It's my face you see...

I don't know. I guess if there is anything about my face, I'll complain about two things.

One. I look younger than I really am. The good news I can be 50 plus and still look like a 30 plus plus guy. Problem? My future wife may kill me and may not want to go out with me anymore. Problem number two? I have to keep on showing people my ID every single time. Even now as I apporach people, they couldn't believe that a young man that is fresh out of college/uni could possibly have that kind of experience to pull anything off.

I once had a colleague, he told me that he's been in the industry for X number of years and when he was my age, he was doing... yaddah, yaddah....yaddah. I told him that I was only one year younger than he is. He was stunned. So I went and explain to him, "It's my face you see..."

In Canada I had (lots of occassions) been asked to show my passport/ID to verify my age. Sigh. I went to Singapore, they too asked me for my age. Slightly embarrassing but I can still live with that. I have to since I can't blame them and just politely tell them, "It's my face you see..."

I was standing in a crowd of 25 while doing presentation. I had enough experience and knowledge to carry out the presentation with minimal effort BUT I heard people murmurring around me. "How is it possible that a young presenter could know so much? Look at him..." I almost want to say, "It's my face you see..."

So what's the most annoying thing about my face? I still look like a young man. That's fine with me BUT what's the most annoying thing is the fact that people, once they take a look at my face, they would automatically speak English with me. It's fine if I attend some function when I know that the language medium is English but at a hawker center I don't. I would expect the local medium to use (Cantonese/Bahasa mostly). Numerous occassions when I went to the hawker center to purchase a bowl of noodles from this old Chinese guy and he struggled to find English words to converse with me. I admire his effort but the way that he butchers it, tells me that he's not comfortable talking with me in English. When I spoke to him in Cantonese, he looked surprised and then handed me my order. He's not the only one. I can speak Cantonese well enough (not well for debate but decent enough conversation). Sheesh! It's my face you see...

I also have this face, that tells people that I am "innocent". The word is "ignorent". This I am known as but yes to a certain degree and comparing with others my age, I am "innocent" and "ignorent". For the label, I am fine. It's my face you see...

To comment or not to comment?

Okay, here's the situation:

There's this girl who dresses nicely and she looks good. She and this stranger are working in the same office building but in different company. The stanger is a male that she may bump into a few times before (since they both work in the same building) and the stranger noticed one thing. She always dresses well and thus looking good. The stranger was tempted to tell a compliement by complimenting on her nice dress and just look good. Problem here, in Malaysia, is that the culture doesn't seem to promote these kind of compliements.

I asked five different ladies and they all seem to give me very different answers. I got a reaction from this particular lady that she'll give a slap to the stranger, another would be totally fine, some would say how the stranger looks (if the stranger is good looking, no issues; if stranger is bad looking, well..otherwise).

It's just a simple "I just want to tell you that you look good and I think your dressing skills are really good" can be detrimental to a guy's health.

A girl dresses nicely for people to see yet we (strangers) can't give a simple compliment? Girls only wants her friends to compliement on how she looks...but why can't a stranger give a complimentary remark? A girl buys a good-looking dress, makes herself up and thus looks good. She goes into public area, noticed by many but only allows a small percentage of viewers to compliment her. Hmmm..... a simple remark could only be done if a complex ritual has been made, i.e. friendship (in my opinion, friendship is hard and complex). Sigh.

So in conclusion, guys don't bother to compliment. It's safer and healthier not to comment. If you comment once as good, they would expect you to give the same comment next time too.