There must be something in the air, and I'm not talking about the pollution that used to drift down from Guangzhou before the factories were moved to Thailand and India.
Returning from lunch not an hour ago, I saw a woman walking ahead of me with her umbrella up. Now, normally, there'd be nothing odd about such behaviour, given that it was pretty hot and the sun was shining. What made the conduct aberrant was the fact that she was walking along in a shopping mall.
When she suddenly put her brolly down, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, since who among us has not on occasion forgotten to take our umbrella down when walking in the shelter of overhanging buildings?
It was only after she had gone through the door leading to the car park that I realised what was going on. For, as soon as we were through, she opened up again, getting a funny look from the woman in the Wilson booth, who drew her colleague's attention to this strange phenomenon. She continued on like this until she got to a ramp, where the ceiling gets low, after which she shot her umbrella up again, even though we were still some 30 yards from the exit.
Shaking my head at this one – a first after nearly 25 years in Hong Kong, and restoring my faith in Chinese nature just when I thought I had seen everything – my thoughts turned back to yesterday, when my mole at the most Christianised company among Hong Kong's property cartel forwarded an email from his department head.
A little background about this woman. Local people have a word for someone like her, sing lui, which translates as "affluent, single, middle-aged woman with severe personality defects that guarantee she will remain on the shelf for ever".
She drives a Mercedes or a BMW, arrives at the office late, does no work, rejoices in giving people jobs to do when they’re about to leave the office, and is given to sending moral messages by email.
Sometimes their insanity can turn ugly, as happened yesterday.
My friend, together with eleven other workmates, received an invitation to borrow a book with a title that may be loosely translated as "The Diaries of a Flight Attendant", in which the author recounts various incidents that had happened on flights.
I know where your mind is going, and for once it's on absolutely the right track, as the synopsis refers to the case of a fat woman who sat on a passenger's "thingie" (AKA "dick" – Chinese has a lot of words for the instrument panel as well, you know).
So, perhaps all those stories about Cathay Pacific haguettes helping pilots get airborne in the cockpit are true after all, in spite of the nasty mental images they conjure up.
But I leave the best until last. The property company's HR Department having refused to take the book for their library (thanks to my mole for that gem), the sing lui was undaunted. She concluded her whacky email by telling her twelve disciples:
"The borrowing period is two weeks and may be extended only once"
Returning from lunch not an hour ago, I saw a woman walking ahead of me with her umbrella up. Now, normally, there'd be nothing odd about such behaviour, given that it was pretty hot and the sun was shining. What made the conduct aberrant was the fact that she was walking along in a shopping mall.
When she suddenly put her brolly down, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, since who among us has not on occasion forgotten to take our umbrella down when walking in the shelter of overhanging buildings?
It was only after she had gone through the door leading to the car park that I realised what was going on. For, as soon as we were through, she opened up again, getting a funny look from the woman in the Wilson booth, who drew her colleague's attention to this strange phenomenon. She continued on like this until she got to a ramp, where the ceiling gets low, after which she shot her umbrella up again, even though we were still some 30 yards from the exit.
Shaking my head at this one – a first after nearly 25 years in Hong Kong, and restoring my faith in Chinese nature just when I thought I had seen everything – my thoughts turned back to yesterday, when my mole at the most Christianised company among Hong Kong's property cartel forwarded an email from his department head.
A little background about this woman. Local people have a word for someone like her, sing lui, which translates as "affluent, single, middle-aged woman with severe personality defects that guarantee she will remain on the shelf for ever".
She drives a Mercedes or a BMW, arrives at the office late, does no work, rejoices in giving people jobs to do when they’re about to leave the office, and is given to sending moral messages by email.
Sometimes their insanity can turn ugly, as happened yesterday.
My friend, together with eleven other workmates, received an invitation to borrow a book with a title that may be loosely translated as "The Diaries of a Flight Attendant", in which the author recounts various incidents that had happened on flights.
I know where your mind is going, and for once it's on absolutely the right track, as the synopsis refers to the case of a fat woman who sat on a passenger's "thingie" (AKA "dick" – Chinese has a lot of words for the instrument panel as well, you know).
So, perhaps all those stories about Cathay Pacific haguettes helping pilots get airborne in the cockpit are true after all, in spite of the nasty mental images they conjure up.
But I leave the best until last. The property company's HR Department having refused to take the book for their library (thanks to my mole for that gem), the sing lui was undaunted. She concluded her whacky email by telling her twelve disciples:
"The borrowing period is two weeks and may be extended only once"
thereby opening the world's first one-book lending library.
3 comments:
The term 'sing lui' is interesting. 'sing' means superflous; 'lui' means women. According to Baidu (Chinese version of wikipedia), the term was one of the 171 new Chinese phrases officially accepted by the Ministry of Education of the PRC in August 2007. Now this term is widely used in HK. Another sign of increasing influence, not just politically, but linguistically, from the Mainland?
I never fail to be amazed at the directness of the Chineselanguage/culture/thinking. (Think the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.)
They lead the world in calling a spade a spade, sometimes quite literally, as in the famous Darley manufactured "Black Man Toothpaste", illustrated, naturally, by a grinning minstrel who would make an East Coast liberal choke on her skim-milk Latte.
You must have met someone very similar to Ms Resina Wong, who also appears to be very Sing Lui.
I think you also remember that the Darlie brand used to be literally named "Darkie toothpaste". As shocking stereotypes go, this one really did strike a chord with the local population and actually made a mint for the Hong Kong-based toothpaste company. Ker-ching! Twinkle!
Just had a further thought about appropriate names … Macleans isn't too bad either.
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