Tom Rider

I always tell this joke, and I don’t think I’ll ever be sick of telling it, because it’s downright hilarious. Might not be for those of you who make the same mistake, but oh well…

My ex and I were going for a movie at Mid Valley. It was a weekend and the place was jam packed with other movie-goers. The queue was ridiculously long, but suddenly came this announcement:

“For the movie Tom Rider, please note that the tickets are sold at counter XYZ.”

So I roll my eyes and scoffed like I normally would. But my ex went, “What’s wrong with Tom Rider?”

I balked.

“What’s WRONG with Tom Rider? What’s wrong with TOM RIDER? What’s wrong with Tom Rider is that it’s actually Tomb Raider!”

“You moron…” I hissed under my breath.

“But it’s Tom Rider!” He insisted. “See…even the announcer girl just pronounced it an Tom Rider.”

“Well, she’s an idiot, too that’s why she works here.”

And so began my derision of all ah beng-like grammatical/pronounciation mistakes. Only I shall spare you of them here because you probably run into them yourself all the time in Malaysia.

Admittedly I make some mistakes myself from time to time, but never such blatantly idiotic ones. Makes me wonder what they learnt in school? And it’s a definite deal-breaker for me with guys. If you are incapable of putting together a sentence without using the word -lah,-mah,-loh, or the likes, then please steer clear lest my eyes roll out of their sockets.

Yes, I know I’m Chinese, so you can similarly ridicule me of my use of the Chinese language. But at least I’m humble enough to know that I’m not good, and am willing to learn. Please do not go around rolling your tongues trying to sound American when you can’t even sound the difference between ‘three’ and ‘tree’. And there are many of you with this symptom. NO, it does not make you sound more eloquent, it makes you sound like a desperate wannabe. If you watch Friends and only laugh when the others aren’t laughing, that’s you I’m talking about.