there’s this sales engineer in the office who isn’t so flattering. not that i need a lot of false compliments, i know myself, but he didn’t have to be so candid.

he: “you know, i can’t eat seafood or mangoes. i always have a major outbreak after eating them.”

me: “aiyah, can’t really tell the difference lah, outbreak or not.”

he: “yeah i know, i have a lot of problems with pimples. i really envy you guys. how come no pimples one? so good!”

three minutes later….still on the same topic

he: “my pores are damn big.”

looking at me, he continued, “you know, your pores are big too, but you have no pimples.”

wah lau, i really don’t know whether to take that as an insult or a compliment.

my boss decided to join us for lunch today. it was a painful lunch, because i don’t particularly like him and thus i don’t have anything much to say to him. plus, he’s a even neater eater than i am.

towards the end of lunch, my usual lunch kaki asked if we wanted drinks, and i merrily (perhaps a little too merrily) told him i wanted teh bing.

immediately, the boss asked if i’m a malaysian.

wide-eyed, i told him no and asked him why. can it be that singaporeans don’t drink teh bing?

he always had the idea that malaysians love teh bing. maybe it was the merriness in me that made him think i live for teh bing (kind of). if he were a friend i’d have told him maybe because i have a buddy who’s malaysian and perhaps i’m influenced by the teh-bing-drinking malaysian. but since we’re of different frequencies, my boss and i, i decided not to tell him so much about myself.

if he’s still not sure about my nationality after me having worked there for a cumulative period of seven months over three years, something must be very wrong.

can it be that…. i’m behaving like a malaysian??