Tips and Insult Fests
I suppose this would be the appropriate post in which to wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year. Well then, Happy Chinese New Year, everybody. I know I don’t sound too festive, but then I’m not the one living it up on the Peninsula.
Yes, that’s right: my family has left me, alone except for my maternal grandmother, to work in the mart and get my salary while they go to visit my paternal relatives and my parents’ old friends, collecting red packets of cash all the way. Of course they’ll take mine, too—I call it remote control cash—but I hope they don’t think to cheat me out of my rightfully earned money. After all, I’m the one working here while they eat the open houses out of house and home.
All things considered, though, I’m not too badly off. The computer is finally fixed (Thank God) and I now have the freedom I have sought so long (to go online for long periods). It’s not quite what I expected, though: I find I have curiously little to do online now, apart from checking my mail and updating my blog once in a while. Oh, I also check other people’s blogs, too, but there’s only so much that one can expect from others.
I daresay this blog has become rather boring, but then so is my life now; far more boring than it used to be, at any rate. No longer do I have classmates to rant about or laugh at; no more teachers to complain about; not even the odd incident to laugh at! And I used to think that my life couldn’t possibly get any more boring.
But then the tips more than make up for it. In fact I could write a treatise on them by now, mostly because I have been blessed with several encounters with generous customers. OK, so here goes:
It appears that the richest customers are the most thrifty; they don’t even say thanks after you lug several hundred bucks’ worth of groceries across the car park to their car. Some of them are generous, certainly, but very few of them. I recently got ten bucks from a guy in a Land Cruiser for loading three boxes of oranges and showing him where the Chinese sausages were. On the other hand, I also recently pulled a trolley that was so heavily loaded that I thought something was going to fall off any second, all the way to the secondary school across the street, loaded (stuffed) the lot into a tiny car, and got nothing but a sour look and a very grumpy thank-you, as if to ask why I’d taken so long to honour this august personage with my humble service.
Tips usually come from people who are of the same race as you are, in my case, Chinese. I have not received any tips from Malays, gweilos, or even locals. I put this one down to the simple reason that people feel more comfortable around somebody they see as one of their own, and therefore are more likely to treat them better. After all, I often find myself giving rather exceptional service to Teochew speakers (my father’s side being Teochew), and giving not quite so good service to people with dyed hair (don’t know why).
And finally, tips are to be appreciated. I now rather frequently find myself sizing up a customer and wondering how much they’ll tip me—and being disappointed when they don’t. It’s taken me awhile to realise that tips are, after all, tips; gratuities, an extra cherry on top, not supposed to be there at all. I should be grateful that I’ve gotten as many tips as I have already, of course; but it’s so hard to remember that. Also, I find that if I help a customer solely for the tips, I get nil; but all my tips have come when I least expected them, like when I was busy frightening the Land Cruiser man’s kids with my metallic smile. (He must’ve been more grateful for me scaring them into silence than for me loading his stuff.)
So that’s it on tips. Oh, and my puppies are all walking with eyes open already. The eyes are still milky, but they can see; and they seem to equate humans with food. Every time I walk over, they all come and latch themselves to my fingers and begin sucking like vacuum cleaners. (They do that to their mum, too, just not on the fingers.) So I think I’ll be giving them away by Cup Go May.
And one last boring little thing: I had an insult fest last night with what I thought was a guy from my Literature tuition class. It turned out that he was also somewhere in the Peninsula, and some other guy was actually using his computer, so I was insulting somebody I don’t even know. And the worst thing was that when he got back, he read everything I’d typed and went ballistic. (Everyone who’s had an insult fest with me knows just how offensive I can get—without using any four letter words!) I was metaphorically grovelling on the floor by the time he got over it. Heck, what else does one do when one has just unwittingly insulted a guy’s entire family and their progeny to the nth degree?
And the weirdest thing about that was that I was taunting some guy with my own name: Jonathan. So that little conversation is now saved in my computer under the name “Jonathan insulting F_____, which was really Jonathan insulting Jonathan”. I got the idea from Herr Robson, who told me that he saves all his online conversations for future reading. (That’s another little weird thing.) He can’t save the ones with me, though; neither of us has any idea, but he says it’s green algae. (It’s a long story, but you don’t need to know it. If you are overpowered by curiousity, email me or leave a comment.) I don’t mind.
Yes, that’s right: my family has left me, alone except for my maternal grandmother, to work in the mart and get my salary while they go to visit my paternal relatives and my parents’ old friends, collecting red packets of cash all the way. Of course they’ll take mine, too—I call it remote control cash—but I hope they don’t think to cheat me out of my rightfully earned money. After all, I’m the one working here while they eat the open houses out of house and home.
All things considered, though, I’m not too badly off. The computer is finally fixed (Thank God) and I now have the freedom I have sought so long (to go online for long periods). It’s not quite what I expected, though: I find I have curiously little to do online now, apart from checking my mail and updating my blog once in a while. Oh, I also check other people’s blogs, too, but there’s only so much that one can expect from others.
I daresay this blog has become rather boring, but then so is my life now; far more boring than it used to be, at any rate. No longer do I have classmates to rant about or laugh at; no more teachers to complain about; not even the odd incident to laugh at! And I used to think that my life couldn’t possibly get any more boring.
But then the tips more than make up for it. In fact I could write a treatise on them by now, mostly because I have been blessed with several encounters with generous customers. OK, so here goes:
It appears that the richest customers are the most thrifty; they don’t even say thanks after you lug several hundred bucks’ worth of groceries across the car park to their car. Some of them are generous, certainly, but very few of them. I recently got ten bucks from a guy in a Land Cruiser for loading three boxes of oranges and showing him where the Chinese sausages were. On the other hand, I also recently pulled a trolley that was so heavily loaded that I thought something was going to fall off any second, all the way to the secondary school across the street, loaded (stuffed) the lot into a tiny car, and got nothing but a sour look and a very grumpy thank-you, as if to ask why I’d taken so long to honour this august personage with my humble service.
Tips usually come from people who are of the same race as you are, in my case, Chinese. I have not received any tips from Malays, gweilos, or even locals. I put this one down to the simple reason that people feel more comfortable around somebody they see as one of their own, and therefore are more likely to treat them better. After all, I often find myself giving rather exceptional service to Teochew speakers (my father’s side being Teochew), and giving not quite so good service to people with dyed hair (don’t know why).
And finally, tips are to be appreciated. I now rather frequently find myself sizing up a customer and wondering how much they’ll tip me—and being disappointed when they don’t. It’s taken me awhile to realise that tips are, after all, tips; gratuities, an extra cherry on top, not supposed to be there at all. I should be grateful that I’ve gotten as many tips as I have already, of course; but it’s so hard to remember that. Also, I find that if I help a customer solely for the tips, I get nil; but all my tips have come when I least expected them, like when I was busy frightening the Land Cruiser man’s kids with my metallic smile. (He must’ve been more grateful for me scaring them into silence than for me loading his stuff.)
So that’s it on tips. Oh, and my puppies are all walking with eyes open already. The eyes are still milky, but they can see; and they seem to equate humans with food. Every time I walk over, they all come and latch themselves to my fingers and begin sucking like vacuum cleaners. (They do that to their mum, too, just not on the fingers.) So I think I’ll be giving them away by Cup Go May.
And one last boring little thing: I had an insult fest last night with what I thought was a guy from my Literature tuition class. It turned out that he was also somewhere in the Peninsula, and some other guy was actually using his computer, so I was insulting somebody I don’t even know. And the worst thing was that when he got back, he read everything I’d typed and went ballistic. (Everyone who’s had an insult fest with me knows just how offensive I can get—without using any four letter words!) I was metaphorically grovelling on the floor by the time he got over it. Heck, what else does one do when one has just unwittingly insulted a guy’s entire family and their progeny to the nth degree?
And the weirdest thing about that was that I was taunting some guy with my own name: Jonathan. So that little conversation is now saved in my computer under the name “Jonathan insulting F_____, which was really Jonathan insulting Jonathan”. I got the idea from Herr Robson, who told me that he saves all his online conversations for future reading. (That’s another little weird thing.) He can’t save the ones with me, though; neither of us has any idea, but he says it’s green algae. (It’s a long story, but you don’t need to know it. If you are overpowered by curiousity, email me or leave a comment.) I don’t mind.
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