Travel Dust

I was walking along the river at Robertson Quay early this week, waiting for a couple of friends, and a huge muscular bloke came up to me and said in this strong kind of British accent (or an Australian from deep down under):

“Excuse me. Excuse me, Miss. You can’t smirk while walking in Singapore?

I try to avoid making eye contact with him - my Manila street instincts tell me to do this, but I look up at him because my brain is saying, “SMIRK?!?”

He was smirking. 

I then kept thinking, “Whaat? Are people tripping on this guy??? Or is there a new rule that you can’t smirk at strangers to avoid creating fights? This guy looks like he can start a fight.” So I just tell him, “No. You can.”

He goes: “Oh so you can! Some people told me you can’t smirk while you’re on the street and I thought that was crazy. Throwing the butts on the ground makes sense…”

And I just slowly stopped listening to him when he said butts because the screws in my brain slowly turned and made me go silently say “Ahhhh” but I swear, I think my mouth opened. He was saying SMOKE all this while! So I said, “You can, but you can’t smoke if there are other people around you while you’re walking.”

He goes: “Huh? You CAN??”

I suddenly replay a debate I had with my friend’s British boyfriend oh how we say “Can’t” and they say “KAHN’T.” I was supposed to say “Kahn’t” but ended up saying “KEN NOHT.” Accent fail. I sounded like a Singaporean instead of British. He understood me though. *face palm*

He talked some more while walking away but I just didn’t care and looked down at my phone. I sat down somewhere and typed: “Where are you guys?! Random people are talking to me na!” 

My friends said I have a hearing problem, but golly. The way he said smoke really sounded like smirk!!!