On my abbreviated R&R trip to Hong Kong I was pleasantly surprised when the petrol station attendant reminded me to use my petrol voucher - he'd spotted it in the little card holder we use for cards for the car as I was looking for our Shell card.
You could say that the petrol station attendants in Singapore are less nosy; I would put it down to not having any EQ.
On another occasion I came across cardboard cartons being cut down and bundled for recycling - rather than left intact in a back corridor or bin centre as we do in Singapore.
Hong Kong is ever more a Chinese city, especially for people who look Chinese (like me). Unfortunately my Cantonese is "baby" Cantonese learnt when our help wore pony tails or buns and white or grey or blue tops and baggy bottoms. And I have no Mandarin, the lingua franca in the brand name shops - which is not an issue since I do not darken their doorways!
This rather cramped my style when dealing with a grouchy HK taxi driver with the worst attitude ever. He grilled me as to exactly where in Happy Valley I wanted to go. The street name was not enough, he wanted to know what shops were in that part of the street. Fortunately I was spared being asked the names and religious persuasion of the shopkeepers!
Saturday traffic in Happy Valley rivals that around Ngee Ann city (Singapore) and so I suggested he stop at the street parallel and I would hop out to run my errand. He grumbled that he couldn't stop for long; how long was I going to be? I made it to my shop and back, no sweat even though I jogged.
Next stop Hong Kong Club to collect a cover that had been left there for me. Again, he queried: WHICH Hong Kong Club? I asked how many there were and said the name in English for him. As we drew up he trotted out the same grumble about waiting - I rushed in through the new doors and thanks to the efficiency of the Receptionist on duty was out in double quick time.
As my final stop was stone's throw away at the Airport Express HK station, I told him our final destination and said in Cantonese that he was the worst taxi driver I'd come across in Hong Kong. Then Cantonese words failed me and I had to complete the rest of my tirade, in English. And under my breath as I gave in to using some choice expletives.
However I left him in no doubt as to how I felt via my long and obviously charged soliloquy!
Would you believe the fates were conspiring against me for cutting short my holiday? There was not a luggage cart to be seen on the pavement of the Airport Express station that morning. So I unloaded and left my "wheelie" bag (aka rollie bag, aka roll on cabin bag) on the pavement and hope the taxi driver would not drive off with my suitcase as I dashed in to look for a cart - again none to be seen, but I spotted a woman with her suitcase on a cart and asked to borrow the cart for 10 minutes.
She was very kind and I rushed out to salvage my 2 bags and to pay HK's worst taxi driver - who had by this time had condescended to unload my suitcase and park it beside my "wheelie" bag. I paid him off and went in with my luggage.
Mysteriously about half a dozen carts appeared in one of the doorways and as soon I had wheeled my borrowed cart back to its rightful "owner", I dashed out again to secure the temporary possession of a cart.
At least, in Singapore, luggage carts are in plentiful supply at Changi airport and at supermarkets (where we have to insert a S$1 coin to liberate a cart and subsequently retrieve the coin when we upon returning the cart).
The fact that English and, increasingly, Singlish is gaining popularity as the medium of exchange between Singaporeans and foreign workers is a good thing for Singapore.
We've already got a cosmopolitan mix of people and with the advantage of spoken English, we must be the leading candidate for the ultimate Asian city.
There are some problems we need to anticipate and circumvent though - such as the insidious spread of 'cut off' Singlish where the endings of words are often swallowed or not enunciated.
Adding words like, lah, man, meh for emphasis is fine and can sometimes be attractive.But chopped off words make Singlish as attractive as a pretty woman without a nose.
