Tag: stereotypes

Aint No Chup-Bowl like Ching Chong Chup-Bowl

Cos the Ching Chong Chup-Bowl don’t stop.  No it never stops, riding off the flavour of the previous post, here’s a few snapshots of how the Choo Choo Ching Chong Chup-Bowl train just keeps on comin’ thru:

(Note: I can say Ching Chong cos I’m Ching Chong.  If you have only the Ching or the Chong or neither, say it only if you like cigarette face burns & 3 fingers left on each hand in the morning.  Ahhh the beauty of controversial racially inappropriate double standards – I’m onto it)

My dad baked a cake by mixing banana & tasty cheddar cheese together.  He argued it was ‘cheesecake’ even though he used cheese meant for pizza.  I was forced to eat it and then I gagged – not in a nightclub laneway ‘well I should keep on going cos the guy at the bar bought me a drink’ kind of way.  But more in a ‘this is what a banana with a bacterial yeast infection tastes like’ kind of way. He might be trying to get this on the menu at Lucky Duck Chinese Restaurant.  Keep on walking.

My dad plays ping pong every Sunday.  He wears these shoes to Ping the Pong.  I think my dad’s in a gang.  And bright orange is their Wu Wong Tang gang bang colour.  I need to look for chopsticks with p.i.m.p inscribed on the side with fake diamonds and hoes hiding in the rice storage bin to be sure.  Meanwhile everyone beware.  If you see and smell a Honda that’s using toilet freshener as car fragrance slowing rolling up beside you on the road – don’t try & be a hero when that ping pong bat points at you through the back window.

     

Dad bought this turbo massage chair.  It’s compliance with health and safety standards is as questionable as the place of birth stated on his Australian passport.  Sit in this chair for 20 minutes with the vibration settings on high and you’ll be circumcised – yes that includes you too ladies.  It’s here to stay so I’ve decided I must de-sensitise myself to its power.  To do this I will lay on it nightly … naked … face down …with a glass of wine … until it’s safe … hey don’t hate the player people, hate the manufacturer…

 

Dad installed this satellite on the roof.  Communist Terrorist – Maybe.  Gangster – Definitely.  Check out the puffer vests below – rocked only by those feared in the hoods cos mum & dad are nothing but pure bad ass Chup-Bowl:  

Not Recommended – Asking for Chup-bowl

In our house, it’s not ‘Trouble’, it’s ‘Chup-bowl’ – I see you struggling to pronounce it.  Ok, drop down to a squat, slip on some kung fu cloth shoes, aim a video camera at the TV, shoot whatever movie’s on (make sure your cousin’s forehead’s visible in the shot as he ducks down past).  Now bark at any 7 year old child nearby to start dubbing & transcribing those subtitles (their small hands can work quicker than yours).  Allow the method acting to transform your speech.  Eventually ‘Trouble’ will become ‘Chub-ble’.  And then slowly feel it chinky-ly transform into the desired ‘Chup-bowl’.  This means the final stage of ethnic speech correction is complete.   

So what’s Not Recommended for this edition?  Home ‘Improvements’ like this:

This is the set up you’ll see in the toilet of my parent’s house.  No it’s not a shelf for guests to rest their chopsticks while eating noodles in a cup on the can.  It’s part of an elaborate hooked up contraption invented by the King of the Temple and Father of the Empress himself in his quest to be the master of water conservation.  From what I can see, but have avoided finding out for sure (the less you know, the less of a reliable legal witness you’re considered), the electrical wire leads to a plug that operates some kind of motor that channels some murky liquid from a huge plastic garbage bin/bucket container in the back garden to a pipe.  The murky liquid is pumped out of the container and travels through the pipe to flush the toilet whenever the button is pressed.  The murky liquid is actually excess water collected from the washing machine every time a load of washing is done. Try this same set up at your own home & you’ll be asking for Chup-bowl.  Get my dad to install it for you (with a hand written ‘Certificate of Safety’ spelt ‘Certifike of Siftte’ provided) and that Chup-bowl is Dup-bowl.

Look closely at the photo: Note the ultra-fine craftsmanship of the barely there wooden plank mounted on the wall.  Appreciate the seamless entry of the electrical wire’s insertion through the plaster.  Every time I flush the toilet I nervously hear the loud constipated choke of the rumbling motor outside (no doubt one of our neighbours has a motorised something that’s now mysteriously missing a motor).  Every time mum does the washing I’m worried I’ll see her thermals again as scrunched up missiles shooting out the toilet hole into my face when I go to flush.  So people of Australia and possibly some living in the other hemisphere, know this:  If you see a saturated little girl with long black hair covered in foaming detergent clutching toilet paper while speedily rocketing through the sky with underwear at her ankles letting off sparks and smoke, it means my dad’s blown the shitter through the roof – it’s not an inventive firecracker experiment we’re trying for Chinese New Year.

The Greatest Show on Earth – The 1st Episode

‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ is often used to describe and sell some kind of flashy grand Big Top circus show.  I often use the concept of a circus in attempts to explain and provide insights into the inner workings of my family.  And indeed this comparison is extremely harsh and unfair – to the circus.  Because even the circus as a commercial enterprise has some manner of standards; restrictions on its performances regarding the extent to which the audience should be shocked and baffled.  In fact this is the case with any kind of performance – whether it’s in the movies, on television or up on stage in the theatre.   Even fucked up feral material like people shitting on each other or people trying to hump animals, vegetables, dwarfs etc has classifications to enable degrees of choice and control with what you see & hear. 

There’s no communal cross-shitting or pet pumping going on in my family (that can be proved) but I wish that sometimes I could just be pre-warned about their relentless show-time antics – so I can at least prepare to cover my ears, close my eyes, change the channel, boycott the theatre or just fucking get the entire show banned (and the ‘cast’ deported) altogether.  The family’s a recurring theme in my blog – because the family’s an unavoidable theme in my life.  And I’m arguing that it’s also one in yours whether you currently choose to have anything to do with them or not.  I’m an adult now but there remain things both said and done by them that still continue to unsettle the fuck out of me, behaviours and choices that won’t cease to confuse and unhinge me making me go ape shit crazy whether they’re near or far:

Episode 1: There’s been a long running feud between my mum and her younger sister in China.  It started a few years ago after my mum’s last visit to see members of her WuTang clan back in the motherland.  One moment they’re all close like some fucking ching chong version of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen and then they abruptly morphed into each other’s public enemy number one.  What trouble brewed in the province?  Who the fuck knows? I don’t want to know (just like I don’t want to know why cash is so strictly enforced as the primary method of payment in the Chinese community).  All I know is that it went from them addressing each other on the phone traditionally according to Chinese custom, ‘Greetings elder sister/ Greetings younger sister, how is you?’ to behind the scenes references by my aunt of my mum as ‘that cock sucking fat slum hag in Australia’ (a loose translation has been applied here, but the overall sentiment is the same).  But then my aunt arrives in Australia recently for a visit and they chat, giggle and cook their way through the month of September.  They were making happy good time wok stir fry music together without addressing to anyone, and I suspect even to each other, the insignificant side matter of their 3 year term of resentment and estrangement. 

They don’t trust each other and it’s likely they thought nothing of talking shit about each other behind closed doors … even while living under the same roof.  But as the bystander watching their reunion and the farcical insincerity of it all, the ‘scene’ made me feel sick because it all seemed way too familiar – because it hit me then that this same show has been played out before way too many other times from the core to amongst the most far reaching branches of my extended family.  It’s a show that’s been staged continuously amongst various family members throughout the past like some mass money making Broadway hit.  And it’s most likely being played out right now somewhere in the present as I write and later on, as you read.  There’s too many multi layered secrets, criss-crossing claimed loyalties, and corrupt versions of re-written history and face-saving cover-ups to ever really know the details of the what, why and how of who’s playing and hustling on who.  I don’t get the plot but I do know this: there’s a large cast with a variety of different actors and many of them were born with the same surname.   It’s the way it goes – it’s the Greatest Fucking Show on Earth, everyone acting their fucking flat arses off.

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‘What the fuck was that?’  Indeed.  Stay tuned, the above is just a scratch on one patch of the mind’s surface.  Like with all 1st episodes of any show, not everything is clear and not all questions are answered.

What Is You Means?

Yeah you read right – What is you means?  That’s what my dad says when he doesn’t get what the fuck someone is asking or saying to him (this is most of the time).  The man has been in Australia for 30 years and he rocks to his own version of English.  But I’ve stolen this line from him in reply to all the times someone comes along and just says some really smacked up incomprehensible shit. A sample:

‘Hey, you can speak English really well!’ – Why wouldn’t I you stupid fucks, I’ve lived in an English speaking country all my life.  Even if I lived in the Chinese ghettos, we’d still need to know how to speak English to deal with the ‘outside’… how else would we be able to sell our pirated dvds. 

‘Hey, I couldn’t tell you were Asian from speaking to you on the phone’– Why not?  Couldn’t you hear my dad singing karaoke and my mum paying the pan pipes in the background? 

‘Do you speak Asian at home?’ – I didn’t even know that one generic language existed amongst over 23 countries.    

‘I was walking down Russell St and I wasn’t used to seeing so many Asians’ – Does this mean they had an allergic reaction to seeing all that shiny black hair?   And my all time favourite….     

‘Hey, you’re kind of nice looking…for an Asian’ – What the damn fuck is you means??      

As a reader of my blog feel free to use this line whenever you encounter a talker of shit, and really try to fuck with them by saying it in a Bruce Lee sort of accent and do some kind of kung fu chopping thing with your hands.  If you recognise me on the streets of Melbourne I’ll do you a demo.