15 signs you're a real Singaporean

Instead of barging into the nearest café for a latte or cappuccino, you join in the queue at the next kopitiam to get your cup of traditional perk-me-up. The local way of drinking coffee or tea is having them ground and brewed with a sock-like strainer in a tall pot and added with either condensed milk, evaporated milk and/or sugar, depending on how you like it. And if you're up for the whole breakfast set, you'll find yourself ordering your kopi or teh with kaya toast and soft-boiled eggs because that's obviously better than French toast or pancakes.

Speaking of kopi, you know the sock brewed kopi is where it's at. Whether you prefer a kopi c siu dai or kopi ga dai, the best of ordering kopi is being able to customise your order to the exact level of sweetness/bitterness you like.

When taking the escalator, you tend to stand on the left, making way for people to climb up the steps on the right side. You then grumble and tut when you get stuck behind a tourist who stands on the right side. But once you travel overseas and you'll find that people stand on the right instead.

If grumbling and tutting aren't enough, you complain about everything, from having to wait in line and being in a packed train or bus to price and GST hikes and temporary shut down of services. Sometimes it's just word vomit, but when desperate times call for desperate measures, you take it up to the MP.

Besides occasionally complaining about how bland your food tastes, you also add chilli to everything. We're talking chilli sauce and sambal to chopped bird's eye chillies and chilli flakes. You look down on people who meekly utter xiao la at the mala stall. Your packing list for travels to Europe or America also includes hot sauce (guilty!). The takeaway is: if your tongue doesn't tingle, it's not spicy enough.

If you caught yourself slipping a couple of 'lah's' alongside your RP English at a meeting or a formal presentation, you're not the only one. Singlish is somewhat like a second language, so be yourself – a true Singaporean – and say your 'lah', 'loh' and 'leh' with pride.

Singapore is home to plenty of great restaurants but hawker centres will always have our hearts, there's no doubt about that. And the best stalls have the longest queues. When in doubt, just join the longest queue – you can't go wrong. Extra points if you actively track your favourite hawker stalls even after they’ve moved (i.e. you know that Sungei Road Laksa and Famous Sungei Road Trishaw Laksa are two different stalls, the former in Jalan Berseh and the latter in Hong Lim Food Centre). 

We all know there are only two kinds of weather in Singapore: hot and hotter. We combat that by wearing 'loose' clothes and complaining incessantly (both IRL and online) about how hot the weather is even though we've been living like this for the entirety of our lives. When we're in the mall, the cinema or the office where the air-conditioning is set to rival Antarctica – it's a different story, especially if you throw occasional torrential rain and thunderstorms into the mix. Out come the sweaters and all your once-a-year winter holiday jackets. 

Following the previous point, getting from A to B in this humid weather is hard and sweaty work. Grab, while increasingly expensive, is often your first mode of transport and you're pretty sure all the money you spend on Grab in a month can pay for a trip to Bangkok. On idle rides, you consider if owning a car might be worth it – but catch yourself when you realise you might have to sell a kidney to pay for one. The rest of us? We suck it up and take the MRT. 

Always order meat first to show the auntie you're a baller, before moving on to the smaller, less expensive items like vegetables and curry. Time Out even did an experiment to try to maximise our cai fan order – read how it went here. 

Even though there's nothing 'town-like' about that shopping belt chock-full of malls, it's just something we said since we were young. We think it might be something to do with painting the town red? But we might be wrong.

People giving away free tissue packets at the MRT entrance? Take. Gym trainers giving away free banana/apple/random fruit to promote their gym? Take. The only time you don't take freebies is when it comes with a "Can you help me do a survey? Two minutes only" clause.

You order chicken rice. Your friend (or the next table) also orders chicken rice. But somehow their food looks better or served in a larger portion than what's in front of you. Such is life.

"Karung guni, poh zhua gu sa kor, pai leh lio, dian si ki..."*

Bonus points if you've ever threatened to sell your misbehaving kids to the karang guni man, or ever been on the receiving end of the threat.

*A mixture of Hokkien and Singlish loosely translates to "rag and bone man, old newspaper and clothes, spoilt radio and TV..."

This man is here for us in the best of times and the worst of times. We see him during National Day parades and New Year's Eve countdown parties as well as in PSA commercials telling us to wash out hands during our darkest days. He's the hero Singapore deserves, and also the one we need.