January 1, 2007
-
Excerpt from Final Notes from a Great Island
This is for Nic:
Isn chee bye a wonderful vulgarity? It is truly delightful and easily my favourite Singaporean expletive, precisely because it does not sound like one. It is Hokkien for agina? but it is so much jauntier than its British four-letter equivalent, which sounds so guttural, particularly when it is said sneeringly through the side if a Londoner mouth. Like my mother. That always got my attention when she called me in from the street.
Chee bye, on the other hand, comes across as a formal farewell to the unfamiliar ear. You can almost imagine Jeeves and Wooster crying heerio! Bye!?Such a breezy exclamation, it appears to crop up at the most inappropriate junctures. Two drunks argue in a Toa Payoh coffee shop and, no matter how personal and objectionable the bickering gets, they conclude by shouting heerio! Bye!?Well, that is jolly decent of them, isn it?
