Wallah??!!

Well, don't think what it means....it's not our Indian rikshaw-wallah or paper-wallah, or the famous kabulli-wallah...it's the Singlish language.
Oh my god, here in Singapore there is another breed of people happily killing english.
What the heading means is "what-la" spoken fast. (I'm sure you all know 'la' is the trademark Singapore-Malaysia umm, huh...I dunno what!)
The people here are very to-the-point; no round about ways please.
Ask "Till when is the shop open?" and they give you looks like you have come from some alien land speaking alien language.
But ask"When do you close?" and they beam, "Oh, you ask(ed) that-ah?"
God only knows why they can't even understand some simple stuff.
One of the very first tastes of Singlish I had was on my first day in the university. I let my relative wait outside and was enquiring about my hostel room in the hall office. Then as a precaution I asked the office attendant if it was OK to take my cousin to my room.
She stared at me.
I repeated, slowly and clearly.
She said, "I can't understann (read understand) ah...wailla...(wait la) " and called another lady. I groaned looking at the other lady she'd called. An old lady. I lost all hopes of getting myself understood.
Finally, I summoned all my patience and said word by word, " My friend, outside this room, waiting. Can take her to my room?"
Wow, this worked miracles. The two burst into peals of laughter (dammit, as though I was speaking wrong english all this while! ) and said "ya la, ya la, can!!!"
My woes began in full swing as my classes started. Most of the time I could not understand if my friends were talking in english or chinese(as most of them had a tendency to suddenly start chatting in chinese, ignoring me) and it took real careful listening with pointed ears(!) to follow what they were saying.
Well, now it's much better (my understanding, not their language, by jove, no way!!). I can even fit in a few singlish words like Kiasu and Jia you and converse. Guess this language is too much in their blood...they looked at me with surprise as one of the lecturers asked the class how a semicolon is represented (I stared with surprise when the teacher asked this; later I found why, as the whole class stared at her as though she had asked something she shouldn't..) and one or two even ventured to ask me, "How do you know so much-ah?"
The nicest thing is all Singaporeans are proud of Singlish, they think that this is the unifying language in a place where people speaking a multitude of languages exist, and are proud to display their Singlish skills...things are so good that professors don't advice using "yeah" but have no problems with "la".
Got bored ah la?
neve minn!!!!
I got bette stuff wif me la!