Impression of a Malaysian Chinese in KL/PJ

When we say "This guy/gal comes from KL/PJ", I bet most of our friends out there (maybe including you, readers.) will immediately switch to this mindset that:

"This guy/gal sucks in Chinese (or Mandarin to be specific) and doesn't know how to write it. Let's talk to him/her in Cantonese/English/Hokkien, or write to them in English."

Of course, this is exceptional in cases where the KL/PJ guy/gal used to study in Chinese Independent High Schools.

Fact is, I am a PJ boy. And I DO know how to speak in Mandarin & write in Chinese (in fact those who know me well will know that my common language is Mandarin. Sadly, in SPM my Chinese got a sore B3. I expected it'd be higher). The unfortunate drawback, ironically, was that I am WEAK in Cantonese/Hokkien and even my mother dialect Hainanese.

I wasn't aware of the existance of this type of mindset, until some of my friends in MMU whom are not KL/PJ people (They are good in Chinese too) starts to guess where I came from. Despite how many times they tried, they didn't get the right answer, and they were really shocked when they heard about the answer. One of my friends even exclaimed that : "I thought the KL/PJ people are all English-educated and sucked in Mandarin and Chinese words." How queer.

Whee, this means I can disguise myself as someone NOT from KL/PJ area. But there was another even interesting encounter during my 3-month stay in Singapore. (Extra fact here - Singaporeans thinks that Malaysian's Mandarin sounds very weird and melodical. I still can't see how is it so. And they have a habit of calling Malaysians, Johorians in most cases, "Lian Bang Ren", which meant "Federalist". Funny.)

During one of my off-days I was having dinner at McDonald's, and happened to come across a couple playing Scrabble in the outlet (Singaporeans do their stuff there, from studying to anything). Then I struck up a conversation with them (in English, of course), and all the while they thought I was a Singaporean until they asked where I originated from. They were quite shocked to find out that I was a "Federalist", because they didn't expect a "Federalist" will be speaking English to them.

(My friend no-wing thinks that because the Singaporean's English is Singlish level, and Malaysian's English is Mallish level, and both levels are the same. But I didn't tell no-wing that the couple participates in Scrabble contests FREQUENTLY.)