The Asian etiquette

My favourite radio station here is running a programm for a week, where sixty lucky listeners can call in to win two tickets each for an all-expense-paid trip to Singapore. Of course I tried calling in but I wasn’t lucky enough to get through (yet). I’ve been to Singapore before but there’s no harm to not go again when everything’s paid and organised for you right ?

So there is of course some daily snippets about Singapore, about the local cultures and also about the cuisines, which everything is of course very familiar to me. There is one part where a local Singaporean was interviewed and she introduced us the phrase ‘Makan already?’ (literally translated to Eaten already?), the local slang equivalent to saying ‘How are you?’ when greeting people.

I personally don’t greet my Malaysian friends this way except when greeting some elderly like my aunts , parents or my grandparents. Then today, out of the blue, my colleague said:

Hast du schon gegessen?

I was looking at him, wondering why is he asking about that? As if sensing my confusion, he quickly explained that he’s heard about the Asian way of greeting people from the radio. Then I suddenly grasped it. It sounds funny to the ear, hearing those words in another language .