Language bliss & blunders: At the hairdresser's (April 2012)

My all time favourite... !

From DJ Tales 3.4 (April 2012)

It’s like leading a cow to watch a movie. That’s the Khmer idiom to describe my (Jess) recent haircut experience.

The hairdresser I went to 2 months ago was busy, so I went to another salon instead. There were 3 girls, presumably all hairdressers. Not understanding what I wanted with my hair cut, the girl that I spoke to initially got frustrated & called for another girl to attend to me instead. The 2nd girl started asking questions but I couldn’t understand her either!

It was rather discouraging, even more so as I had received assurance from my teacher the week before that I was progressing very well & understanding a lot. What made it difficult was the wide use of ‘slang’ words & expressions, so I couldn’t understand as they sounded so different! (e.g. ‘gonna’ vs ‘going to’ in English).

I tried chatting with the girl cutting my hair, but each time I asked a question, the other 2 girls added in many comments & made jokes, all which I couldn’t understand. They also mixed in some English words, but they sounded so unclear that I thought they were speaking Khmer!

This was the conversation after the hairdresser (Hd) was done.

Hd: Nih ban eh?
       (Is this OK?)

Me: Urm…
       <hesitating>

Hd: Nih K’chood! K’chood!
       (It’s k’chood (?!)

Me: Urm… k’chood? K’chood ay gey?
       (What does k’chood mean?)

Hd: K’chood! S’at!
       (K’chood! Beautiful!)

Me: K’chood mien ney ta s’at?
       (Does k’chood mean beautiful?)

Hd: K’chood! K’chood!
       <bewildered look, repeats more intensely with the other 2 girls joining in>

I made a mental note of that word & asked my teacher the next day. To my surprise, she said, “K’chood? It’s an English word! It means beautiful.” After wrecking my brains, I now know what it is:

“CUTE”!

<Cow bangs head on the TV set…>

Language bliss & blunders: Similar sounding words (March 2012)

It's about a month till our language assessment in November! Thought I'd post up some of our LANGUAGE BLISS & BLUNDERS from our past newsletters just to remind ourselves how far (or not!) we've come!

From DJ tales 3. 3 (March 2012)

Words that sound alike but have different meanings can be quite confusing (not to mention a source of great embarrassment!)

HORSE vs. STUDENT

Jess has made this mistake – calling a student, a horse instead!

(dog) BARK vs. BOIL

A dog boiling? We’ve had that thought a couple of times about the one disturbing our sleep!

The mistakes we REALLY don’t want to make:  

APPLE vs. FART

CAKE vs. URINE

We’re really glad that OMF wants us to learn the Khmer alphabet & pronunciation well. A little hard work now will certainly save us a lot of miscommunication & embarrassment in the future!

IV Drip on wheels

Spotted on the streets of Phnom Penh.

The lady on the motorbike is holding a drip which is connected to the scalp of the little boy sitting between her & the driver.

Drips are readily available at local pharmacies here in Cambodia. Commonly, people who fall sick tend to ask for a drip. It's thought to help the body get stronger. Many report to feeling better after having a "drip treatment".

Doctors who give "drip treatment" are generally considered good while those who don't may be deemed otherwise. In general, the more medications and injections one receives from a doctor, the better the service is thought to be. Hopefully this mindset is slowly changing with education.

Water bill - just in time?!

Our water bill... Due today!

We haven't been checking our postbox frequently because we don't really get mail sent to our house address except for the electricity & water bills. Just so happened that David decided to look into it today, and behold!

Hopefully they won't be so efficient to cut our water supply by tomorrow morning though. 

Thank God for prompting David to check the postbox just in time so that we can make payment tomorrow (albeit it being one day late). Otherwise, it might have been a whole weekend of having our water supply cut off!

"To see how ugly you are!"

"Why are you looking at me?" I asked David.

"To see how ugly you are!", he replied.

Now, you're either cheering him on for being so bold to say such a thing to his wife... OR you're totally disgusted at how insensitive his words were.

In order to help you make a better judgement, I should give you some context.

Recently, I met up with a friend who's also expecting her 2nd baby. It was inevitable that some pregnancy stories came up during our time together.

When she was pregnant with her 1st child, she had many older women (urm... they were Chinese / Asian in Australia) tell her that she was definitely expecting a boy. Why? Because they could tell by looking at her face! These women claimed that the facial features of women changed during pregnancy to reflect the gender of the baby they were carrying due to the hormones - i.e. testosterone if a boy, estrogen if a girl.

In other words, if a woman was carrying a girl, she would look... more like a girl / female. If she was carrying a boy, she would look... more like a boy / male.

In my friend's interpretation however, it meant that "If you're carrying a girl, you'd glow & look more beautiful. If it's a boy, you're more manly, which basically means you look uglier!"

Being a Malaysian Chinese who's lived in Australia for most of her life, she didn't take offense at those words as she could understand the cultural context of these women. Her Caucasian friend however, felt so insulted when she was told the same thing! What's acceptable in one culture may not be the case in another!

Well, did my friend have a boy in the end? She did! So did her Caucasian friend. Although they sometimes wished they had girls just to prove the women wrong! :)

So... David certainly hopes that I look ugly... The uglier the better!

Robbery... but God provides!

Sarah (not her real name) had her bag wound tightly around a hook on her motorbike. She was on her way home when 2 men on a motorbike rode next to her and started pulling at her bag!
It took a couple of tugs before the robbers managed to get the bag. And then they sped off!

Not only did she lose cash, cards & her phone, she also lost the bag itself which was a valued possession amongst many other precious things that were in it.

That night, Sarah had a headache and wanted to reach for her pills, but then realized that they were in the stolen bag! Different items came to her mind as she moaned for her losses, particularly a favorite key-ring that she had.

The next day, she went to the OMF team center, and guess what she found in the mail for her? A new key-ring! A friend from the UK had sent it to her 3 weeks ago, way before she knew what had happened!

Another great praise story: After learning about the robbery, Janet (not real name), another missionary friend here offered to give Sarah her handbag that Sarah really coveted (liked). Sarah asked Janet to consider it carefully as she really did not think she could bear to part with the bag should Janet change her mind!

Some days later, Sarah was thrilled to find that bag in her pigeon hole. Janet had decided to give it to her. Amazingly, on that same day, Janet later found out that she had received a parcel from the UK. Guess what it contained? A spanking new bag of the same brand that she had given to Sarah!

God's provision is so amazing & timely!

Theft: 1 motorbike, 4 bicycles...

Just a day before I posted about God being our ultimate security, our neighbour's front yard / porch got broken into for the second time. The thieves took a total of 4 bicycles & 1 motorbike over two separate occasions, one week between each.

Our house is joined to theirs & we actually share the same front yard. So our motorbike could have well been stolen too if not for the fact that it was parked on the other end, blocked by both families' cars. It's likely that the thieves may not have seen our motorbike in the darkness of the night.

Side & main gate on the left are on our side of the house. The neighbours have identical gates & their bikes were parked on the their end of the front yard

The thieves had it easy the first time (as the gate was unlocked in the evening). But the second time, they had cut the padlock on the gate. They then hung the broken padlock over our neighbours's door to prevent them from getting out of the house to stop the thieves!

(Before adding the extra security features)

Side gate, view from the outside - there's a hole to allow securing of the padlock on the inside from the outside

(After adding the extra security features)

Side gate, view from outside: a metal piece that covers the hole, installed to prevent thieves from accessing the inside padlock

Side gate, view from the inside: a little latch on the metal piece that can be padlocked at night

Main gate, view from the inside: the black, badly soldered piece of metal prevents thieves from lifting the metal pole that anchors the gate to the ground

While we do thank God for our landlady who has been very prompt in installing extra security features on the gates, we're reminded again that our trust cannot be in these things, as much as we need them to some extent. God is still our ultimate security.

There'll be times when we will experience His miraculous covering and protection. Yet, at other times, He allows us, His children, to be victims of evil perpetrators. We're not immune to the effects of evil. It is part & puzzle of living in this fallen world.

So please pray that we continue to look to God for all things - security yes, but more so, to His enabling & keeping of our faith when bad things do happen.

Video: Learning Khmer - vowel sounds

Video taken sometime in January.. to help with differentiating the sounds of a couple of easily confused vowels. See if you can notice the difference in their sounds?!

The day I couldn't be a backseat driver

It's rainy season. You'd think that I'd have the common sense to pack in a raincoat in my bag... but No...

So it rained last Friday just as we were going back home. Thankfully David was more prepared than I was. So at least we had one raincoat to share between the two of us...

I'm a backseat driver. Especially when the driver is my husband. Even more so when we're in crazy-traffic-land, i.e. Cambodia. Frequently, I have this urge to scream out "Watch out! Car coming!" or "Slow down!" or "Motorbike!"

Even though I'm slowly learning to refrain from commenting, I still feel the obligation to "lend my pair of eyes" to watch out for the traffic. As if I can somehow control the driving just by my looking.

So... it was a rather... urm... faith-testing (& nerve-wrecking!) experience to be riding home under that raincoat without being able to see anything apart from my own two feet! You bet I was clinging on tighter than usual!

Maybe that's why God sometimes keeps us in the dark about where we're going in life. So that we can stop being backseat drivers trying to tell Him what to do? So that we can learn to trust & cling on to Him more?