I received a phone call from Ruth yesterday. It's been a while since I last chatted with her on the phone. She reads my blogs to find out what's happening to me and, well, I'm waiting for her to start her own blog. She can really write well. I enjoyed her short stories. Most of the time she send me (and others too) an email to let me/us know what was going on in her life... and most of the time I don't write back.. Sorry Ruth, I'm bad at writing.She called while I was at my nephew's birthday party. I had a pretty long day yesterday. The kidz safari was from 9am-2pm, and I didn't reach home till about 3.30pm. Then at about 8pm I went for this birthday party held in my cousin - Sharon's house.
Ruth called at 8.23pm. We exchanged pleasantries and checked on each other's life. She read about Sze-En being horrified at her dad's students atrocious English. She was amused by Sze-En's way of talking and told me that she had something to share on Ellie's (her daughter) choice of words too. My memory's not good but from what I remembered, Ruth said that Ellie had some kind of class celebration. It was the last day of school and all the kids in her class went out for lunch. At one point, Ellie raised her glass and said "yammmm senggggg". All the kids (and mothers too I'm sure) stared at her. Ruth had to explain that it was the Chinese way of saying "cheers". So they all raised their glasses in unison and said "yaaaaammmm seeenggggg". Haha...
Now that's uniquely Ellie. :)
3 comments:
Ellie is so funny!!! Hopefully one day, when she is grown up and use proper English words like "Cheers", she would read your blog and remember that she once said "Cheers" the Chinese way.
Also, in addition to the Yam Seng event, she also was the "star of the week" in her class; she was able to write her Chinese name, teach the kids Twinkle twinkle little star in Chinese (which I can pronounce but not spell!) and show them her old pages of chinese writing lessons (which she now absolutely refuses to continue though I have tried). She also chose to display her "baby" pictures one of which happened to have been taken at Esther's house for one of Sze-En's birthdays a long time ago. I think being Malaysian/Chinese is a big part of her, and a good thing. :)
Also, we still regularly use some M'sian words (mixed into our english) like roti, jaga, sheshe, jangan, PoPo, mee, boleh/tak, yes-ah?, and other things I can't think of now. And, the funny thing is, even though my family doesn't pick up the words and use them, most of the time they know what we are talking about now.
Post a Comment