#3 Are you a SB? Certainly not.

Setting: wandering around the campus (under the threat of Covid-19) with my advisor, who was not satisfied with his dinner served. A skater passed by when we were talking about cats, because we call ourselves cat lovers, or more accurately, quasi-cat-lovers.

Our gaze was directed to that western-style skateboarder, then, my advisor asked me:

你会玩那个吗？

me (in a humble attitude):

不会，因为我不是SB。

I venture to say that every normal Chinese people (especially in this normal university) who can read some English letters know SB stands for shabi (an idiot) in Chinese. However, I do not intend to offend that skater. As you can tell, we are just strangers. I have no reason to discredit him. His presence just simply and immediately reminds me of a song, Sk8er Boi, by a famous Canadian singer Avril Lavigne. Right, “I am not a skater boy” is precisely what I want to express.

Therefore, you can infer that I have successfully exploited the ambiguity of the abbreviation “SB” to cause certain humorous effects.

Declaration of interest:

this blog post is NOT sponsored by