Bananas Go Hungry!
I'm feeling the full brunt of illiteracy in this little town I work and (temporarily) live in. I can't order food, because I can't read the menu! You might think that these things happen when I walk into posh, snobbish French establishments. But really, sometimes all I want is a bowl of prawn mee or chee cheong fun! Most food courts in Seremban carry signs only in Chinese, so most of the time it's intelligent guesswork and relying on visual cues. We're not stupid - if a stall has chickens on display then it's obvious what it is, but when things aren't so straight forward we boldly ask.
Me : What do you have?
Stall owner : These (pointing at the menu card)
Me : Hmm...(staring hard at the characters, trying to make some meaning out of it...fan (rice)...thung (soup)...)
At this juncture my husband valiantly stepped in with his usual "trick".
Hubby : So what would you recommend?
Stall owner : This is good, this also good (running his finger down the list)
We ended up ordering from a hawker next door who's obviously selling char kuey tiow!
Today we had dinner at a new eatery in town. To our horror the menu was entirely in Chinese (with the exception of the beverage section where Guinness, Anchor and Carlsberg were printed as they were - how do you say them in Chinese anyway?). And there was not a single pictorial clue!
Waiter : So what would you like to have?
Hubby : So what would you recommend?
We went with all of the waiter's suggestions!
I am not proud of myself. I'm sorry I didn't want to attend Mandarin classes in school. I remember my Mandarin teacher had to bribe me and some friends of mine with stamps to get us to attend his classes. We made off with some neat stamps from his collection, but I still can't read well enough to order from a menu in Chinese.
What bananas we are. We are so not proud of ourselves.
4 comments:
I totally empathise with you. I once told a hawker stall lady in our town that if she is adamant to only have chinese words for her menu, she is the one who stand to lose out in business. This was after she angrily told me to read the menu (in chinese) which looked like sanskrit to me for all I care, when I asked her what does she sell. So Stoooopid. Needless to say, we never went back to her.
He, he! Already limited food choices in Seremban, now further limited by language inadequacy!
Hah...another banana man here. Usually I'll just tell them I can't read Chinese and ask them to tell me what they sell. Needless to say I never went hungry... :)
And so the Malay saying goes...
"malu bertanya sesat jalan"! My hubby's trick works all the time - "err, what is good ah?"!
Post a Comment