ALL ABOUT ... ME!

My readers will no doubt be familiar with both my overweening pride in having mastered just enough Cantonese to get by, as well as my great fondness for several environments in Chinatown where I can purchase exactly what I want and get treated well precisely because of that.
The passable Cantonese speech ability, that is.
Not the overweening part.

Like many Dutchmen, I am a clever little dick.
Especially when it comes to languages.
It's all herring and onions.


One of the places I like serves Hong Kong style club sandwiches, which make for a tasty light supper. They also do milk-tea, and I can sit in the window and observe the passing foot traffic while day-dreaming.
Altogether very nice.

公司三文治: 'gong-si saam-man-ji', club sandwich.
港式奶茶: 'gong-sik naai-cha', HK-style milk-tea.

But it is tourist season in San Francisco, and consequently the foot traffic is rather white, and tends to wander in with difficult rhetorical questions. Or they're hungry, and bravely take the plunge into the unknown. It's all so strange!

It took a long time to get my club sandwich. Only two women were working there, and both got waylaid by white folks. One family of nine people milled around like a giant pale clusterfudge while their patriarch asked questions about everything on the menu, before finally ordering enough fried rice, fried noodles (chowmein), fried eggrolls, fried wontons, and fried chicken, for his entire tribe. All take-out.
Meanwhile five other random white units were pointing at pastries and beleaguering the woman who was going to make my club sandwich.
Which comes with a small serving of French fries.
That were cooling as we speak.

薯條: 'seui-tiu'; "tuber strips".

If these people had been halfway pretty, I would not have minded in the slightest. But the one pretty little girl that was present was hiding behind her mommy (also very pretty), who was patiently waiting till all the white people had quite finished taking up the time of the staff so that she and her daughter could get some buns.

They were invisible among the white people.
A dreadful pity!

When my sandwich finally came, the waitress saw what I had written on a napkin.

天啊，餐廳滿哂鬼佬！

She burst out laughing.

Tin ah, chanteng munsai kwailo! Alas, the restaurant is filled with foreigners.

I may not be anywhere near scholarly literate, and my pronunciation in general probably sucks eggs, but my handwriting is far better than average, and I can put my snarkiness into words.
And yes, I feel very proud of that.

The astute reader will no doubt recognize the phrase as a variant on "my hovercraft is full of eels". Also a useful utterance.


Verrily, my cup runneth over.
Ngo ge pui mun yat.
我嘅杯满溢。



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