[woofa.express]

Gary offends Guest Workers.
I was spreading fertilizer off a strip at Senai in southern peninsula Malaysia, it’s just north of Singapore. This was in about the mid ’90s.
Usually the fertilizer was trucked in bulk but on occasions in bags, sometimes small 50 kg (1 cwt) bags. At such times a team of “guest workers” arrived to decant it.
This story isof one such occasion. The guest workers were Indonesians.
I should have started this story with a quick introduction of the Malaysian language. One would give a greeting, just like we do, in the morning, afternoon and evening.The greeting would be prefixed by the word “selamat” meaning greeting of course.In the morning it was selamat pagi.
So, me being polite gave each of these Indo’s a greeting selamat pagi.
My offsider,also a guest worker, a Tamal from Sri Lanka named Ragoo comes to me and says
Mr Gary, viyyu tork like tviss? You make them vverry aangri.
What did Isay?
Cannot say MrGary, they vverry aangri.
So I return to the labourers and yes they were sullen. Very sullen. But one old Chinese bloke who was driving a backhoe was besides himself. In stitches.
It took me awhile to get to the bottom of this. My Malaysian language skills weren’t so very good.
I was not saying selamat pagi but I was saying selamat pookie. It turns out pookie means vagina. But it gets worse. It really means a vulgar name for vagina starting with a “C”.
I was walking around saying greetings C to all of them. Yeh, that made them vverri aanggari.