White People (or Ang Mo)

5 October 2020 | Nick, the air con guy came today to clean our air cons. It's a requirement of the owner that we get our air cons in the apartment cleaned every 3 months at $125 SGD for each cleaning. Nick, the air con guy is a really nice guy and so he and I typically chat for a while after he finishes. Today, I mentioned to him that there probably wasn't much to clean because we really don't run the air con during the day. We use fans and have acclimated to the weather. At that point, he says to me, "Wow, you're my only white clients who don't use air con during the day." I giggled inside and continued to chat him up about the value of fans and how we'd like to get ceiling fans in the living room. After he left, I couldn't resist immediately telling Nick about his comment. Of course, we find it interesting that we are his only white clients who do use air con but we also find it really funny that people out here have not compunction about referring to us as his “white clients.”

When we first moved into the apartment complex, we hosted a dinner on the roof of one of the buildings for work colleagues. Of course, we ordered too much food, so rather than throw it away, we asked the facilities guy (whom we had befriended) if we could give the leftovers to the workers in the guard house upon which he later told us that we were "the only white people to ever offer food to the workers and people in the guard house." Again, interesting that people (and white people in particular) don't offer leftovers more often to the workers which seemed so natural to us but even more interesting that he very nonchalantly referred to us as “white people.”

Another term heard more frequently and used more widely amongst all people in Singapore including white people (to refer to themselves) is Ang mo or ang moh (Hokkien POJ: âng-mô͘ / âng-mn̂g; Chinese characters: 紅毛). Ang mo is a racial descriptor used to refer to white people that is sometimes seen as a pejorative epithet. ... It literally means "red-haired" and originates from Hokkien, a variety of Southern Min. Frankly, because there are a lot of British in Singapore, you do see quite a few “red-haired” people so the term is quite fitting. Nick and I often refer to ourselves and the other Europeans at The Crest as ang mo.

So, there you have it. I’m not sure what’s politically correct or not but typically we just go with the flow.