A Day at the wetmarket…
Wednesday, May 9th, 2007G’day folks…this is my 1st entry of the year, after a 5 month hiatus. I know, I know…some of you are going ‘YAY!!!! HE’S BACK!!!", while others are going… "OH DARN, WHY IS HE BACK?!!!". For the former, thank you for your support (although you must have lots of free time on your hands to be actually reading a blog),LOL. To the latter…well, @#@$#^%%$%#@!!!!!! (if you’re now going, "GASP!!!how could you curse on a public blog???", well then, this goes to show what pessimistic and nasty minds you have!!!haha) what i meant by those symbols of ‘love’ are …"God bless you and your family…". Anyway, moving on from that intro which served no purpose whatsoever to enhance the subject matter written in the title, I shall be pleased to tell you of a place of which i have visited for probably the 2nd time in my entire life…a place so vile yet surprisingly calm, a place of which birds dun fly free but are chopped into pieces and bargained to a mere rm8 per kilo…..yes dear readers, i’m referring to ….*musical accompaniment for added atmosphere* ……THE WET MARKET.
"Gary, instead of going to the supermarket, today we’ll be going to the wet market in Pasir Pinji to buy our groceries…", said my mom in a matter of fact manner.
" But why??? its so gross and smelly la that place", replied yours truly, albeit in a cool and collected manner of course.(HEY YOU!!!STOP LAUGHING!)
" Its a good experience , and things there are more fresher", went on my mother without taking a single notice to my ‘cool and collected’ complaint.
Fast forward to the Wetmarket. I stood there with eyes opened as I saw in amusement at one corner a whole array of stalls selling freshly slaughtered pigs, while just across them was a stall selling cheap clothing for RM5 a piece…you know, those ‘hideous looking’ Power rangers and Ultraman kids clothing, with Ultraman painted purple and green instead of the signature red and white…absolutely hideous…and can you imagine the smells and odours of pigs saturating into the very fabric of the clothing????? Thinking that would have been the most oddest thing i would have seen in the market, i was totally blown away by what i saw(and heard) a few steps on from that ‘pork smelling clothes stand’.
Now,my cantonese may not be on par with the literary scholars of the Confucian era, but it was unmistakable that i heard the hawkers who were selling their assorted items of vegetables and meat having conversations with their customers and other traders with sentences peppered with references to everybody’s father, mother, etc etc… and of course the all famous, woman’s lower region!. I asked my father immediately why did they all speak like that and he replied in an insightful manner…"only in the cantonese dialect can you hear all this ‘terms of endearment’"….Needless to say, i burst out laughing with a thought running through my mind. If the English language were to adopt such terms of endearments, we would break the ice with strangers and each other by simply saying " You have on a nice dress today, YOUR FATHER!!!", or another example, " Oh come on, don’t be so glum, YOUR MOTHER’S LOWER REGION!"……
At first, I thought that this manner of speaking was rather barbaric, rude and downright primitive but by observing how the Hawkers, traders and customers were jovially laughing and going about their usual business…it dawned upon me…that hey, maybe if i spoke to them in a prim and proper manner, they would look at me as the one being barbaric,rude and primitive!
Coming out from that wetmarket has taught me one thing(with the help of my parents of course) . Sometimes we judge places and people with what we perceive them to be in our minds…based on our own biased mindsets, when the actual truth is they aren’t so bad. A good example was what my father told me when i related all of this to him….He said," You think that the wetmarket place is dirty and smelly? Have you seen and smelt your room lately?" … Indeed I laughed but also acknowledged that there was much truth in that….
