Two Extremes of Human Intelligence in a Bank

Just a short texty update today. I’m bringing my father to Singapore tomorrow and coming back on Friday, so time is precious on my side. Obviously, I won’t be updating tomorrow.
I was at an RHB Bank earlier because I had to open a bank account for salary credit purposes. Being away from Malaysia for so long meant that I had forgotten almost all my Bahasa Melayu. I was never good in that language anyway. I always scoff at it because they used so much loan-words from English its not Malay anymore. For example,
What’s “computer” in Malay? Komputer!
What’s “account” in Malay? Akaun!
What’s “sex” in Malay? Seks!
Its ridiculous!
So I went up to this nice lady at the counter, who happen to be a typical Malay Muslim girl with the tudung and all, and I asked her nicely in the best Bahasa Melayu I could muster.
“Saya want to open a bank account with RHB!”

Damn! The whole sentence only one proper Malay word. Nice going, Kenny.
The nice Malay lady at the counter smiled at me and replied,
“Ni yao kai Savings Account hai shi Current Account?”

Yes, you read that right.
The Malay lady at the counter, knowing my superior excellence in the Malay language, does not even dare to compete with me! Which is why she spoke to me in perfectly fluent Mandarin for the next 30 minutes whilst she complete my application.
I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.
I have noticed a positive change in terms of racial demographics in Kuching lately, which I can only describe as vibrant. Today, apart from Malays who speak Mandarin and Indians who speak Hokkien, there’s also a large number of Ibans, Bidayuhs, etc who migrated from the rural areas to Kuching to attend Universities, and they all speak perfectly good English, albeit with an accent but that’s ok. And I love it! Alright, I admit it kinda helped that a lot of them indigenous girls have sizzling hot bodies, but still!
On the other hand, the Chinese population in Kuching are divided cleanly into three groups:
1. Chinese who speaks good Mandarin, but bad English;
2. Chinese who speaks good English, but horrible Mandarin;
3. Chinese who speaks the foul langauge like “Chau chee-bye! Kan ni nah!”
Fake LV Bag
I was chatting amiably with the Malay counter lady in Mandarin. Meanwhile, a middle-aged Chinese lady was standing by the counter beside me, her (obviously fake) Louis Vuitton handbag hanging on her arm, striking a typical rich tai-tai pose. Apparently she’s here to pick up her new AirAsia Mastercard, which is a pretty good credit card that allows you to earn points that can be exchanged for free flights on AirAsia.
Anyway, the counterperson arrived with her new credit card and the lady asked him, “So this credit card can only be used to buy AirAsia tickets one ah?”
“No ma’am, you use it like a normal credit card and the points you earned can be exchanged for AirAsia tickets.”
“YOU MEAN I CAN USE IT TO GO SHOPPING AH!?!?!?” she exclaimed so excitedly the old security guard suddenly woke up and drew his gun.
At this point, I can see the poor counter boy looking at her with eyes that say “OF COURSE YOU CAN USE IT TO GO SHOPPING LAH YOU STUPID DUMBASS! What kinda stupid credit card company would be dumb enough to only let you use it to buy budget air tickets only!?”
But instead, he managed the most insincere smile in the whole world and replied “Yes, you most definitely can do so. BITCH!”
Sorry I added the last word. 😉

23 Replies to “Two Extremes of Human Intelligence in a Bank”

  1. LOL…
    I can speak English, Mandarin, Malay and Cantonese well enuff for normal conversation. 😛 Unlike MunKit, open mouth already is type 3. 😛

  2. how come i don’t seem to belong to any of those groups one? mebbe i’m in the kanak-kanak istimewa group, lol.
    and if you wanna insult my mandarin. u die ah. =P my written one is pretty bad but i can read and speak it perfectly well.

  3. People used to laugh at me because i don’t know how to write or read in chinese. =(
    Most of the indians in my college know how to speak mandarin and cantonese. So never ever tried to kutuk them in mandarin. kakakakaa..

  4. hahahahaha. im no chinese but i can read write talk chinese fluently. i even tot of working in china as an archeologist. funnies funnies. but sadly my bahasa sarawak is dead poor. it feels pretty awkward having conversations wif my bumi frens. hmmmmmmmmmmm….

  5. hahahahaha. im no chinese but i can read write talk chinese fluently. i even tot of working in china as an archeologist. funnies funnies. but sadly my bahasa sarawak is dead poor. it feels pretty awkward having conversations wif my bumi frens. hmmmmmmmmmmm….

  6. nyahahaha.
    in your spider bar (or whatever) Kursus Bahasa Inggris.
    I might as well be tipsy, that made me laugh a while.
    nyahahaha for chinese lady with low iq as well.

  7. Good for BM then, accepting foreign words easily — it’s the reason English has such a rich vocabulary. The basic recipe for a regional lingua franca.
    Though you refer to S’wakians and not Sabahans, I say I belong in #2. Being just half Chinese is no good excuse either. My BM is quite hebat lah.
    Yes your S’wakian girls are damn hot! (People do say the same for Sabahans but I have my preferences..)

  8. i can proudly say that i’m both 1 and 2. 😀 And i thank my parents and kindy teachers for that. 😛 Go St Faith’s Kindy Kuching! :))

  9. I’ve managed to save up roughly $70007 in my bank account, but I’m not sure if I should buy a house or not. Do you think the market is stable or do you think that home prices will decrease by a lot?

  10. Hi, I recently stumbled on your blog and have found it quite entertaining! I know this entry is over a yea old, but I just felt like I had to comment.
    Well, you complain about how so many Malay words are ‘stolen’ from the English language, however if you really wanted to be a nitpicker you could say that most words in the English language were stolen from other languages in the first place! Like Latin, for example.
    But yeah I really like your blog, keep up the good work!
    Oh, and in case you were interested, there is a word in English which came from Malay.
    The word? “Amok”.

  11. Hi, I know its a late comment, and am no sure if kenny’s gonna even notice its here..
    just a wee comment here kenny, I hope you don’t mind.. sometimes there are the ‘not so fortunate group’ of people who did not manage to further their studies. they are probably not so well educated as you and me and won’t even know what LV or channel means. she carrying a fake LV bag was not because she wanted to act rich.. she probably just bought it from the nearby pasar malam without even releasing what LV actually means. Trust me, in the small kampung im from, there;s actually a hair saloon by the name of LV..
    so what if she doesnt know what a credit card does? we should be honoured that we have more knowledge and help those who are not so well educated!

  12. Could you write an expose for our fellow malaysians about the eye of malaysia and the massive corruption involved with it. I mean seriously, it costs 35 mil for rental and they are proposing another 35 to buy it. It looks like a effin carnival ferris wheel and is nothing compared to the millenium wheel at the Thames river in England. And is it on prime land? NO! Its on landfill that could collapse at some point in the future.
    And the world famous ferris wheel in England costs 7 mil- ringgit!! we malaysian tax payers are being robbed blind by the tourism board. I hope a worthy reporter will cover an expose on this robbery of taxpayers money. There are homeless kids begging on the streets-malaysian mind you, glue sniffing street kids(as young as 10 years old), drug addicts being thrown into jail,and why do we have NGO’S to take care of our social work? Don’t we have th emoney to pay for a jokeof a ferris wheelbut no moneyfor malaysian citizens welfare and general wellbeing. As told by the star newspaper,orang asli’s health care is non existant.Hope that you can help shed some light on this to other Malysians who are unaware of this going on in their country.This may be political but how much can we close one eye and not be affected by it? Maybe not the middle class portion of us but how bout the people who belong in the lower income wage bracket? or the NO INCOME bracket? We may have magnificent infrastructure but frankly, those who’s taking care of our people?

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