Fei Poh

… means “fat chick” in Cantonese.

That was my nickname during my last year in university. You cannot blame me lar. I was in England and it was always cold so we eat crap to keep warm. My typical breakfast is a big greasy fry-up (fried bread, fried mushrooms, fried hash, fried everything) to soak up last night hangover. Lunch at the crappy law faculty cafeteria usually consists of a turkey cranberry sandwich, a bar of snickers and a can of coke. Dinner is always lamb vindaloo, naan bread and a pint of lager. All that coupled with the stress from studying (and…erm.. partying) how to not become a fei poh??

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was that one time when I went over to Toi’s house (still in England; we went to the same Uni) to wake him up for dim sum. It was a cold blistery winter day and I had triple layer of clothing on – top off with a trench coat that a friend has loaned me.

I was banging at Toi’s door for ages and when he finally open the door, he took one look at me, jumped back in disgust and screamed, “OMG! WHY IS THERE A FEI POH AT MY DOOR??!!!!!!”

Apparently, he saw a vision of a pig. The buttons from my loaned trench coat were popping (I was wearing three layers mah!) and my face was red and bloated (it was the cold!) and I was all stumpy, flab and fatness. *Sob*

(Does it help that the friend who loaned me the trench coat is one size smaller than me?? That just makes me cheap right?)

I was deeply scarred by that incident. I ate damn a lot of dim sum that morning because I was so upset. Worse still, Toi still remembers the incident and never fail to tell all my new friends about how fat I was before. He just retold the story last night when we were having dinner and sharing fei pohs stories.

Until yesterday, my personal favourite fei poh story is the one about how Dailytoe threw up after she saw a fei poh climbing at our gym. I think I blogged about it before – about how we were taking a climbing course together and the two of us got drunk the night before. But Toi won hands down with his fei poh story which happened in Ipoh. It goes something like this:

So, Toi’s mother was driving him around in Ipoh when suddenly the car in front of them came to a sudden stop. Mrs Toi had to jam brake to avoid hitting the car and she was furious. She started cursing under her breathe, “Wahhh!!! Look at that fei poh in front. Dunno how to drive wan issit??!!”

We all curse in our cars. It’s expected, it’s acceptable, it’s the norm. Sometimes I sing in my car very loudly only because I know no one else can hear me.

But the shocking part was, the driver of the car in front of them actually stop her car completely and got out. It was indeed a fei poh and in her angry full form, she came stomping towards Toi’s car with clenched fists waving in the air.

She rapped on Mrs. Toi’s car windows and shouted, “WHO YOU CALLING FEI POH, YOU SKINNY SCRAWNY BITCH!! HOW DARE YOU CALL ME FEI POH!”

Frou: Wahlao ehh!!!!! How the heck did she hear what your mother said from her car!!??

Toi: I think she can read lips lar! She was probably looking at the rear mirror and saw what my mother mouthed.

Frou: Unless your mother really mouthed “fei poh” very obviously.. otherwise, how to tell!!?

Toi: Aiyah that woman sure kena called fei poh so many times in her life that she is hyper sensitive. Even when they call her fei poh from far, far away in another car, she can still hear!

So the moral of the story is, next time you want to call someone fei poh, please be discreet. Cough it, cover your mouth or think it in your brains. Feelings gets hurt, you know!