Hanging Out With Mainlanders

Yes I'm Chinese... and to the mainland Chinese, I'm a foreign Chinese. I speak broken Chinese (not with a beautiful Beijing sing-song accent like most of them do) and I can't seem to complete full sentence without substituting some English words in it. It's sad but true. However, Mandarin is my second language, so cut me some slack already!

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I hung out with my friend, Amy, who is the owner of the local foot massage place. It was lunch with a couple of our Japanese friends, and then followed by shopping with Amy and Nancy, both from China. I don't think my ears have spent that much time trying to concentrate so hard just to comprehend Mandarin ; I mean, I speak Mandarin to my mom growing up and even though I live far far away from my family, my daily phone conversations with mom doesn't allow me, like some other phony compatriots from Singapore to say 'oh I can no more speak Mandarin'. That's utter nonsense anyway!

But yes, hanging out with a bunch of Mainlanders is quite unlike hanging out my Singaporean friends who speak mainly Chinese. For me, it was more like being in a Chinese musical... no, opera... with them singing their replies and comments to me in words I don't normally come across LOL! Funny - but stressful lol.

These people work so hard... I mean, massaging other people's feet is no joke (hell my husband doesn't even enjoy doing it for me - ok, not exactly a romantic move I'll admit) but to do it on a more-than-twelve-hour-day-job... ouch! But watching them spend money was pretty impressive! I mean, I'm a pretty big spender (at times) but I guess I never expected people who work so hard manually to burn money like... ummmm... me? HAHAHA! ...and these people expect big name brands...! If you think just because a lot of the imitation stuff comes from China and they are the main recipients, you're bloody wrong!! They expect to shop at Saks, Neiman Marcus... they buy kid's clothing at Oilily, Chloe... can you say ka-ching!?! :D

I needed help removing the toothpicks out of my eyes so I could go to sleep last night. Talk about an eye-opener lol.