That's What I Said

One of the things you have to accept when you move to another country is that you will at times – hopefully not too frequently – be labelled a DF. That’s Dumb Foreigner, not Dumb Fuck in case you were wondering. There is a difference – anyone can be a Dumb Fuck but to be a Dumb Foreigner you actually need to have arrived from somewhere else. Hey, we paid money to look this stupid.
Because I’ve moved twice – first to the Netherlands and now to Singapore – I have had plenty of opportunities to be laughed at, made fun of and generally treated like the sad little DF that I admit I occasionally am. Fortunately in Singapore most people speak a form of English known as Singlish which, while at times baffling to DFs like myself, is at least better than landing in the backwoods of Holland where gobbledygook is the predominant dialect and the chances of picking up the language without professional help are practically zero.
A case in point: For a while there was a tv ad running in Holland for McDonalds where a chubby American tourist walks in and orders the local speciality, the McCroquet. Now a croquet (croquette in English) is of course a long sausage shaped deep fried creation, a crumbed capsule containing the pulverised remains of various animal parts they couldn’t think of anything else to do with. It’s pronounced ‘crow-ket’ and cloggies love ‘em. Anyway the DF American walks in and says loudly ‘I’ll have a Mc-crocket!” The serving gimp says “you mean a Mc-crow-ket?” To which the American honks “that’s what I said, a Mc-crocket!”
From that moment on my friends and I all celebrated our personal McCroquet moments by crowing “That’s what I said!” It became the catchcall for all DFs struggling with the Dutch language and their bizarre pronunciation.
One time I was in a local bakery on a busy Saturday morning. I spotted the weekly special, a baked roll with sauerkraut (zuurkool) and a sausage inside. I'm always game to try anything new and bizarre so I asked for one in perfect DF Dutch. The conversation – in Dutch – proceeded as follows.

Me: "One zuurkool bun please"
Sales girl: “A what?”
Me: “A zuurkool bun”
“A what??”
“A zuurkool bun”
“A WHAT??”
By now all the customers in the shop are staring at me, it was so quiet you could hear my breathing, and I was flushed red from the tips of my ears right down to my toes. As sweat started to break out I pointed desperately at the row of buns and sqauwked “A zuurkool bun!”
“Oh, a zuurkool bun” she sneered, relishing in the chance to watch me squirm. And all this time the buns were right in front of us on the counter. Bitch.
I paid and scurried out as fast as I could. Now at first glance you may think this a harmless incident, just another hapless DF embarrassing themselves in public, but consider this. I told all my friends about it, and hopefully they told their friends…and in a small village how many DFs do you think now shop at that bakery? That’s what’s known as ‘viral marketing’ in action.
The moral is be nice to all of us struggling Dumb Foreigners, we’re human too even if our accents are a little kookie sometimes.