None so blind as those who do not see

I'm still going on about jokes today.

Actually, I wanted to write something serious, like analysing the emerging fluidity of the international politics of the Asia-Pacific, since I have written (when I'm serious) articles on this subject matter and have taught  this area of political science at NUS up to Honours level.

But I had wanted also to add a quick follow up to my missive yesterday, to say that when I outgrew the jokes in Movie News, those in Reader's Digest provided a new wellspring.

Then, Googling, I found this gem by RD's "humour editor", Andy Simmons, on How Not to Tell a Joke:

A classic joke goes as follows: "A nurse says to the doctor, 'Doctor, doctor, there's an invisible man in the waiting room.' The doctor replies, 'Tell him I can't see him now.'"

Pretty simple, right? Not according to my friend Mitch.

"Why couldn't the doctor see him?" he asked after I told him the gag at a party.
"Because the patient's invisible," I grumbled under my breath in a way that implied he should just laugh and move on.

"See, I didn't get that," he continued. "I thought the doctor couldn't see him because he was busy with another patient."

"Well, yeah, he was, but the fact that the guy was invisible..."

"When you say he was 'invisible,' does that mean his clothes were invisible too?"

Here's where I turned my back on him.

"Because if his clothes weren't invisible," Mitch said, stepping between me and the people whose conversation I was trying to join, "then the doctor could see him, right?"

"Yeah, I guess..."

"Unless he was naked."

"Okay, he was naked."

"Why would he go to his doctor naked?"

"Oh, never mind!"

I cite the above because it has happened to me! There I was, regaling my captive audience with a sure-to-laugh joke... and someone with a serious demeanour -- amid the contorted faces -- starts asking me questions like Mitch above, did. It makes one want to die laughing.

Okay, since I'm staying with jokes, this one is from my yesteryear memory (again, I can't remember when or where I first heard it).

Back in the days when public buses were operated by the likes of the Singapore Traction Company (STC), Green Bus, Tay Koh Yat, etc, one service plied the Holland Road area as part of its route.

An angmoh (Caucasian) got on board somewhere else and asked the bus conductor (yes, such a person existed in those days) to let him know ahead where a certain bus stop along Holland Road was, so he could alight. The conductor obliged.

But the bus got increasingly crowded along its route -- before it was anywhere near Holland Road -- and people were not moving in (yes, some things don't change). The exit was being blocked.

Exasperated, the conductor shouted in Hokkien, "Ho lang lok, ho lang lok".

The angmoh got off.

PS: If you are not Hokkien, get someone who is to explain what that dialect exclamation was all about.