Reading between the lines, and an expletive moment shared...

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Reading
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That's right. What you see above is "reading between the lines". Then there's this sign at the entrance of a school in the Toh Tuck area:

What does it say? "Stop. Security check"? You sure? There's no punctuation mark anywhere on the signboard, so what I see is... what I see, ie "Stop security check"! There's no need for such checks, I guess... just drive through.

Punctuation marks are of course important; they dispel ambiguity. There's this anecdote about a manager named Dick. He had the usual IN and OUT trays. But the label on one tray read "Dicks Out Tray" and the other was "Dicks In Tray".

I also had to read between the lines of this sign at an MRT worksite:

What in the world does "I safe! You safe! We safe!" mean? It is not helped by the graphic of three hands grasping at each other, or maybe pulling each other down ("I'm gone, You're gone, We're gone"?).

Since it's a workplace safety sign, and the worksite being that of a Japanese contractor, I guess it's Japlish for "Safety at work... We all have a part to play" (I still can't figure out the hands, though).

More whimsically, I vaguely recall hearing the following refrain -- from the adults! -- when I was a child: "I say, you say, kah chng boh sway!" If you don't understand Hokkien, you'll have to get someone who does to help you there. It's scatological nonsense.

I also remember, from way back, that there was a putdown for someone who keeps uttering "Oar" (or "Oar, I see...") in a conversation. The putdowner would snap at him or her: "Oar? Han zher, lah!". Again, it's simply nonsensical wordplay. In Hokkien, the tuber yam has the "oar" sound while the sweet potato sounds like "han zher".

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An expletive moment shared

There I was, waiting at the slip road's red man/green man crossing near that aforesaid MRT worksite. Together with me was a group of South Asian workmen from the site. The green man came on, and we started to cross. But a car came screeching through, ignoring the red light for the driver. We were all forced to step back.

In a flash, one worker -- I am very sure he's not Chinese, they all weren't -- spontaneously yelled after the stupid driver: "Kan nee nah...!"

What could I say? But of course, "Kan nee nah...!" as I too yelled after the idiotic driver. Then my fellow traveller and I exchanged smiles. It was an expletive moment shared.

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Again, I will not try to explain the Hokkien swear words above. But someone has "kindly" compiled a list of local, er, sexual slang. If you are curious yellow and insist on trying out any of the profane utterances in the link below, and you then get whacked by someone bigger than you, that's your parsar (own fault):

http://knol.google.com/k/singapore-sexual-slang#