Living up to the name of his road (Singapore)

A word used in Singlish (Singapore English) is kaypoh.

    It is derived from the word 管家婆 guǎn jiā pó / "control house old-woman" / female housekeeper, for which the Hokkien dialect pronunciation is guan kay poh.

    When shortened to kay poh, it means to be nosey, and is usually used as a noun, e.g., "You are such a kaypoh" (/ You are such a nosey parker / busybody).

    I was in the unique batch of RI (Raffles Institution) students who straddled the old site at Bras Basah Road for Pre-U 1 and the (then) new one at Grange Road for Pre-U 2.

    The main entrance was on the Grange Road side.  We soon discovered (maybe in Week 1) that there was a way out through a smaller gate at the back which was more convenient for getting to Chinatown, so a few of us decided to use that exit to go for lunch in Chinatown.

    That rear gate, we saw, led to a road called Kay Poh Road.  A man was standing outside the first house, watching the unusual sight of a group of students walking past.

    We burst into laughter.  How appropriate!  First house in Kay Poh Road and curious about these students walking down his road.  Kaypoh No.1!

(Singapore, 1972)

* Googling the RI Grange Road site, I find that it was a Teochew [dialect] settlement/kampong and private pathways before RI built its replacement for the Bras Basah Road site.

* (from googling) Quote Singlish is Singapore's unique, informal English-based creole, blending English with words and grammar from Malay, Chinese dialects (Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin), and Tamil, creating a colorful local dialect with its own rhythm and particles like "lah" and "lor". It's an unofficial language reflecting Singapore's multiculturalism, used for everyday communication among locals to express identity and camaraderie, distinct from the formal Standard Singapore English. Unquote

An encounter with an old Chinese lady (London)

I was on the Piccadilly Line Tube train for Chinatown, to have lunch with an ex-student at 12noon.  

An old Chinese lady (late 70s / early 80s) got on a stop after me, at Finsbury Park, barely able to get on the train from the platform, in spite of help from a walking stick.  

She laboriously made it to the second seat from the door, and her legs wobbled as she struggled to sit down, saying something aloud.  

The young woman in the seat next to the door, a Westerner in her early 20s, just watched her without even offering a hand to steady her.  

I was at the far end of the row opposite her.  I thought she'd be bound for Chinatown, so I would help her on the stairs up to the ground level at the destination end.  

Sure enough, when we got to Leicester Square, the old lady struggled to get up.  

There were too many people between her and me for me to get to her to help her up, so I got out at my end, and went to her door to offer her an arm.  

She was greatly taken aback, and started to say she could manage.  I stayed with her all the same, and even when we got to the stairs and she tried to dismiss me, I remained behind her, going up step by step at a snail's pace.  

Then, I helped steady her from the stairs to the escalators, and then escalator to the turnstiles, and thereafter the stairs to the ground level.  

I asked her where she was going, but didn’t understand a word of her form of Cantonese.  

At the turning into Lisle Street, one of the streets in Chinatown with a high density of Chinese restaurants, I gestured by way of asking her if she was heading that way.  She nodded her head.  

As we walked along slowly, I saw out of the corner of my eye the words engraved on the metallic skirting board of the building along which we were walking:  The Hippodrome Casino.  

When we got to the entrance, she stopped and said, “This is where I’m going.”

Ah...  All that painful effort for a day in at the casino!

(London, 2015)