...her first hokkien language boo-boo.

I managed to survive 2 weeks in Penang without getting any crossed signals. I thought I finally could sort of blend in. But Penang wanna fool with me. Lure me into a false sense of security and then wham!

The past 2 weeks, I managed to order food by pointing, nodding my head, holding out my finger to indicate quantity, or speaking in Cantonese or English (yes, some of the Chinese stall owners are that language savvy).

Then the boo-boo came.

In a nutshell... I ordered something but the food came to be something else. It's ok if the error stops there. But no! I ordered 1 pack to "tapau" and she gave me 2 packs!! How am I gonna finish 2 big packs of fried rice with big chunks of pork?? But it was no use arguing. She was really busy (I had to wait 30 minutes and there were a lot of people waiting too) and she kept pushing the plastic bag to me. Being unable to converse with her verbally or in sign language, I had no choice but to shelve out money to pay for the 2 packs.

Anyways, I won't be going back there even though the food was good. Unless someone who can speak Hokkien is volunteering to be my dinner date. ;-p

...the clumsy berry.

i am suspecting that something is wrong with my motor skills or my neurons. OR things are not just going my way. sigh...

lately, i have been quite clumsy, accident prone, and having butter fingers. here are the cases that happened in the last 2 weeks:

• i scraped 2 of my right toes on the underside of a table's legs coz i slipped on the slippery floor in a coffeeshop. plaster required.
• i slipped when i was trying to bend down to pick up money that flew out of my hand coz i didn't have a good grasp of it coz i was also trying to prevent money from flying off the table
• i have a few scratches on my legs from plastic bags after buying groceries
• i dropped the same thing twice in the supermarket and the same thing again when i was in the process of putting it away in the cupboard
• i broke one of my favourite earrings (sob! sob!) while combing my hair
• the strap on one of my handbags snapped when i was in the supermarket
• while having lunch, a piece of chicken flew and dropped onto my lap while i was trying to cut it. needless to say, it stained my freshly washed skirt.
• while having lunch on another day, i dipped the lower part of my cardigan onto a tray of curry while trying to reach for another sauce

in addition to the above, i also broke my fingernails and toenails a few times and found a few bruises caused by i dont know what.

so what's wrong with me??