讲华语, Cool?

This incident happened to a colleague - WK, re-told to me by another colleague TKL.

WK loves to snack in office, as a result, munchies and junk foods are always within an arm's reach from a swivel of his chair.

Today, he asked TKL to accompany him to buy some Mamee snack - that msg-loaded no-water-needed-tear-n-eat instant noodle snack - at Telok Blangah (I don't know where exactly but that's not important).

WK wanted to buy a 20 mini packs in 2 jumbo bags (10 per bag). The conversation with the store towkay went something like this:

WK: 我要大包的Mamee.
Owner: 里面是十包, 你要几包?
WK: OK, 我要两包.
Owner: 这样啊?我要去楼上拿.

WK was puzzled as to why the towkay has to go 'upstairs' for a mere 20 packs of Mamee. The answer was revealed when the towkay came down - with 2 bags - yeah, and 80 packs of Mamee!

Yup, the owner said 里面四十包.

WK heard 里面是十包.

Ironically, had the conversation been in Cantonese or Hokkien, even word for word as above, there would be no misunderstanding and WK wouldn't have to walk away with 4 times more Mamee than he intended (not that he was complaining either!)