dimanche 23 juin 2013

Paying 11 for 6

When you got no change to pay 6, so you pay 11, you are most probably a Chinese.
This habit of always trying to round up the change, like paying 11 instead of 10 to get a one piece note of 5 back, probably attribute mostly only to the Chinese, because I remember doing the "11 for 6" thing in France and got people looking at me strangely and return my extra 1euro. Another time when buying a ticket for a concert, I gave 55euro for the ticket of 35euro, the ticketing counter lady, maybe had been giving 15 change all night to everyone, went looking for a calculator, so I took back my 5 and paid her 100.
My French friends hate when I make fun of their mental arithmetic skill, they will tell me many great mathematiciens are French, but still many adult French I knew can't do division on paper, I am not judging them, I only think it is the fault of the complication of how French language name numbers, they are hating me more making this double insult on their mathematic and their language which they are so proud of, but many foreigner who learn to speak French will agree with me, cause the French call 70 as sixty-ten. 80 as four-twenty, the worst is 90 as four-twenty-ten, imagine 99? four-twenty-ten and nine. By time they finish saying 99, they probably already forgotten their last count.

But if I am allowed to generalize, then there is worse than the French, the Malay.
After a few experience of Malay merchant miscalculated my change (it could even be more) now I will always recount the change instead of trusting the merchant skill. It also happened sometimes they themselves ask me to count it for them, especially in the food market where some farmers are illiterate and don't count well.
At one of my weekly market place, Thers is this lady merchant, each vegetable I add in my shopping basket, she will repaet asking her husband to do the addition for her.
Today I went to the house of an old lady to buy organic kampung chickens' eggs, 60cents each, I got 10, and the whole family asked each other how much is the total of it, few seconds later they all agree with 6 ringgits, I gave her 10 and she return 6 to me and I returned her 2 back... I then asked about the price of her chicken sell prepared. "Prepared?" I explain "killed, unfurthered, intestine emptied and chopped" she puzzle for long time figuring out a price cause she said no one ever buy it that way. "what? everyone else do all these themselves?" she puzzle again by my surprise, so her daughtor told her "she doesn't know how to kill a chicken, Chinese people only know how to eat." Although she made me sounds like an idiot but she is right. Chinese love eating and only know how to eat, they specialy love eating seafood and surely non of the know how to fish, cause the Chinese outside their bussiness environment is like handicap, most of us has phobia for rural living, we are afraid of insects, know vey little about animals and plants, we can't fish nor swim, neither to climb a tree or plant food.
In the eyes of the Malay, they think we are such a big eater and we are so sissy. In the eyes of the Chinese, they think Malay are hopeless in mathematic and lousy bussiness man. So that should make us both need each other rather than hate each other.
But no matter what, unfeather a chicken should not be easier than counting 60 cents per egg for 10.

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