while on the bus back today, a little boy was making a hell lot of noise. not that i know how noisy hell actually is. a number of people were looking over at the boy including one indian. there were also two other indians sitting beside the boy minding their own businesses.

as the parents tried to silence the boy to no avail, the father decided to use the tactic our parents used to use on us: 等一下 ah neh neh 抓你啊!

i was a little taken aback. with the indians at such close proximity, he actually blurted out "ah neh neh." i understand that they most likely do not understand mandarin. i also understand that "ah neh" in tamil means "brother" but those acclimatised to our society would've understood that "ah neh neh" is a pretty unflattering term.

underlyingly, we are still bred into the idea that the ah neh nehs are bad people who will kidnap us if we misbehave. and things like that cause racism to spread without our conscious knowledge of it. that is dangerous.

this very same incident also made me realise that the way our parents used to teach and discipline us is the very cause of our impulse to feel like hitting or slapping someone when they get on our nerves. whenever we did wrong and they do not like it, they whip out the cane and start whipping our asses. if i were a potato, i would've been sent to kfc long ago. this gave us the idea that violence is the solution. which is also why children under abuse have a higher tendency to grow up violent.

and yet another note, i was pretty "unautomatic" (buay zi dong) today. at the takashimaya basement, the kfc and macdonalds were side-by-side and we wanted to eat kfc. but kfc had no seats left and macs still had a few. also, we noticed a number of people eating kfc food at macs with only one macs ice-cream or regular drink on the table. so we decided to follow suit, except that we didn't bother to buy anything from macs. until a macs staff came over and helplessly tell us, "are you eating macdonalds? this is kfc the tables are over there..." and his tone was so helpless. you can really tell he is unhappy about it but at the same time, he can't scold us because of his position as a service staff. so i went to buy a mcflurry and sat down. i thought about it and i know that if i were in his position i would be so damn pissed off with us, i'll keep complaining and cursing and i'll post it on my blog. so after we finished our kfc stuff, we promptly cleared the tray in the kfc bin and before we left, i apologised to the staff for our inconsiderate act.

i'm really sorry...

yet another note. today i bought a new phone. the samsung jet. i was flipping through the user manual and found this... (click to see a larger image)

O_O!!!