Grow a pair.
I didn’t mean for this blog to get so sexually explicit, especially since my parents are reading this, but… well… anyway….
Last week I went out for lunch off campus with my colleague Yasmine. You know, whenever I think that I’m doing “Asia Light” in Singapore, I remember that the experience I get to have getting to know people here is pretty cool. It doesn’t matter if you’re Chinese, Tamil, Malay, or Singaporean, everyone speaks pretty good English, if not fluent. So we can dive right into talking about our lives, our work, our students, our feelings (Landi, do you miss hearing about my feelings?), on a much deeper level than say, if I were learning a couple phrases of Thai each week.
So as I was saying, Yasmine and I went for Indian food. And, of course, while we were eating we were talking about food. I told her that I had tried durian, thought it was disgusting, spit it out, and that my friend told me to “grow a pair”. She had never heard this phrase, so I explained what it meant.
Yesterday, I went out to lunch with my other colleagues Pheng Guan and Yilin. Although she was eating a bowl of fish porridge and sharing a plate of duck with Pheng Guan, Yilin wanted to try the raw fish they served. (Yilin is about 90 pounds but eats about 5 times as much as me). When I made my I-am-totally-grossed-out face in reference to the raw fish, Pheng Guan told me to “Grow a pair”.
Apparently, the phrase “Grow a pair” has been spreading like wild fire through the first floor teachers lounge. Hilarious.
Thanks, Billy.
I am pleased to hear that I am a cultural phenomenon in Singapore.
Sure you’ll get around to this at some point, but this post reminds me–I’d love to hear your take on Singlish. It’s just strange that so many people grow up learning a version of English that has a substantial overlay of foreign grammar and (I think) idioms. Like, they’re “fluent,” but I wonder what the hell they’re talking about half the time.