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.
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10 Responses to “How much ah???”
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Jun 30 2005 / 7:01 pm
Oh my god, that’s so eerily true. I rememeber the “finish the pork and fish balls, leave the kuay teow”….even though all I really wanted was the Kuay teow!
And of course, my growing collection of McDonalds serviettes and KFC refresher towelettes
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Jun 30 2005 / 7:37 pm
It’s funny cos it’s true. Hope you don’t have the “how much” problem too.
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Jun 30 2005 / 9:43 pm
haha….so so funny but so so so true…one thing though, I don’t ask “how much?” anymore, I ask “ikura desu ka?”..hahaha..
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Jun 30 2005 / 11:23 pm
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Jul 02 2005 / 6:25 pm
I tend to do that myself, but i never put it down to ‘asianess’. I always thought it was the bargain hunter/extreme shopper in me. I’d always put it down to a gal thing. Go figure.
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Jul 02 2005 / 9:16 pm
Lee Lee: fair comment. Though in my experience I do notice that the Asians that I know tend to do that alot more in general than the non-Asians that I know.
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Jul 02 2005 / 9:31 pm
Yeah i think you’re right.
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Nov 25 2005 / 5:22 pm
Haha… Too hilarious…
I vaguely remember pressing the soap pieces thing together too…
But methinks it isn’t such an asian thing. I once saw this US-made contraption on American TV that compressed all these soap pieces together to form one nice big piece of soap.I personally thought it was quite amazing that other people actually did it too…
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Nov 25 2005 / 5:29 pm
julzies: wahahahh that contraption would have a ready market over in Asia if they ever bring it there.
Or maybe there is one already.
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