discovery.

    By the same token, I’m now looking, with different eyes, at women with prams getting on and off buses.

    I think everyone should go through the experience of pushing a laden wheelchair or pram on/off kerbs or other raised surfaces for a few times, so that they’d be more aware and perhaps offer more readily to help, rather than leave those people to struggle on their own. 

    (Perhaps some people will say, "Those people with prams chose to have children — it is their own choice, so they have to live with the consequences."  Fair enough, but people do not choose to be wheelchair-bound.)

    (Buses in this country do have ramps for wheelchairs.  Wheelchairs are also electric these days — in this country anyway and from what I’ve seen thus far.)

Goo goo ga ga: 02 (London)

 

I help out on a huge allotment site in east London, mainly weeding and watering the plants.  

    It has about 300 plots.

    The couple I help are Portuguese and Brazilian, with the Brazilian managing simple English.  We’ve resorted to google translate on our phones.

    One day, one of their allotment neighbours, a Turkish lady, came to pick the tomatoes and chillis that are on offer as the couple plant more than they can consume.  They do the work as a form of relaxation, they say.

    I found myself struggling to understand the Turkish lady as well, yet she (60) and the Brazilian lady (early 50s) were chatting away merrily while they were picking the crop.  I couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying.  

    Later, I asked the Brazilian lady if the Turkish lady could speak Portuguese (more likely than a Brazilian knowing Turkish).  She said, “No!  We were speaking English!”

 

(London, 2023)

Goo goo ga ga: 01 (London)

Throughout my years of teaching Mandarin, students will come up with ungrammatical Chinese (wrong word order) or un-Chinese expressions (direct mapping from the English in their heads).  I can often make sense of what they’re trying to say.  

    The most recent case is a mature student who sent me a WhatsApp message in pinyin (/ romanisation), but wrongly spelt (by standard pinyin conventions) for a lot of the words.  When I responded, she expressed great surprise that I actually understood what she was trying to say. 

    My reply, “Mummies often understand the goo-goo-ga-ga’s of their babies.”

(London, 2023)

Now no trains as well! What next?!?? (London)

Friday 01 September, announcement on the Tube: “Circle line is suspended due to unavailability of trains.”

    We’ve had cancellations due to staff shortage (especially immediately post-Covid-lockdown when people were still going down with it), but no trains?!?  Where did those trains go?  

    Or was London Underground trying to find a different reason, getting fed up of the usual “lack of staff” one, just so that it doesn’t look so bad for them??

(London, 2023)

You know you’re really old when… (London)

 

Further to my other blogs on the subject:  the recent developments since those blogs are confirmation that I have indeed and definitely moved into the “old” category.

    Bus drivers will lower the bus for me so that there isn’t such a big gap for me when stepping onto the bus.

    People will leap up from their seats on the bus or Tube the moment I board, without my even making eye contact.  (I actually try to avoid eye contact so that they don’t think I’m trying to guilt-trip them into offering me a seat.)  

    Another time, an old lady on the bus, who looked obviously older than I, asked me to take my time when I was about to get up to disembark.

    Yesterday, I was waiting for a bus, minding my own business, looking out for any approaching buses, when a young woman (20s?) on the bus stop bench waved her hand in my line of vision to attract my attention to ask if I’d like to sit down — I thanked her and said no.  

    When I got on the bus that came a few minutes later, I moved all the way in, to the back of the bus, as it was quite crowded.  Even with my back turned to her, another young lady could tell I was seat-offering material: she tapped me on the upper arm to get me to turn round to see the aisle seat she’d vacated for me (she moved into the window seat).

    Westerners, especially the female contingent, seem to be quite sensitive about the issue of age, calling it “rude” to refer to age, refusing to let people (some even their own son[s]) know their age, etc.  

    I often tell my students, to whom I teach Chinese cultural practices as well as the language, that age in the Chinese culture is a positive thing: one gets the respect that comes with age.  

    My experience here since I got to 60 and beyond proves that, although a lot of children (and their parents) do not exercise the same consideration, this spirit is generally alive here in London.

(London, 2013 onwards)

See also:

https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2021/02/you-know-youre-getting-old-when-03.html