What's funny to some people...

To be able to enjoy a joke, one has to be good enough in the language to be able to catch the punch-line and the nuances that go with it. I tried to explain the joke on ‘Daddy, how was I born?’ to the phone shop girls who are Chinese educated. Not only did they not appreciate it, (partly because of language, partly because of the computer jargons) one of them even criticised me for speaking too slow! I tried so hard to make them understand English without which the joke falls flat. It was a waste of time.

More than twenty years ago, I read an article in the Malay Mail, which mentioned about instances of our ‘Malaysian English’. It was about this young lady who listened to her colleague explaining about something. At the end, she asked, “And so, what is the because?” When I related this to James (Matthias’s partner) over lunch, he could not help laughing.

A few years back, when my computer’s email function was functioning properly, I used to correspond with Mary Schneider. Once, I related a true story about this English housewife who was caught fooling with our neighbours who were Iranian students. It was past midnight when I heard the wife explaining, “we were only kissing!” The husband retorted, “But your knickers were fooking wet!” Mary replied that she couldn’t stop laughing!

Closer to home, my in-laws’ guaranteed laughter comes from the mere mention of ‘tah pi’ which means ‘farting’ in Hakka! Whenever conversation gets boring, some bright spark will touch on this subject and start everyone laughing and exchange some farting jokes. The shop in Teluk Intan with a name like Soon Fart comes immediately to my mind.

When I first knew my wife, she used to be tickled when describing how when she was a little girl, she found the use of a handkerchief with four ends tied into knots and used to cover one’s head so funny. Again, the mere mention of it will bring laughter.

Among the family, the description of their father describing how someone who had struck a big lottery should take a picture with both hands holding the winning ticket in front of the belly, to further prove that the ticket belongs to him, is another guaranteed hilarious one.

Sometimes, a slow response of one in a group can be hilarious too. Just imagine, after everyone had his laugh, he giggles! Same with the one who could not understand the joke and asked, ‘And so, what is the because?’…