Having known many Vietnamese friends, I know that my experiences moving to this country are good, if not downright cushy in comparison. However it did not feel that way back then.

When I was a kid, it always took me a while to settle in to a new environment. It was always a melancholic feeling moving from kindergarden to primary, and then to high school. Just when I felt comfortable I had to go again. That was the feeling when my parents said to my brother and I that we were moving to Australia. My brother was nine and I was 13. His reaction was, “How exciting!” Mine was a teen-angst filled “Why?!?!”

I was in Form 2 at the time. I’ve got a great bunch of friends and school life was bliss. My grades were good and the girl I had a crush on since Form 1 was beginning to pay more attention to me. Everything was swell. So yes, at the time I really could not comprehend the reason to move. My parents said to me , “It is for your education.” And I said, “What’s wrong with here???” In hindsight I understood their rationale: with the local affirmative action laws in place, it was unneccasarily harder for a non-bumi to get into a good university later on. However, all I could think of at that time was, “This really sucks!”

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In the midst of the feelings about leaving all the good stuff behind, I also had a sense of dread and trepidation. I could speak and write English but I have never interacted with a Caucasian before. What would they be like? Would I be able to understand their accents?

I soon found out on the first day of school - I was so freaking nervous! The school system here is like this:

Primary School : Year 1-7
High School : Year 8-12

I was enrolled in Year 10 and my brother was in the primary school next door in Year 5. The kids at school - there were good ones, there were ignorant ones and there were *bad* ones. The good ones and the ignorants ones were sometimes the same people:

“Where do you come from? Do they live in trees there?”
“What do you have for lunch? Fried rice?”
“Do you know kung fu?”

At least they were friendly and tried to talk to me. The bad ones were the ones who yelled racial abuse at me. Funnily enough I didn’t even realise at the time that the terms were derogatory.

“Ching-Chong? How come they know my uncle’s name?”
this is true - my uncle’s full name is Tan Ching-Chong. At least it wasn’t “Tan Ah Beng”.

In any case I settled in fairly quickly. After I realised that some of these angmohs can’t even write or speak proper English, I felt pretty smug about myself. And the maths they taught at that level I’ve already done them back in KL. I managed to become friends with the scatterings of Asian migrant kids around the school: Indonesian, Malaysian, Sri Lankan, Filipino, Singaporean, Taiwanese, Hong Kong. And eventually I had a good group of Caucasian friends as well - including these two hot Aussie chicks who were in my form room. That story I shall leave for another day.

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Perth in the late 80s still had some problems with racial hatred. There were derogatory posters stuck round the place saying things like: “Asians out!”, “Niggers out!”, “Jews out!” However, the government and police were great and pro-active. In general, us migrants felt safe. If we did come across anything bad, we just walk away quickly. No point in engaging those idiots.

Despite all that I had begun to really enjoy life in Aussie-land. Weather is great, and the food is great. I feel really blessed to have experienced this big culture clash. I can’t imagine myself meeting the people that I have met if I had lived my life back home. The languages that I have heard spoken and the cultures that I have been exposed to beyond Asian ones: Italian, Greek, Irish, English, Scottish and of course Australian - all of that made me the person that I am today. And for that, I thank my parents.

Thanks mi, thanks di. It was really for my education afterall.

1986 - age 12

2004 - age 30

One day the angmoh boyfriend of my cousin asked me a question: Why do Chinese ppl always ask “How much?”

Me: Really?
Peter*: Yeah.
Me: Dunno. Hey this is a nice table. How much…oh f**k.

Hmmm, why indeed. I have no idea. I’m guilty of doing that all the time. In fact I once did it whilst switching between my M’sian and Aussie-fied accents.

To Peter*: Heyyyyy, nice jacket. How much is it?
… then …
To Uncle: Eh tua-koo! Not bad har this wine?? How much?

Why why why??? Maybe we have been taught from small to be frugal and that’s why we’d like to know how much anything is worth.

“Wei, boy…don’t waste that soap har? Put it together with all the small pieces of soap and squeeze them together. Can still use one!”

Perhaps the only thing that has stuck to me since I was a little kid is this. I was struggling to finish a bowl of kway-teow-tng at a kopi-tiam. My grandma said to me:

“Cannot finish is it? Never mind, never mind. Don’t eat the kway-teow. Just make sure you eat all the pork and fishball, ok?”

Or this when I went back to Penang a few years back and I bought some goreng-pisang from a street vendor:

My Uncle: How much did you pay for that?
Me: 50c each.
My Uncle: Aiyah! You didn’t bargain ah!? I pay 40c each only!

Sheesh. Then there’s this…Plastic containers cannot throw away lah. KFC refresher towelettes don’t use, put in fridge lah. Go McDonalds, sapu all the serviettes lah. Like preparing for war like that. Wah lan eh. How to not ask “how much” when everyone around you from small so damn kiam-siap har?!? Does that answer your question!?

* Name has been changed to protect the angmoh, or “gweilo” as he prefers it.

For those of you who don’t know it, there’s a service out there that let’s you see which other bloggers have linked back to your blog. And why would you want to know that?? Ego mah!

Anyways, it’s called Technorati. Go there, create your free account and “claim” your blog following the instructions. You will have to install some code from them on your blog template. Very easy one, I can do it also!

Once you’ve done that, you can see how popular you are … or not. For those of you who have problems with Haloscan’s trackbacks (like Singabore) this may be a good alternative.

Looks like Mr. Kiasi’s post about human kind’s penchance for beauty above everything else stirred up some interesting discussions. Go look - then come back here. Not much to add beyond my “pretty girl is like Ferrari” comment except …

Yes it is true that people would always be attracted by physical beauty first. However, it’s the personality that makes ppl hang around after that. Heck, the sex can be fantastic but you can’t have sex 24 hours of the day and you sure as hell can’t look at their pretty faces all day long. At some point or another, you have to talk. And trust me - if nothing intelligent comes out of their pretty little mouths, it gets tedious *very* quickly. You’d be saying “Aiyor!!!!” a lot and be vomiting blood all over the place.

Pretty soon your brain would have an argument with your penis over what’s more important. And you know what - the brain would win eventually because the brain does control what happens down there.

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Wah steady boh - an entire blog in Hokkien. Wah mah si Hokkien lang, tan si hor - Jin tang koh tak ah!

Swee and I went for dimsum this afternoon. Despite asking her to not order too much because we were both still slightly hung over from last night, she did the exact opposite. She ordered a lot. My mistake for asking her to go grab a table first while I parked the car.

She couldn’t resist it. The place is good. Come to think of it there are plenty of other good dimsum places in Perth as well - a city of a mere 1.4 million people. Here’s a little trivia: Perth has more restaurants per capita than any other cities in Australia. Yup, we beat even Sydney and Melbourne which are also reknown for their food. The increased competition forces restaurants to *be* good.

So back to dimsum. How did a small city like Perth get so many good dimsum restaurants? And for that matter, good Hawker (Singaporean & Malaysian), Chinese, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese restaurants? The main reason lies in the fact that Perth is an attractive place to settle down for migrants. Perth is closer to SE Asia than Sydney or Melbourne. Flights home are cheaper and therefore new migrants feel less intimidated by the distance.

The food scene in Perth wasn’t always this varied. It all started to flourish in the late 80s to the mid-90s when there was an influx of SE Asian migrants (which led to a lot of right-wing hysteria here but that’s a discussion for another time). I still remember when I first got here in 1989 and there was one (yes, *one*) Hawker restaurant. It got business not because it was good but because it was the only one. People go there because they missed the food back home too much. Now every suburb (towns within the city) with a high concentration of Singaporeans or Malaysians have one or two restaurants catering to their taste - items such as Penang fried kuay teow, chai tau kway, laksa (Assam & Curry) are now easily within reach.

pho-tai

Then there are the Chinese, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Thai restaurants which are equally great. The dimsum, sayur lodeh, tomyum, pad-thai and pho-tai (raw-beef noodle soup) are good by any standards, no matter where you are. There are a few truly authentic things that we can’t get here for sure but what we do have is more than good enough. Besides, flights home are cheap enough that we can fly back if we really must have Penang or-chien (oyster omelette).

Penang or-chien

How dull a place Perth and for that matter Australia would be without all this variety in food. The alternative is just too bland to even think about. If there’s only one thing that migrants are good for (and that is not true), it is the cuisine that we bring to our new home - just like the Italians and Greeks did before the Asians.

Here’s another hot-chick friend of mine who’s also married (on the right):

At this stage you might have some questions. Even if you don’t, humour me and read on lah. KNN.

*ahem*

• How come you got so many chio-bu friends?

  No idea. There’s no skills involved in meeting pretty people. I’m lucky to know ppl who know good-looking ppl. I guess I made a good first impression for them to think I’m friend-worthy. And it’s my personality that makes them want to remain friends with me lah! Right or not??? Wei wei wei, can have courtesy to not vomit in front of me or not!? I just bought these shoes leh.

• How come they are all married?

  Bad timing. When I met them, they were either gonna get married or already married. Bo Pian.

• Are or were you depressed that they were not available?

  For a split second of course lah! I’m not blind man! But then I thought: Hmmm, to be seen with good looking women is better than to be seen by my old lonely self. By myself I’m average. With them by my side I’m above average.

• Their husbands leh???

  Their husbands very cool one. They are also very lucky because their wives are very loving to them. Plus they know I wouldn’t dare do anything. Why? Perth too small - I wouldn’t survive to see the next day.

• If cannot get, then why hang around them for???

  Like I said, a pretty face can get you places. Plus good for ego lah! Other chabohs see me alone, think: “Ceh. Average.” They see me with a hot chick, they think: “Hmm, there must be something about that average-looking guy that that hot chick is willing to be seen in public with him. I *must* find out what.” That’s my theory. Don’t call me siao ‘cos it has worked……once. Ah shuddup lah! Cannot let me be happy for one minute issit?!?

You have a better theory?

Before I show you what my friend wrote, here’s a pic taken one drunken night with him (we just had moonshine* made by this Romanian friend - you can tell from our faces):

Keep that face in your mind as you read this:

i woke up from a dream today, very disturbing…….

was being interviewed, or more aptly, having my ass grilled

hardest one was so what did you do for fifteen months after your last stint?

to which i answered without a resounding
er………………………………………………….

it may be the perception of self worth that drives us men to attempt great feats

and the misconception of ambition to strive for success in all manner of fields

but make no mistake….. all actions derive from a singular motif

sublime yet unrelentlesslly demanding

veiled in the virtue of the selflessness of love

its true essence a cacophony of sin

we move not to the rhythm of our own heart

but to the bounce of a great pair of tits:)

What did that all mean?! I have no freaking idea. All I could get from it is that what men do in life, they do it because they’re horny. Is that right, dude!??!

Dude, start a blog lah! Don’t let your fantastic talent of stringing together words of meaning into sentences of none go to waste!

* ingredients were: sugar, water and yeast. I kid you not!