Being "Aunty"

Just something trivial for today.

You know how when you're growing up, you watch your mother doing certain things and think to yourself, "Oh man, that's so 'Aunty'." On a note of clarification, "Aunty" is a commonly-used term in Singapore. We call the lady who sells us a bowl of noodles "Aunty". Anybody who falls under the category of "Parents' friends" are automatically called "Uncle" or "Aunty". Even the taxi-driver is "Uncle". One earns this title based solely on seniority as the first name is hardly ever used in a social setting with older people.

The flip side of the coin also means that if someone calls you "Aunty", you know that you're getting old! Or you have friends who are very young parents. Needless to say, I grew up thinking that "Aunty" is a normal English word, recognized anywhere in the world. The same goes for the word "Handphone". Yes, that famous word. Germans call them "Handy". When I first sent my resume and wrote "Handphone" number, my ex-boss almost didn't want to give me an interview for she was appalled at my level of Singaporean English.

To say that I felt discriminated would be an understatement. I tried to explain that even English teachers in Singapore use the word "Handphone" and the A-and O-levels in Singapore are certified by Cambridge University, which means that our English can't be that bad. However, Singapore is too small a country to be able to "internationalize" a word like "Handphone". Somehow you can have different American and British pronunciation, spelling and even vocabulary but variations from other countries are invalid. My ex-boss even thought that I was getting my English confused with the German word "Handy".

(BTW, "Aunty" turned out to be an official word. It is simply the informal version of the word "Aunt". And the word "Handphone" does exist on Wikipedia)

Anyway, the point of my post is that I think I'm becoming "Aunty!" I went to the supermarket the other day and bought some household items for our new place. Having spent close to a hundred bucks, the cashier asked if I wanted to "collect stickers". Without hesitation, I agreed and felt my heart leap when I saw that I had already "earned" 20 out of the 30 stickers required to get a discount in any of the items in the book.

On a side note though, I'm not one to buy something just for the sake of getting a bargain, but I happened to see a hand-mixer that I needed in the booklet.

It was at this point that I had to pause and think, "Am I really becoming 'Auntie' now? Oh no, does that mean that I'm ageing?"

I suppose everybody's ageing. One starts to age the second one is born - pessimisstically-speaking. But if your life were a film, this would be one of the parts when you rewind the film and think about what you just thought about.

I guess the apple didn't fall far from the tree. I am similar to my Mom. She used to collect her receipts from NTUC (a supermarket in Singapore), staple them with Kit-Kat wrappers and enter them into Kit-Kat competitions. Dad was a Kit-Kat fan and we would end up eating Kit-Kats by the boxes and win new ones! I think we won 1 additional box for every 10 boxes we ate.

So yeah, I'm "proudly" collecting my points and having all sorts of cards that I use at different stores. I guess I could be an "Aunty", preferably a cool one. Besides, what's wrong with using a little bargain? :)