User Comments - auntie68
auntie68
Posted on: Turbulence
December 10, 2007 at 9:55 AMHello again changye. Yes, the professional "crying ladies" of Manila's Chinatown are something special. Curiously, this job normally done by "pure" Filipinas; it is rarely (if at all) performed by ethnic Chinese. In the award-winning film from 2003?/2004?, the lead "crying lady" was played by none other than Sharon Cuneta, who is -- so I was told -- one of those Filipino stars who is like the flower of pure Filipino acting. As a teenager, I flipped (gingerly) through family albums of photographs documenting my great-grandfather's very elaborate funeral in Singapore. This was the 1930s. You can see clearly from the faces -- and the positioning in the formal compositions -- that more than half of the cast were not related to us in any way. In fact, my old family servant (aged 93; she is like the lovable servant in "Botchan", who wrote a long letter in hiragana) confirmed that the ladies of the family were not allowed to wail or show too much emotion, because it would have been "unseemly" ("taksenono", in Malay), hence the hired "criers". Guess we overseas Chinese are pragmatic, if anything...
Posted on: Turbulence
December 9, 2007 at 12:31 PMHello changye! Yes, professional "cry-ers" seem to be a part of Chinese culture even today. Especially in the overseas Chinese community. Have you seen the Filipino movie, "Crying Ladies", before? It is about Pinays who earn their living "crying" at Chinese-Filipino funerals. Hmm...
Posted on: 城市的乞丐
December 9, 2007 at 11:34 AMIf I'm not wrong, the mikes for the ladies are not correctly calibrated, so the booming male voice is really loud, but I can barely hear what Amber and her female colleague are saying. Hope this makes sense... Thanks!
Posted on: 城市的乞丐
December 9, 2007 at 11:33 AMHello again everybody. I have a query for the admins: I seem to be having problems with the sound quality of the "review" MP3s. The sound balance is definitely off, for this lesson and for the (NBA-themed) lesson before it, I hope you will look into this. Thank you SO much!
Posted on: Turbulence
December 9, 2007 at 12:57 AMZhou sunn, all. Tucked away in this amazing lesson was a very "Chinese" expression -- 白发送黑发. The notion of parents having to bury their own children must be a terrible loss in any culture, but I get the feeling that it is particularly poignant, even tragic, in Chinese culture. I wonder if anybody else has any thoughts on this?
Posted on: Identifying Family Members
December 4, 2007 at 11:39 AMAnd thanks to Mr changye, I'll never be able to call somebody 姐姐 again without fighting to keep a smile off my face.
Posted on: Identifying Family Members
December 4, 2007 at 11:37 AMHmm... why the 的 (de5) is omitted may not be purely a question of grammar, rather just "one of those cultural things". For example, in Italian, the possessive case usually requires the definite article (Eg. i miei vicini, la mia scuola, etc etc), but when you are talking about your own family, it's just "mia mamma, sua sorella etc etc, without the definite article. No doubt our wise friend aert, the linguist, could help to illuminate this. All the best to all -- Auntie
Posted on: Getting Dressed
December 4, 2007 at 9:11 AMDear Amber, thank you so much! Mr Changye, the little doggie in my new avatar is actually another client! You know, if I weren't slightly scared of dogs, I think I would be driving a bigger car. Pet shoots are so lucrative; I've received so many requests. My own regular haircut costs only SGD$35, doggie here gets SGD$55 haircuts. But he can't work the TV remote; guess everything evens out in the end.
Posted on: Noodles without Cilantro
December 4, 2007 at 5:32 AMCilantro definitely is not for everyone! To me, fresh cilantro -- even a few shreds of it lost in a vat of curry -- smells like... squashed bugs. I am told that my individual enzyme profile (the genetic/enzyme thing) is what makes me perceive those metallic-yet-horribly-funky notes. This Auntie spent her childhood picking little bits of cilantro out of Chinese or Tamil food. And I'm a not fussy eater, otherwise. Roquefort, Munster, kimchi, perilla leaves, asafoetida (sp.?), tapenade, durians, lemongrass, all kinds of tsukemono, venison, raw green chillies -- you name it, and I'll enjoy it. So thank you SO much for this lesson, CPOD...
Posted on: Turbulence
December 10, 2007 at 10:12 AMOops, when I say "pure Filipina", I only mean that the person is a Filipina who is not ethnic Chinese. The wonderful thing about Filipino culture is that it is so rich and diverse. I am the proud Singaporean Auntie (姑妈) of a 2+ year old nephew who is 100% Peranakan (ie. overseas Chinese with some Malay blood), and at the same time, also 100% Pinoy (+tsinoy +tisoy, meaning part-Chinese and part-Spanish, respectively). Who says you can't have your cake and eat it... The only thing that makes me worry is that his "bilingual" preschool is going to teach him arithmetic in Mandarin, which is not a language that any of us in my family can speak well!