Mum's the word.

"Is minic a bhris béal duine a shrón"
It's often a person's mouth breaks his nose.
(Irish proverb)

The malay equivalent of that would be,
"Kerana pulut santan binasa, kerana mulut badan binasa".

Now, the best thing about studying overseas is that i can speak a language others don't understand (yes, malay!). It's very convenient having this secret language; so convenient in fact, that i've unconsciously developed this tendency to gossip with my friends about people sitting right next to us (without even batting an eyelid!). I think this is a very useful skill for girls (*wink wink*)

Unfortunately, I've greatly underrated the universality of the Malay language. Some people (besides us Malaysians) can actually understand Malay; even if their speaking abilities are less than perfect. And just because of that, i've had to endure some very embarrassing moments of stupidity (2 such incidents in the last 2 weeks alone).

I'll tell you what happened in one of those just-kill-me-right-now moments. The other one is way too embarrassing for me to even recall. Note that i may change the story a bit for added effect, but this is basically the gist of it:

=On a fine day of grocery shopping=

Te'ah: Tengok, ada jejaka kacak!
Izzy: Mana? Hmm.. kacak. Kacak.
[when i say we use malay, i wasn't joking! - Kacak instead of "handsome"]
Te'ah: Kalau la aku dapat suami kacak macam tu, seronok gile.
[hahaha, okay she prolly didn't say that. It was more likely me, but hey... who's keeping tab anyway?]

So as you could probably imagine, the whole conversation revolved around the 'kacak'ness of said man and silly (dirty??) jokes i'd rather not dwell on. =P Our secret girlish chitchat went on as we were paying for our groceries. Then suddenly, the cashier (from the looks of it, a Bangladeshi) one row down stood up from his post, came to us and said: "Dia kawan saya!", grinned his cheeky little grin and went back to work.

Gulp.......
.............
.......
..

Shocked to complete silence is a very mild way to put it. Truth was, my heart had dropped to the floor from the shame. If i could bury my face in the ground like an ostrich, i probably would have. But i couldn't so i did the next best thing - smiled and acted as if nothing earth-shattering had happened. (Girls, another useful skill u might want to master). Later, in the safety of my room (and away from random Malay-speaking Bangladeshi), i slapped myself silly for being so utterly idiotic. And even tho she never mentioned it, I know Te'ah had the same late-stage response too - it's a girls' thing! Plus, i'm positive i saw slap marks on her cheeks.. hehe.

Oh, if only i can learn to keep my mouth shut~

p/s: Anie, i'm confident by this point in time u've become quite sick of me (hahaha, too bad!), but i'm still v glad we're going to be in the same attachment group next semester =)