English vs Singlish

Had lunch at Astons today with Karen and some colleagues. During lunch one of them said the party behind me are teachers too from hearing their conversation (It was quite loud). I said their most probably in the CL dept since their all speaking Mandarin. Bewildered, she replied that their not speaking Mandarin but English or the correct term rather would be, Singlish! Haha! A hybrid of English, Malay, Hokkien, Punjabi, etc and mostly spoken in Singapore.

I pressed harder to hear again and shit man, they really were speaking in English or rather, Singlish. It was so bad and they spoke so fast I didn't believe it could really be in ENGLISH.

I wonder if people can really grasp the skill of switching on and off their use of Singlish. When I travel overseas I find myself not using Singlish at all but it occasionally slips on rare occasions.