Bleep, Bleep, Bleeeeep!

Dear readers;

I have been asked to contribute articles for Malaysian Today and feel naturally flattered. My first article came out today (Malaysian Today June 12 - 18, 2008 No 253) under the Writer's Blog segment.

Since it is out, I can share with you lot, the first article. Grab a copy if you can. I would feel so honored... =)

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I have a disgustingly, profane mouth. It is not something my parents are too happy about…screw that… I’M not happy with my potty mouth! I blame my foul mouth nature due to the few years living in East London where cockney was favored to Queen’s English. “ What crap are you talking about girl? Your sister lived in the same vicinity and she doesn’t swear!” (Okay, my mother didn’t say ‘crap’.) But hell yea’, I’ve been a swearer for most of my adult life and it’s terrible, I know. The only ‘good’ it has brought to me was scaring off (or rather, swearing off) unwanted attention from dingbats, who think that the myth of ‘Convent girls’ being an easy lay is true. Stupid F-s!

Being the wife of a very conservative Chinese man with an equally conservative family as my in-laws has somewhat, toned down my profanity (although I did pick up some really easy-to- learn Chinese swear words that rolled oh-so-nicely vocally). And now that I am a mother to a 6-month-old daughter, I realize that my mother’s constant nagging about my “lack of articulate banter”, would prove to be “distasteful and not conducive to Isobel’s upbringing”. But Shiite, old habits are hard to break. But I am trying. I replace my (infamous) favorite swear words with these: kundek, chee-bey, fish finger and mukimark. It seems to be working, although I still do get the smack on the lap by my co-hosts while doing The Breakfast Show live on national TV if I accidentally ‘replace’ a letter of my ‘replaced’ swear word, to its original form. I’m a ‘bad trendsetter’ says my producer, as we watch our young interns giggling at my linguistic mishaps and heaven forbid, following my appalling behavior.

So I told Intan, “hey, I am not to be blamed completely…ma-chi-bung!” Because it appears that swearing has become the new punctuation. Just check out James Blunt’s original CD version lyrics to “You’re Beautiful”. Flying he says? My beautiful posterior he was flying high! That’s just the edited version. And have you heard ANY of the cartoon South Park’s songs?

So before this article puts my family and my name to shame, let us pause a moment for a restorative sip of Thursday latte and some important clarification because not ALL types of swearing are equal. For example, I do NOT swear at people. Ever*. That’s simply abusive and revolting. But I do swear about things, most notably, when I’m frustrated or have injured myself.

Unfortunately, this means I swear a lot – especially with the UEFA Euro 2008 fever, where I am sleepy and clumsily walking into things – Its an (unhealthy) vicious cycle of me watching my game of football at wee hours of the morning, and then heading straight to the studio – with less than 2 hours of sleep in between. Bloody hell. Spatters of F-words and/or P-words are uttered. When one is in pain after knocking into a stationary pole one to many times, ‘releasing the pain’ by saying “replaced swear words” of fish finger and mukimark just doesn’t do much justice to the physical pain (and ego).

And look, all right, to be honest, I don’t just swear during moments of pain and frustration. I also sprinkle the odd expletive through my everyday conversations. As a descriptive adjective. And, you know, for emphasis.

For example, “ Geez…you looks F-ing awesomela! What’s your secret B-?”

And again, it’s a (distressing) trend. Whoever had a chance of watching any of Gordon Ramsay’s shows (Hell’s Kitchen & Kitchen Nightmare) would find this frightfully true. I read somewhere that the Catholic Church was claiming Ramsay used the F-word more than 80 times during one episode and was demanding that the show be pulled off air. “80 times!??” Fish fingers! How absurd, cries my hypocrite self!

I heard one TV reviewer talking about Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and when asked about the swearing, she replied, “You know, it’s really just like seasoning. You barely notice it after a few minutes before it is just part of the natural cadence of his speech.”

So, one day, I watched his show and I was strangely captivated. I learnt about food and restaurants and I saw what goes on in a commercial kitchen. I loved how he made-over restaurants and cleverly straightened up hopeless chefs and owners into shape. Minutes passed and I no longer heard the swearing. I was sold to the show, sold on Ramsay.

The conclusion to this is to justify my bloody, foul mouth being. Please do not blame my parents. They tried. Trust me. (My father was an ex cop – go figure!) Some say to-may-toe, some say to-mar-toe. I say pungguk kuali itu hitam. Figure of speech. MY figure of speech.

But, fine. With my mother’s constant nagging and those big, 6 months-old brown, eyes staring at me innocently, I shall make a supreme effort to censor myself. In front of her at least. Stink of a Skunk. Sigh…

* Except when I am driving and someone in another car does something idiotic but they can’t hear me, so this doesn’t count.