made a short evening trip to jb to visit karsten yesterday. it was a short trip, but nonetheless, a nice one. and i am saying it was a nice trip becos firstly, it was my first visit to his place and that we had the chance to catch up. also, we managed to do a bit of shopping at one of the malls.
malaysia is our closest neighbour. yet, the ambience, the people, their dressing, etc feel so different. it seemed like singapore 20 years ago, yet, in a way, it has all the modern things. i can't find the exact words to describe it, but on the whole, i feel that it is much less stressful, more relax and the people are less pretentious. the people are less well dressed, the chinese are very malaysian chinese, the way they speak, the way they articulate their words, the way they dress, etc. very different from singaporeans. then again, there seemed to be a heightened awareness of the lines between races. there was an poster outside a shop advertising for shop assistants and it stated specifically, that they were looking for chinese only.
hmm...
malaysia is our closest neighbour. yet, the ambience, the people, their dressing, etc feel so different. it seemed like singapore 20 years ago, yet, in a way, it has all the modern things. i can't find the exact words to describe it, but on the whole, i feel that it is much less stressful, more relax and the people are less pretentious. the people are less well dressed, the chinese are very malaysian chinese, the way they speak, the way they articulate their words, the way they dress, etc. very different from singaporeans. then again, there seemed to be a heightened awareness of the lines between races. there was an poster outside a shop advertising for shop assistants and it stated specifically, that they were looking for chinese only.
hmm...
The symbol "0 comments" was jumping out of the screen at me, begging me to end its sorrows...
ReplyDeletewell...
first: Hi (been most busy lately & haven't had time to write.
second: F. always wonder WHY S'poreans are always shopping. When u go downtown, u shop. when u visit JB, u go shopping. It's hard to explain (i seem to be losing this trait but ocassionally i also relapse.... hmm it sounds almost like an illness)
third: Karsten is a very german sounding name.but who can tell these days.
fourth: Strange that u should say that M'sians articulate differently. Often people cannot tell where i come from just by hearing me speak. it's almost germanized) BUT when i am sitting at the airport, i can tell S'poreans from other Asians the moment they open their mouth. It makes me feel at home on one hand and yet "foreign" coz Singlish is just so different.
hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi!!!!!
ReplyDeletelong time no hear... heh heh... how's that for singlish? ha! ok, ok, let me respond pt by pt :-)
first: no excuse for not writing ***spank spank spank spank*** ;-)
second: na... not an illness, it's a national passtime - did i spell it right? or pastime? or should it be past time... never mind... come on, look at our size. we are unofficially called the little red dot. we don't even feature as a speck from space. and with such a size, we can't go to the country side - we don't have one in the first place, we can't fish in the river - and there is hardly anything to fish in the singapore river (even then, it is more of a canal now), we can't go mountain climbing - the closest to a high feature is bk timah and that is more of a hill than a `mountain'. so? we shop! and it has become our habit! it has become part of our psche! :-)
third: he is danish. but having lived in sg (and then jb) for the last 13 yrs (or 15?... nvr mind), he has been `localized' already!
fourth: aiyah, u are already germanized la. i can even catch the german-accent when u spoke the last time we met! ok, abt malaysians, well, put simply, they have this very ah beng feel when u observe them. yet, in a very nice way...
and yes, thanks for breaking the spell of the zero comment! heh!
:-)
i'm not quite into spanking but if it's from u.......
ReplyDeleteWe can give many excuses to shopping but if it starts to take over our lives, it seems almost pathological. Like i said, i've had my "coldturkey" treatment but i do relapse.
So what is a dane doing in JB/SG? Wait ... is he one the foreign talents who's behavior u found so different & needed to adjust to (see!... i've been following yr entries)
you said it man... pathological... ha ha! well, my friend in jb looks after all the danish ships that call on the port... put simply, he works there for the danish govt.
ReplyDelete:-)