Wednesday, June 1, 2011

How I Survived The Embarrassing

Sorry cause I haven’t blog for the past few weeks because I was busy with my Wesak preparations. Nothing much happened except I was damn tired and lazy. Even now I also dunno what to blog. Sigh. See how lazy I am. So I was asking my best friend in office for some idea and she suggested I write something that will embarrassed myself. According to her philosophy, to embarrass oneself can gain popularity. Nice idea hor?


Even though I am Chinese, Mandarin was not my mother language thanks to my dad who threw me into Malay's school. It's always sucks when think of how most of my friends can understand Chinese where else I am totally ABC. So here are some of the words I had spoken and let you see how embarrassing I am to direct translate the slang of some of the words from Cantonese/Hakka to Mandarin.

This involves a story where a Chinese guy who can't speaks well in Mandarin but twisting his tongue and squeezing his brain to made a sentence out to communicate and create most embarrassing moments that made him speechless.

Situation 1: Raining + Umbrella
My asst manager asked me how I am going back since it was raining heavily. I just tell her don worry, I have "pa jer". Direct translation from Cantonese as umbrella is called "Pah Jeh". Her eyes get widen after hearing it and I know I did some mistake there. Ish!!
Correct way of saying umbrella in Mandarin:  "yu shan 雨伞"

Situation 2: Banana
My way : "Gong Jiao" is actually sound obscene as Gong in Chinese mean men while Jiao refer to men's private part
Correct way of saying banana in Mandarin: "siang jiao 香蕉"

Situation 3: Wallet
I was telling my friend that I forget my wallet as I said in "he bao". Then they all laugh till stomach ache and at the end I found out what I said is direct translation from Hakka. In Chinese culture, water always represent wealth or money, so in Hakka maybe due to this they call their wallet as "Stream bag" meaning bag that contain unstoppable water flowing in.
Correct way of saying wallet in Mandarin: "chien bao 钱包" 





Situation 4: Fried Egg
Me and this mean girl was having lunch in KFC. Then dunno what happen I tease her saying, she being a girl she should know how to cook. So I teasing her saying at least I know how to cook instant noodle and fried egg as I saying it as in "zhar dan". Nothing wrong right? But she start laugh uncontrollably. Not correct meh?  'Zhar' as it mean fried and  'Dan' mean egg.
Correct way of saying fried egg in Mandarin: "jien dan 蛋"
And why she laugh is Zha Dan actually mean BOMB or grenade in Mandarin that's why she laugh unstopable. But then till now I don't think what I said is wrong as you see ah, in mandarin fried chicken also call Zhar Zhi then fried egg why not call Zhar Dan?? Hmmphh!!

Anyway is some of the stupid mistake but hey, one cannot succeed without taking risks. In fact, in as embarrassing as they may be, they often turn out to be great stories for future speeches. They become my signature stories, my unique stories that no one else can duplicate because they happened to me, not you. They also make for great jokes in future for sure : P.
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