As you know I’m now currently in Melbourne. Got a busy afternoon ahead in the Nuffnang office here and then there’s the “Coffee with Nuffies” session later this afternoon where Ming and I are supposed to meet some Australian Nuffnangers here. Will take loads of pictures of my day and blog about it in the coming days.

Today though I’m going to tell you something really petty but annoying that happened to me on my flight here. So I had just boarded the plane bound for Melbourne, I put my bags in the overhead compartments and just settled down in my seat.Seated next to me was an aunty. I acknowledged her with a “Hi” and realized that she didn’t speak English too well. I think Cantonese or Mandarin would’ve been her first language. No worries about that though.

About 15 minutes later, the air stewardesses came around to pass out Australian Immigration Arrival cards. You know the kind of things you have to fill up every time you go to another country. You put in your name, address, passport number, where you’re staying in Australia, how long you’re staying etc etc.

Since I had just packed my passport up in the overhead compartment above me, I decided to keep the card in the seat pocket in front of me until I land. Then while waiting for people to exit the plane, I would fill in the card then. Saves time too.

7 hours or so later the plane finally landed and I reached into the seat pocket in front of me looking for my Arrival card but it was GONE!

After turning my whole seat around, the Aunty seated next to me finally said something along the lines of
“Oh…. I took your arrival card… sorry… I wrote my card wrong so I took yours. Didn’t know it was yours”.

I was fuming inside. A part of me couldn’t help but feel that she knew it was mine (I mean it was in MY seat pocket after all and she saw me put it there) but still blatantly took it from me because she messed up her own card.

But the other part of me refused to allow such any sort of a violent reaction. We’ve all been brought up in Asia to learn to respect the elders and not talk to them in any way like that. So I just looked at her and said “It’s okay Aunty”.

Now this is a really petty thing. I mean at the end of it maybe costs me an extra 5-10 minutes or something getting my card at the immigration counter and filling it up then. So it’s not so much the time but just the principle of it… of someone taking something from you… maybe because they value their time more than yours. If the Aunty had asked me for my card because she messed up mine, I would’ve gladly just given it to her.

It’s not the first time I’ve experienced rude aunties like that. How many times have you been at a lunch buffet only to see a bunch of aunties collectively try to cut your line. Worse still is that they don’t even look at your apologetically. They go in there thinking it’s their right and when you try to prevent it they give you a nasty look.

Now lets not generalize all aunties! Only a minority of aunties fall into this category. I’ve met many of them who are very nice and if they need help in anything they’ll ask in a very polite manner that makes you just want to go out of your way to help.

But to the rude aunties… please stop doing what you do.

Is it just me who experiences all these things with rude aunties? Anyone else have any experiences like that?