The misadventures of little old ladies

I'm not sure if I have mentioned it to everyone by now but I've recently taken up dressmaking classes at a little place near my house. Reasonably affordable and a good life-skill to have (and even more so in these "times are bad" times) so I figured it was worth the investment.

Anyway, the set-up is all very homey in the sense that it seems to be the place where little old ladies (or middle-aged aunties) spend their time socialising, oh and doing a little bit of knitting/patchwork in between. I'm trying to pick up some Hokkien by listening to these conversations so perhaps it is killing two birds with one stone (or in my case, a sewing machine!).

In the course of my last 3 lessons I have noticed that little old ladies and aunties have a propensity to be comedians. Seriously. Last week, there was an auntie who when I first started my lesson was unpicking a pair of pants she made because of a mistake. Halfway through the lesson she lets out a cry and we discover that after unpicking the seams, she sews the pieces together in the wrong order AGAIN and realises this when she is staring at the crotch area and wondering why it looked so wrong. The teacher is incredulous to the point that she decides that the auntie cannot afford to make another mistake because the cloth may potentially tear from all the sewing and unpicking so using a piece of tailor chalk, she marks "F" and "B" (for Front and BAck) on the respective pieces to clearly demarcate which is which!

Later on in the lesson, a little old lady (who is learning knitting) comes in to the main sewing area to make a call to her husband on her mobile phone. Mid-conversation her phone battery dies and she frets about how she is now unable to make arrangements for her husband to pick her up. One of the ladies in the shop suggests she take out the SIM card and put it in another phone so that she can check her husband's phone number (since she cannot remember it). They do so and she calls her husband from the shop but he doesn't answer so she calls her daughter to call her husband. After the merry-go-round, she finally gets to him and makes the arrangements. At the end of it all, she asks us where she can buy a new battery to replace the one she has in her phone! Another lady says, "Huh? Just charge it lah!", to which she goes, "Charge? I don't know how to charge my phone. I only know how to use it to dial." At this, it is discovered that she didn't even know how to tell that her battery was running low before it died on her.


Comedy. Pure comedy.