Thursday, December 22, 2005
Manik's Singaporean Side
Here's some of the Christmas decorations near Carrefour in town...
Not too bad yeah?
Manik and I went to Carrefour (not sure about the spelling...) to buy the ingredients for cooking 'the ultimate Christmas meal' (this year we decided to try duck, as turkey cost more :p).
While we walked past a sampling counter near the frozen section, a lady who was promoting cheese-flavoured chicken nuggets, offered Manik a small, tiny piece to sample. Immediately he gulped it down his throat and motioned to me to walk away.
This is a typical Singaporean behaviour!
It's very common to see similar types of behaviour among many Singaporeans. Whenever there's a sampling counter, there will be loads of people (usually married women though ) surrounding it. The worse thing is, most of the ladies walked away not buying the product. When attempting to board the bus, everyone rushes in to try to be first to board. This is referred as a 'kia su' behaviour.
'Kia su' is a phrase in the Chinese Hokkien dialect - it means 'afraid to loose', and refers to people who do everything in their power to be first in the queue or the ones who benefit the most from anything.
I was very surprised to observe this behaviour in Manik since he's less 'kia su' than I am ;) (I hope I have not influenced him negatively...)
Actually this behaviour is commonly found in Taiwan too, my country of birth. Whenever I'm there, many times, I will join the crowd and walk away shamelessly.
I guess although I'm not a Singaporean (yet? Or I am already?), I'm a 'kia su' Chinese after all....
# posted by M&M @ 10:07 pm 
