On Being Thai

Well I didn't tell anyone in the family about me looking like Eastern Asians. It was a very funny encounter, and I guessed I almost forgot about it until today.

We were running out of cooking gas during lunch when Sis realized that there wasn't any burning flame on the stove. So Dad came to help by calling the gas company. But they only came like, 3 hours later! If we were to wait for them for the gas... Dad would be screaming like a madman, Mum'd be crying from gastric pain, Sis would become so annoyed and stomped around in a very bad mood, Bro will also become very irritated and locked himself in the room, while I, I think I'll just get online and flirt away. :P But anyways, yeah, Mum pulled it through cooking quite some amount of dishes...

Only when it was like after 4 that Dad said the gasman called and said he'll be ariving. The guardhouse called through the intercom so Dad went down to lead the gasman up to our place.

He's a Chinese guy, late 40s or so, short stature, pretty dirty clothes from all the gas tank and stuff. He went into the kitchen, replaced the empty tank and said something that we barely understand. See, we spoke English to him, so he was trying so hard to converse in English as well. Something about "Empty 24 hours cooking. Still got 25 hours cooking." and something about "This empty? Still many many lei." I know it's my bad. I just couldn't help feeling uncomfortable because he's like, pretty rude and all. Then when Mum asked if there's any receipt so that we could claim from the owner of the unit, he rudely replied "No, no receipt." Mum grimaced. What the heck.

Then on his way out, he suddenly made a very funny remarks.

"Thailand ah?"

Dad was taken by surprise. In fact all of us were. But before any of us could react, Dad replied.

"No, Chinese."

The rest of the day were spent making fun of ourselves. Like hello??? Do we really not look like local?! Maybe we don't look like the typical Chinese. We look like mix. We don't look Malay or Indian. We may look like we're the natives of the inlands who live on top of the tree. After all western Malaysians never really know how the Ibans or Bidayuhs or Kadazans look like eh?

But... Thailand ah? Yea yea, we're Thai. Sawardeekap.

No wait. I was actually Korean right? Korean Japanese mix actually.

Hmmm...

And Mum said if I were fairer, I really do look like Korean. Maybe not those oh-so-handsome film star like what you see on the Korean drama series, but yeah, I think I do have some resemblance to those Korean exchange students.

My thick eyebrow?

Or was it the round face?