So, about Vietnam ...

While I was triaging 7 weeks of snailmail on Thursday, I found a chunky package wrapped in white paper (rather than an envelope) with my name and address scribbled on it. I ripped it open as if it were a gift, and it practically was, because the package turned out to be the new 10th edition of the Lonely Planet guidebook to Vietnam.

Of which I wrote three destination chapters: North-Central Vietnam, Central Vietnam and Central Highlands. If you're interested in glorious landscapes, history, the American War in Vietnam, minority groups and cool weather, those are the chapters you'll wanna read first.

On Friday night:

Suzie: how chuffed are you!
[...]
ME: very chuffed
ME: i kinda pull it out in a pai sei way to show people
ME: but then they are chuffed, so i am more chuffed

The book doesn't hit stores till July, so if you were planning to pick up a guidebook to Vietnam in the next couple of weeks, hold your horses till you see this one. The new edition has a cover photo with conical hats (predictable, I know) and basket boats on a river. Or buy it here at LP.com.

Meanwhile, I'm toting my first copy around in a protective Ziploc bag, to show to all and sundry.

Heartsick

I have never been at once so happy, and so jealous. Tonight I got a Facebook-mail from an old friend, telling me she's secured a publishing deal in New York. It doesn't matter what book, it doesn't matter which publisher --- the only thing I could think of was that someone I know, someone who's had similar advantages I've had, is going to have her name on a book published and distributed by a real New York publisher.

While I ...

This news comes right after I've been wrestling with old ghosts, writing about the scholarship bond I left behind almost four years ago. It's been two, three weeks of sporadically picking at old scabs, as Pin put it, and revisiting the what-ifs. And now, this.

I'm so happy for my friend, really. She's worked hard and worked smart to get to where she is. But as I told ampulets tonight, I've always compared myself to this friend because we had similar advantages and trod a similar path up to a point. Then our paths diverged because I had a scholarship bond to come home to, and she didn't. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life; she not only knew what she wanted, she went right out and got it.

I'm not saying I could've done what she's done. But I have never felt the taunting of a path not taken as strongly as I do tonight.

Link dump

Because I have too many tabs open.

In no particular order:

• "Thomas Merton on Social Media?" --- a 20th-century Trappist monk wonders about "they who have nothing to express [yet] are continually expressing themselves".
• "It's Not About Networking, It's About Community" --- Mridu Khullar thinks "writers are the most generous people on the planet. Well, most of them anyway."
• Granta offers advice on "How to Write About Africa" (via an old college friend on Facebook) --- read it with your tongue firmly in cheek.
  
• Salon.com's Cary Tennis answers the question "Why teach journalism if newspapers are dying?" --- "Teach them how to find out what is true and what is hidden, and how to say it so others can understand what it means and why it is important."

Yes, these links are all about writing. Some weeks, it is all I read about.

Hitting the notes

I've spent the better part of the last few weeks compiling endnotes for one of the books I co-authored. In other words: my co-author and I have been going back through our notes and earlier drafts, painstakingly hunting down exactly what page it was that Raffles called Singapore his "almost only child" or chided Farquhar for his "Malay connexion" (I love that archaic spelling). That also means much time spent in the library, verifying sometimes lurid accounts of pirate attacks in the mid-19th century or checking when the Japanese banned "imperialist" Western films during their Occupation of Singapore.

If it sounds both fun and, er, not at the same time, you're right. We could've saved ourselves the grief if we'd kept better track of these references while we were writing, but oh well. This is why I need to branch out into writing fiction; then I won't need to footnote every other darned thing.

This book, incidentally, is a popular history of Singapore, tentatively titled Singapore: A Biography. More details to come, but the important thing to remember is that it's not a textbook and not a government glorification piece. It's a story about this funny little island I happen to live on, and it's an island that has seen quite a few stories indeed.

Anyway, for now I hope to be done with all the endnotes after this week. Then I can stop squinting at old books on microfilm and focus on learning how to read hangeul instead.

The wind begins to howl

Sometimes I reread old blog posts, and I wonder why I don't write like that anymore.

I'm rereading those posts because of a related article I'm working on --- or ought to be working on (don't panic, Pin), but all I've got are half-formed thoughts scrawled in ballpoint pen across recycled paper and two old-but-well-written blog posts staring me accusatorily in the face. It's one thing to have an inferiority complex, it's quite something else to have an inferiority complex about one's younger self.

To avoid thinking about the article and other melancholy subjects tonight, I went for my weekly Pilates class, followed by a late dinner at Peperoni Pizzeria. Parma ham, rocket salad and mozzarella on a pizza make a surprisingly good diversion. Good conversation always helps too (thank you, Darren and melch and friend).

There would be a picture of the pizza here, but I ate it all.

Ole!

I love watching TED talks and I love this one I saw earlier this week, with writer Elizabeth Gilbert taking about creativity and genius and snatching a bit of the divine.

Excerpt:

And what I have to sort of keep telling myself when I get psyched out about that, is: Don't be afraid. Don't be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cock-eyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed for just one moment through your efforts --- then, ole. And if not, do your dance anyhow and ole to you nonetheless. I believe this and I feel that we must teach it: ole to you nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.

But you really ought to watch her entire talk to appreciate what she's saying.

Things that make me smile

• Text message from a cute guy.
• Email from a publisher offering me Work I Want Very Very Much (details to be announced after negotiations are concluded).
• Good meeting with an existing publisher for the marketing strategy for our book.
  

Yes, I'm a writer. Yes, I have books coming out this year.

Gosh, this feels good.

What writers do

I'm still getting used to introducing myself to strangers as a writer. But it always feels disingenuous for me to imply association with someone like, oh, say, Haruki Murakami. Who is this kind of writer:

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. [...] I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories -- stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

From his acceptance speech for the Jerusalem Prize, which is well worth reading in full.

Working up to Christmas

Between the moving and the deadline, I've been too busy to do anything Christmasy except order food for the family Christmas lunch and marvel at other people's idea of a Christmas greeting.

So in lieu of any traditionally festive posts, I offer you this rather nifty travelogue instead: "The road to Bethlehem", wherein BBC correspondent Aleem Maqbool follows in the footsteps (and donkey-steps) of Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

Personally, I love the opening to the December 17 entry:

"Why are you standing there with a donkey?" said an old Palestinian man.

"This is a nice modern city, and you're standing there with a donkey! What are you trying to say? What's wrong with you?"

Clearly, not everyone was as happy as I was to meet my new travelling companion in the centre of the city of Jenin.

The old man thought I was trying to show Jenin as a backward place. He refused to accept the nativity explanation, and went on his way muttering about how deceptive the foreign media is.

I can't wait to hear more about the donkeys.

Also, I want to write a travel/news story like this some day.

(The only irritating thing --- and this is a technical issue --- is that the posts are ordered in reverse chronological order, like a blog, which would be fine if they were all individually hyperlinked, like blog entries would be, and one could navigate through them from an archive page. But you can't, so it all feels very manual and pre-Web 2.0. The correspondent should just set up a free Blogger or Wordpress account instead.)

The first words are the hardest

Which is why a headline like "I'm rewriting the same paragraph over and over and over!" is guaranteed to get me to click on it.

I figured Cary Tennis's advice (or anyone's, really) would run along the lines of "Just write it, dammit!" But I didn't expect him to approach it this way:

The rule I have made for myself [because he's on post-operative painkillers] is that I cannot go back and fix, or rearrange, or rewrite what I have done. I realized, on the first day of this experiment, when I absolutely lacked the mental concentration to do that kind of rearranging, that I would have to give it up. Thus I was forced to write this new way.

[...] This disability is forcing me to simply keep writing and moving forward.

Of course I fear that I will not be brilliant enough. This fear will have to wait. I cannot hide from it.

He also says:

In the case of writing and rewriting a paragraph 20 times or 50 times, we may fear the plainness and simplicity of what is in our minds; we may fear that unless we unleash a dazzling fusillade of verbal inventiveness, the reader will turn away in boredom and disgust. So we keep tinkering, trying to perfect the bomb.

I've often said I'm a highly inefficient writer (in terms of word count per day, which often translates into income per day) because I spend all this time "tinkering, trying to perfect the bomb", as Tennis puts it. The last few weeks, I've been plugging away at the Lonely Planet assignment, trying to write with "colour and flair" while "telling it like it is" (their mantra, don't you know). Which means I get stuck rewriting the same sentence over and over --- don't even get me started on paragraphs --- and the opening words to any new section are the hardest.

Of course, even harder than writing a good opening, is when you write one and then realise that there's no way you can use it in the book. For instance, this is an outtake for my opening to the history of Hue:

The emperors loved it, so the French sacked it. The North Vietnamese coveted it and stole it; the South Vietnamese and Americans wanted (and took) it back. The Communist government didn't really want to have anything to do with it --- but then the tourists started turning up in droves.

Copyright ME --- just because I'm not giving these lines to Lonely Planet doesn't mean anyone can steal them.

I know that I need to "simply keep writing and moving forward", but I don't know that I can. I guess sheer desperation will kick in at some point, as my non-negotiable deadline looms.

"So what are you doing now?"

That's what a couple of people have asked me since I got back in circulation in Singapore. Some of them thought I'd finished my Lonely Planet writing while I was in Vietnam. To which I shake my head fervently and mention the 65,000 word count I've got to complete by January 9. Sure, some of it got written while I was there, but all the longer texts (i.e. anything longer than 50 words per block of text) still need to be done.

In between writing getting the writing started, I've also initiated the apartment-hunting process. I have until January 21 to relocate. Ideally, I'll be able to wrangle a new place with a move-in date in mid-January, thereby allowing me to complete the Lonely Planet work in peace.

Ideally.

The other thing I've been doing is sneezing regularly. The spates started in Saigon, where I had a slight itchy-eye/sneezy reaction, but it's become full-blown now that I'm home. I wonder if it's the cats or the general air quality. (It's definitely not a cold --- different type of sneezing.)

Tomorrow I'm going to my first Thanksgiving dinner in 11 years. There'll be a roast rack of lamb instead of roast turkey, Caesar salad instead of green beans, and potato au gratin instead of mashed potatoes --- but it's the spirit that counts. Besides, there will be pumpkin pie.

Google, I am not a bot!

Every time I use the "define:" operator in a Google search, it thinks I'm sending automated queries and makes me type in a CAPTCHA to prove that I'm human.

Maybe I use "define:" too often.

What is't but to be nothing else but mad?

I've been watching quite a few Singapore films lately, such as A Wicked Tale, which I liked very much, and Mad About English, which I didn't. My opinion of the latter seems to put me firmly in the minority, though. Other people say:

• "This piece of work is huge fun from start to finish. It has more laughs, poignancy and warmth than any fictional movie in recent memory. And it beats any of this season's CGI-laden blockbusters for sheer enjoyment value." --- The Straits Times
• "... a hilarious look at China as its people embark on a mad rush to learn English before the Beijing Olympics. ... this film shows how ordinary lives are changed as China flings its doors open to the West." --- The New Paper
• "... does a great job capturing the charm and quirkiness of the people." --- movieXclusive.com
• "Mad About English is highly recommended, and goes into my books as contender to be amongst the best of this year's theatrical releases." --- A Nutshell Review/Sinema
  

Uh ... no, no, no and no. The film aggravated me enough that I spent part of the weekend writing down what I thought of it (without being ranty, despite the aggravation). Your mileage, as always, may vary.

---

In a scene from the documentary film Mad About English that also appears in the movie trailer, a police officer in Beijing unleashes his repertoire of Brooklyn-accented English: "Hey, whaddya want?", "Fuhgetabowdit!", "What's up, man?", "Put yer gun down!" Yes, he sounds as if he's been watching too many Robert de Niro movies.

We laugh, of course, because of the incongruity between the chubby, pink-cheeked Chinese mainlander, and the harsh New York slang that he rattles off so unthinkingly. But in the film we never find out how he picked up this accent, when he thinks lines like "Fuhgetabowdit!" are going to come in useful in his daily patrols, or why he enjoys chatting with tourists while he's in uniform (he's supposed to be a police officer, not a tour guide). He's an object of curiosity, both to the tourists he meets and to us watching him as he rehearses his "Welcome to Beijing" lines in English, German, Japanese and other languages. And he remains just that: an oddity, a strange bird, nothing more than a funny little Chinese man.

Multiply that by 92 minutes, and that's the sum total of Mad About English. Every English learners featured in the film, from a 12-year-old cherub to a 74-year-old retiree, is introduced with all the fanfare of, "Oh look! Here’s another Chinese person who’s a little nutty about learning English!" Then we hear the person dutifully recite a few English sentences – with some incorrect pronunciation or grammar, or moments of pure misunderstanding for "comic relief", of course. Perhaps he or she gets some airtime to murmur something about how important it is to learn English so as to welcome foreign visitors to the Beijing Olympics.

Then the film cuts to the next character waiting in the wings. Lather, rinse, repeat.

No matter how many times we come back to any of these people, we never find out their full stories. Where do they come from? How do they feel spending so much time and energy to learn a language that is so historically, culturally and grammatically divorced from their own? What are the implications of learning English when China is on the ascendant? Are these people fringe elements or truly representative of English learners in Beijing (or, for that matter, the rest of China)?

So many questions, hardly any answers. There's only so long that you can watch people stumble over learning a foreign language before it starts to feel not only trite and tired, but also mean and cheap. Stick a camera in front of anyone learning a foreign language – especially a language with such different roots from one's native tongue – and you’d pretty much get the same result. There are signs in Paris that have just as entertaining (or apparently insipid) translation errors in English as they do in Beijing. There are Americans or Europeans learning to speak Mandarin who make just as egregious or laughable errors as these Chinese mainlanders stuttering their way through English. Mad About English doesn't tell us anything that we don't know already.

It was also ironic that all the Chinese interviewees largely spoke in English, whether they were being interviewed or interacting with other (Chinese) people. It felt as if they were constantly having to perform in English, with little opportunity to speak in their native tongue and say what they really thought and felt. Perhaps this was deliberate, to show exactly how "mad" about English these people are, but it only made them seem more inscrutable and kooky (ah, those inscrutable Orientals!), allowing them to be laughed at but not understood.

And really, why should we laugh? Because they make mistakes, as beginners always do? Because they speak English "wrongly", as shown by the bewilderment of the white man they’re speaking to? The laughter makes us complicit in the white man's criticism (not critique, which is what's lacking here) of non-native English speakers, without questioning if that criticism is justified in the first place.

Sure, it's funny for about five seconds to hear a little old lady struggle with saying "bowel movements" and "take off your shirt" (she’s a doctor learning phrases she’ll need to communicate with foreign patients). But the job she does, the life she's led and her determination to learn shouldn't be dismissed on the level of toilet humour. All these people learning English – they deserve better than this.

Hrm, redux

And today, it turns out that I've been misspelling "inoculate". Could've sworn it had two "n"s!

Related post: Hrm

Hrm

I just typed "output" as "outpoot". This doesn't bode well for a Monday.

Yan Yan teaches you English

When I first started eating Yan Yan in the '80s, they came in two flavours --- chocolate or strawberry (feel free to say that in a "Okay Pocky" voice) --- and the biscuit sticks were plain and unadorned.

Now the biscuit sticks try to teach you English.


More accurately, they try to teach word association in English. This is what the sticks say (the animal name is on the top end of the stick, the rest of the words on the lower half):

• Bat --- Only in the night
• Stag beetle --- Love it
• Rhinoceros --- Think big
• Elephant --- Jumbo
• Cow --- Muuuuu
• Frog --- Amphibian
• Rabbit --- Eat more carrots
• Owl --- Active at night
• Panda --- Go for more
• Sheep --- Wool sweaters

Now what I want to know is: who gets to be the copywriter for the Yan Yan sticks, and where can I sign up?

Good reading fun

I had a work-filled weekend (except for the ROJAK interlude), so it's only today that I can get around to posting some neat reading-related links:

• Since so many people got a tickle out of "The challenge of problem with office-speak", here's Slate's "Notes on Catch: Which catchphrases should be 'thrown under the bus'?" (via kitschy potemkin). Excerpt:

  It is possible to think of catchphrase use in stages. There's Stage 1, when you first hear a phrase and take pleasure in its imaginative use of language on the literal and metaphorical level. ...
  
  Then there's Stage 2, when you use it to establish "street cred" (time to throw "street cred" under the catchphrase bus?) or convey a sense of being au courant.
  
  Then there's Stage 3, when the user acknowledges a phrase's over-ness and tries to extract some final mileage out of it by gently mocking it, usually by using ironic quotes, or adding "as they say" to the end.
  
  Finally, there's Stage 4: terminal obsolence, dead phrase walking. Take "at the end of the day." It kind of stuns me whenever I find someone still saying "at the end of the day" with a straight face. What are they, stuck on stupid, as they say?

• Also from Slate (also via kitschy potemkin), ";( Has modern life killed the semicolon?", wonders Portland State University faculty Paul Collins. I have a soft spot for the semicolon, and an even softer one (as I'm sure you can tell from reading my blog) for the dash.
  
  I also really like the penultimate sentence of this essay:

  When grading undergrad final papers recently, I found a near-absence of semicolons, save for one paper with cadenced pauses and carefully cantilevered clauses that gracefully stacked upon one another, Jenga-like, without ever quite toppling.

• Alison Bechdel, one of my favourite authors, gives her take on "Compulsory Reading" (via Bitch Ph.D.), about all the guilt we bibliophiles feel about the books we oughta read that we haven't read yet. This one's a comic-strip essay, for those of you that don't feel like dealing with any more prose right now. (If you like it, borrow her graphic-novel autobiography Fun Home from me.)
  
  My personal list of I-really-oughta-reads includes: War and Peace, London: A Biography, any novels by James Joyce and anything at all by Charles Dickens (I don't think the opening two pages of Hard Times or the adapted-and-illustrated-for-children version of A Tale of Two Cities counts).

After proofreading for an entire week, I'll be glad to get back to a little old-fashioned reading for a change.

Busy proofreading, no time to blog. But G-man sent me a gem of an SMS yesterday:

Walking through a HDB town centre at lunch ... overheard snippet from a conversation between some mobile phone sales staff ... Indian guy saying "You want to see my ex-Chinese girlfriend?"

So if she's not Chinese anymore, what other race would she be?

Wherefore art thou, irony?

Behold the headline of a Channel NewsAsia report from yesterday:

Nationwide campaign launched to get entrepreneurs to think out of the box

I am speechless.

Get your own Swedish furniture name

I have a love-hate relationship with Ikea, so the Blogadilla Swedish Furniture Name Generator made me giggle.

My Swedish furniture name is YYMEI --- what's yours?

(Via NOTCOT.)

The challenge of problem with office-speak

I'm glad I'm back at my email and reading BBC News today, or I would've missed the BBC News Magazine's "50 office-speak phrases you love to hate". I think most of my pet peeve corporate-speak phrases are on the list, including the vomit-worthy:

• "going forward" (#1)
  
• "incentivise" (#4)
• "challenge" (#10)
  
• "paradigm shifts" (#35)
• "stakeholder" (#36)
  
• "cascading" (#39)
• "leverage" (#42)

On a related note, Slate has the sparkling "Lazy Bastards: How We Read Online" (via kitschy potemkin).

Related post: On being plain-spoken

An occupational hazard of being an editor

This week on Facebook, I announced that I was geeky enough to have read The Economist Style Guide, prompting two friends to step forward and say that they, too, had done it. Along with Suzie, who recommended the book in the first place, that makes three people I know who've read it.

What impresses me is that the other two not professional editors. And they're guys --- almost everyone I know who loves quibbling over the placement of a comma or the capitalisation of a word is, like me, female. Make of that what you will.

Speaking of The Economist Style Guide, I was reading it on the bus and an older gentleman (probably in his 60s) sitting beside me keep glancing over my shoulder at the pages. Eventually he asked me what the book was. I showed it to him and he nodded approvingly, then asked where he could buy it.

Even geekier than reading the Style Guide, I realise, is triumphantly spotting typos in it.

It's a curse

So the friend slash co-author for one of my projects recently lent me his copy of Shakespeare: A Biography, which is the first Peter Ackroyd I've read and very, very good. So good, that while I'm reading it, I've been rendered incapable of writing the book I'm supposed to be working on.

Which turns out to be the same curse that afflicted my friend slash co-author while he was reading the book a couple of months ago.

Which made me think last week that I'd better finish reading the book stat, or I'm not going to finish writing the other one that's due, er, stat.

The effect is not quite the same as your garden variety writer's block. When we're thusly afflicted, we have our research, we have our chapter outlines, we know what we're going to say --- we just can't make the words happen.

So it was with grim determination that I finished reading Shakespeare: A Biography today. Now those writing juices better start flowing again ...

Or maybe I should henceforth refer to this as "the Ackroyd book" instead of by its title.

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Technorati Tags: writing, Peter Ackroyd, Shakespeare, Shakespeare: A Biography

Tired as hell

It's a strange sort of day when I typo "mind-boggling" as "mind-blogging".

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Technorati Tags: blogging

On being plain-spoken

After spending a day or so trawling through interview transcripts wherein government employees regurgitate corporate jargon as if it were the gospel truth, it was something of a relief to find out (via the World Wide Words newsletter) that in the UK, at least, the Local Government Association recognises the importance of speaking plainly and has singled out certain "non-words" that are to be avoided, such as:

• capacity building
• engaging users
• outcomes
  
• pathfinder
• stakeholder
• synergy
  

(Those are just six out of the top 100 "banned" words, by the way.)

The Local Government Association's logic is simple:

Without explaining what a council does in proper English then local people will fail to understand its relevance to them or why they should bother to turn out and vote. Unless information is given to people to explain why their council matters then local democracy will be threatened with extinction.

Besides local democracy, I think fruitful and intelligent thought is also threatened with extinction if people keep talking in Newspeak. You know society's in trouble when even teenagers are parroting phrases about "lifelong learning" back to you.

I am going to wave that list of 100 banned words in the face of the next government client who asks me why I didn't just use the language in their press release. Maybe their new motto oughta be: Jargon Less, Say More!

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Technorati Tags: jargon, Newspeak

I can't believe I've been saying it wrong

I've always said I have a limited command of Singlish because I don't speak Hokkien. I didn't get the humour in Money No Enough and other Jack Neo classics because of that, and even my swearing is limited to a couple of common phrases I picked up on the school bus.

Now it turns out that I've been getting a bit of my Singlish-of-Malay-origin wrong too. I've been saying "pasar", as in "not my pasar", which I thought meant "it's not my concern" or "it's not part of my job" --- but it turns out the correct word is "pasal". "Pasar" means "market", which I knew but never spotted as being at odds with the phrase, while "pasal" means "business", which is where the phrase comes from.

Dammit.

Interestingly, no one's ever corrected me till a few days ago, and the Dictionary of Singlish and Singapore English lists "pasal" as a variant of "pasar". Even so, I'm going to try and say the right word from now onwards.

Oh, and "Sarawak"? Is pronounced "suh-RAH-wahk", not "SAIR-ruh-wahk". Damn my Americanised pronunciation sometimes.

Edited to add (March 7): I recently learned that I've been getting "hentam" wrong as well. It's not my fault --- my mother and many people I know say "hantam" instead!

Oh wait ... they're all Chinese ...

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Technorati Tags: Singlish, Singapore English, Malay

What English am I speaking?

I was talking to a friend about another friend, Jamal, and for some reason I started pronouncing the name as "Juh-MAHL" instead of "JAH-mull". To which the friend I was speaking to said, "He didn't grow up in Noo York, you know."

I have no idea where that moment of cultural disconnect came from, but I felt very contrite. I felt even more contrite when I was thinking a little harder about the name and my brain switched channels to "Malcolm-Jamal Warner" --- yes, he of The Cosby Show fame (or lack thereof). I knew watching hours and hours of that show as a kid would someday come back to haunt me.

Time to spank the inner street slangster and get my tongue back to a less affected local pronunciation.

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Technorati Tags: Jamal, pronunciation

Random run-ins today

At Bugis Junction, I was intercepted by a slip of a girl claiming to be from a modelling agency and would I like to ... "I'm not interested," I said, and waved her off. I have no idea what she wanted. I mean, I was wearing a boring button-down office-y shirt I had resurrected from the back of the wardrobe because I needed to look respectable and in case the weather turned cold, paired with skinny jeans and wedges --- the faux successful "creative" look, as one might generously call it. Definitely not one of my better-dressed days.

Also at Bugis Junction, I'd arranged to meet someone off one of my email lists to buy a secondhand Margaret Atwood book off her. Which may not sound that remarkable, but given how all-over-the-place my schedule has been in the last twenty-four hours, I'm amazed no one else beat me to it. Guess there aren't that many prospective purveyors purchasers of Moral Disorders after all.

In other randomness, it looks like both the projects I was rushing to get finish before Xmas are pushing their deadlines back --- due to circumstances that have nothing to do with me, of course --- so maybe I'll get to enjoy a little pre-Xmas jollity next week. Earlier this week, I was in a house that had two real Xmas trees and real Xmas wreaths scattered throughout all the ground-floor rooms. It smelled incredible.

Finally, for my l33t-sp43k1ng fr13nds: who'd've thunk it that "w00t" would make Webster's word of the year?

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Technorati Tags: Margaret Atwood, Christmas, Xmas, w00t

Better than the SAT

Via Mr Miyagi, I've found FreeRice, which pledges to donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations World Food Program for every vocabulary word that you define correctly (don't worry, it's multiple-choice). In 10 minutes, I've clicked through 500 grains of rice and my vocabulary level is hovering around 45. I'm particularly stoked that they had "grok" and "reave".

I'm not sayin' that this is the best way to do something for charity. But if you're going to fritter your time away on the internet anyway, and you like word games, this is as good a place as, say, Scrabulous to spend your time on (you know who I'm talking about).

Plus I got to learn what "nictitate" means.

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Technorati Tags: vocabulary, Free Rice

Rhymin' games

I typed this in an email today: "online moniker Ondine".

Now say it five times fast.

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Technorati Tags: tongue-twister

Random word-related observations of the day

Dear Channel NewsAsia,

I refer to your news report dated 23 October 2007, "Penal code should be updated to avoid gender biasness".

Please note that "bias" is already a noun and there is no such word as "biasness", nor any need for one.

It's not clear from your news report if Member for Parliament Charles Chong used the word "biasness" in his actual remarks, but if he did, you might want to tell him that too.

Love,
Tym

* * *
Speaking of unexpected errors, I was just revising something I wrote two weeks ago and found that I'd written "breakbacking work" (instead of "backbreaking work", obviously). Oops.

Maybe I should thank Ang Lee, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal for making "brokeback" a household term.

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Technorati Tags: English language, brokeback, Channel NewsAsia

The most unexpected language error I found today

"Hick-ups", instead of, well, you know.

It's a strange error to find, especially since it's in a Singapore publication from 2002 and it's not like Singapore wasn't thoroughly so English-educated then that people didn't know then what hiccups were.

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Technorati Tags: hiccup

Fighting the good fight

I failed to read blogs for a few days (as I, um, often do) and when I popped over to Little Miss Drinkalot, I found a Grammar 101 question (yippee!) and a misguided answer (boo!). So I exercised my elfin bow of gold and pointed out that an apostrophe-s is used to denote a possessive only if the noun in question is a plural form, not necessarily with proper names that are singular.

On hindsight, it was a very restrained explanation --- much shorter than the detail I went into on this blog last year (Raffles' vs. Raffles's was the proper name in question at the time).

Predictably, there was a detractor (predictably, an anonymous one) but two subsequent commenters, armed with their respective elfin bows of gold, took care of that. I'm just glad I didn't have to whip out New Hart's Rules all over again.

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Technorati Tags: English, English language, grammar

Quote of the day

There would be no space for goons if it was spooky.

To think that it all began with me innocently pointing out, "Oh, look --- Kallang Airport ... "

If you can make sense of this phrase, you have way more esoteric sources of knowledge than the average person.

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Saturday night spelling bee

Not since I was a pre-teen have I needed to be sure I got the spelling of "hippopotamus" right ... and I almost had to use "hippopotami".

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Technorati Tags: hippopotamus, spelling

I'm a weak-minded fool and you're all sly, crafty old rats, encore

Previous posts here and here.

So I spent the morning Facebooking instead of rushing all the work I need to finish before I go on vacation. I blame this firmly on all the invitations I've been getting, as well as the alleged promise of finding old primary school classmates (as kk has done). Not that I can remember the name of very many primary school classmates to begin with ...

In other news, I desperately want to say "vacay" instead of "vacation", but I think it would make me sound totally Valley Girl.

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Technorati Tags: Facebook, vacay

Changing the world (or not)

It is very strange to see the word "reformed" used in the BBC News report on LiveEarth to refer to bands that have formed again, e.g. "reformed group Genesis, featuring Phil Collins" and "reformed New Zealand group Crowded House". I keep wondering: Did they behave really badly and have to go to a reformatory school? Since this was a LiveEarth event, are they reformed in the sense that they're going to cut their carbon footprint and preach the green message (as opposed to say, the profit-motive message) anymore?

But it seems nobody is being that radical.

Of course, the BBC could've just stuck a hyphen in it to say "re-formed", and it wouldn't have gotten my hopes up ...

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Technorati Tags: reformed, re-formed, hyphen

What do you call it

For the first time ever, someone in conversation this week said "ex-husband", by which they meant mine. For a moment I felt like I had been unplugged from what was going on around me, then the feeling passed and the conversation maundered on.

I have not said "ex-husband" much myself. Mostly I use his name, as most of the people I talk to recognise it. Otherwise, the default term is still "husband", out of habit. "Ex" sounds too trivial --- one in a string thereof, no different from how one would refer to an adolescent sweetypoohbear or a boyfriend who lasted all of one month. Not that one's age or the duration of a relationship alone mark the seriousness of a relationship, but I think being married to someone for seven-plus years quite clearly falls into a separate category of intimacy and dependency.

Then there's the "we/I", "our/my" conundrums that trip up one's speech. We used to have a car, but I don't have one now. It's our flat but my clothes that are in the cupboard. "The" becomes remarkably handy, filling in for any possessive pronoun that would otherwise draw too much attention.

What it boils down to, ultimately, is that I never thought "ex-husband" was a word that would be admitted to my personal lexicon --- but there it is.

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Technorati Tags: ex-husband

Wordiness: An introduction

I like words. I like learning new words. But I don't learn words so well when I learn them out of context, which is why trying to read through the dictionary never did help me very much.

Fortunately, since words are the tools of my trade, learning new ones is very much part of the job. The only problem is my Swiss-cheese memory's inability to retain more than a few of the good ones. Since I rely on the internet to keep track of so much of my life anyway (including my recent albeit late-to-the-party delight with Google Calendar), I figured I might as well use my blog to keep track of cool new words that I come across.

Ideally, there will be a Wordiness entry everyday. On the other hand, this is very much an experiment plus no one pays me to write this blog, so --- we'll see.

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Technorati Tags: word, wordiness

Let this not be my destiny

Where would I be without Urban Dictionary? Today's unbeatable word of the day:

technosexual n. A person, male or female, who is so deeply enthralled with technology they discuss it with a level of passion that most people reserve for sex. Not always a geek or a nerd, but generally someone who has the latest and greatest everything.

I don't have the latest and greatest everything, but I often wish I did. I don't discuss technology with a level of passion that most people reserve for sex, but I do write for Popgadget. I cannot deny that I'm somewhat enthralled with technology.

Oh dear.

Edited to add (8:55 pm): Entirely by coincidence, mrbrown blogs about a completely different definition of technosexual that Calvin Klein's trying to exploit.

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Technorati Tags: technosexual, technology, geek, Urban Dictionary

Kill me now

I almost just typed "greatful" over MSN. The only thing I can blame it on is the fact that I was looking at the Great Eastern website (for work, not for personal edification or entertainment).

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Hamlet Prince of YouTube

In lieu of actual blogging, here's the first YouTube video I've ever clicked on that wasn't recommended by a friend.

To post; to blog:
No more; and in that blogging, to say we counteract
The thousand stupendously stupid comments
The Net has heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.

Yes, I really enjoyed this one.

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Technorati Tags: Hamlet Prince of YouTube, Hamlet, YouTube

It was gonna happen eventually

One of the occupational hazards of being an teacher is that one of your extremely competent (and hopefully not too frightful) former students might someday be your boss.

While this hasn't happened (yet), I knew that after I became a freelance writer, it was more likely that someday, somewhere, some student would be in a position to become my client. If I was lucky, maybe it would be a) a student who didn't have it in for me, and/or b) a project that I didn't mind working on.

Fortunately for me, when the opportunity did come round (thanks, suzie!), that's been true on both counts. The worst I've had to fear is that suzie will mock my copywriting because I know that she, like me, has a wicked ear for spotting the soullessly bombastic phrase or the abuse of adjectives like "unique" and "distinctive".

I think I used "unique" only once.

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Technorati Tags: teaching, writing

A sign of the times, or something

Today's Urban Dictionary Word of the Day: gong xi fa cai (though they spell the last word incorrectly as "chai").

Never thought I'd see the day when a commonplace Mandarin greeting for the Lunar New Year would become an entry in a glossary of contemporary slang.

Happy Year of the Pig, everyone! May you enjoy much bacon and (since this is a Chinese New Year after all) fat piggy banks to carry you through to the next year.

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Technorati Tags: Singapore, Chinese New Year, Lunar New Year, Urban Dictionary

Pas mal, pas mal du tout

I'm feeling mightily accomplished tonight. I just sent my cousin something for her birthday off her Amazon wish list, which may not sound like much to you until I tell you that she failed to mention in her mass email that the entire Amazon site is in French.

Now I took two years of college French and a couple of courses in intermediate French at Alliance Francaise after that, but it's been eight years since then and even though I now work with people from Montreal who chatter away in French half the time, I can't understand anything more complex than "Comment ca va?"

So I'm pretty proud of myself for parsing envies cadeaux ("wish list") within five seconds without having to resort to Babelfish, and guessing sufficiently from the context to punch in all the right credit card information and even opt for an additional EUR2,60 gift tag. I also figured out what addresse de facturation was (though I ran a Babelfish check before clicking on the final Confirmer button, just in case), even though I'm fairly certain facturation was never in any of my textbook vocabulary lists. Yeah, they don't make Amazon-friendly vocabulary lists.

Adventures en francaise aside, I'm also thrilled to have whittled down my stack of unread emails from 20-something to 5. Hurrah!

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Technorati Tags: French language

Sars does it again

No, not the disease, the much more talented writer.

"Sincerely Your's" has been one of my favourite grammar guides ever and now she's followed it up with "Sincerely Your's II: Pirates of the Carribean".

My favourite entry, because I've been seeing this particular error a lot lately:

adverse/averse
"I'm not averse to the idea." NOT "adverse."

I think "commerical" might be more of a typo problem than a grammar one (I know I have an autocorrect entry for it) and I say "supposably" when I'm trying to channel Joey Tribbiani, but otherwise, I'm with her all the way.

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Technorati Tags: English, English language, grammar

I have plus 10 geek cred

I like Urban Dictionary's word of the day. Sometimes it's silly, sometimes it puts the finger on that very term I've been looking for (as it did with the recent "tune wedgie" or last month's "mancation").

And sometimes it's just hits. The. Spot.

Yesterday's word of the day was "geek cred", the meaning of which isn't too difficult to parse. But it was one of the illustrative examples they provided that killed me:

"You have the un-edited original trilogy ripped from the laser discs? That's like, plus 10 geek cred."

I have the un-edited original trilogy (Star Wars, in case you weren't following) ripped from the laser discs, thanks to the kindness of the ex-boyfriend.

I have plus 10 geek cred.

Thank you, everybody.

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Technorati Tags: geek cred, Star Wars

Incidental research

And the most sexually stilted quotation by a Really Famous Person that I found today:

The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.

--- Leonardo da Vinci
as quoted in The Columbia World of Quotations

Man, Leo really had a way with words.

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Technorati Tags: Leonardo da Vinci

Note to all copywriters

The word "spend" is a verb, not a noun. You cannot say a discount is valid "with minimum spend of $100". You can say valid with "an order of at least $100" or "a purchase of at least $100".

And guess what? The latter phrases are not only grammatically correct, they fit more or less within the same amount of space you'd have to lay out the grammatically incorrect text.

The OCBC Rewards Programme, I'm looking at you.

See also My Very Own Glob's "Copywriter from hell (or just a really bad school)?".

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Technorati Tags: English, English language, grammar, copywriting

The pedant in me

It's the weekend, but the boss and I have traded several emails today about whether to go with Raffles's or Raffles' to mark the singular possessive case. As with other perennial dilemmas such as whether one sits side-by-side or facing one's dining partner, or whether one squeeezes toothpaste from the bottom of the tube or from the middle, there is no right answer (even though some people believe that there is and will argue it to their bitter eaten-shot-and-left end). The important thing --- for credible writers or editors, anyway --- is simply to be consistent.

At any rate, here's the evidence.

In favour of the apostrophe-and-s: New Hart's Rules (2005 edition)(aka the bible of Oxford University Press).

An apostrophe and s are generally used with personal names ending in an s, x or z sound: Charles's, Dickens's, Marx's, Bridget Jones's Diary

But an apostrophe alone may be used in cases where an additional s would cause difficulty in punctuation, particularly after longer names that are not accented on the last or penultimate syllable: Nicholas' or Nicholas's, Lord Williams's School

Jesus's is the usual non-liturgical use; Jesus' is an accepted archaism.

It is traditional to use an apostrophe alone after classical names ending in s or es: Euripides', Herodotus', Mars', Erasmus'

The style should be followed for longer names; with short names the alternative Zeus's is permissible.

In favour of the apostrophe only, without an s: the AP Stylebook (aka the bible of American journalists).

SINGULAR PROPER NAMES ENDING IN S: Use only an apostrophe: Achilles’ heel, Agnes’ book, Ceres’ rites, Descartes’ theories, Dickens’ novels, Euripides’ dramas, Hercules’ labors, Jesus’ life, Jules’ seat, Kansas’ schools, Moses’ law, Socrates’ life, Tennessee Williams’ plays, Xerxes’ armies.

And just for fun, because this was my rule-of-thumb because I became a professional writer/editor, here's Sars's (notice the apostrophe-and-s there) take on it, from "Sincerely Your's" at Tomato Nation:

And when you use an apostrophe to denote a possessive with a name or place that ends in "S," you need to add another "S," unless it's a plural ("the Joneses' house"). "The princess's car." "Cletus's truck." The only names that don't take another "S" at the end: Jesus and Moses. Don't question it. Just learn it.

For the record, the boss is making an executive decision to go with Raffles', while I will continue to rally for the cause of Raffles's on my own time.

Thus endeth the lesson.

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Technorati Tags: English, English language, grammar, editing style, copyediting

My humble neologism

When I hailed kk online today, she asked me how I was, as usual. My typed response was, inadvertently, "Goodbusy."

Come to think of it, it's a good word, innit?

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Going nowhere fast

Chatting online with Ondine tonight, I admitted rather abashedly that I have no real goals in life at the moment. Then I remembered that I cobbled some together for a meme some time back, so perhaps I should revisit them:

1. Write a novel. Any novel. Even if it's chick lit and Stellou never speaks to me again.

Does starting several short stories and toying with the idea of interviewing my grandparents oral-history-style count? Baby steps, man, baby steps ...

Okay, perhaps I should have an intermediate goal, like complete one of those damn short stories by the end of the year.

2. Learn to speak another language.

I think this one will have to wait till I have more dough, or can trade lessons with someone who wants to learn English. If I could, though, I'd take refresher classes for French or start Japanese.

3. Keep a cat or dog. Iguanas need not apply.

Hey, accomplished! And it wasn't even planned that way.

4. Attempt another musical instrument (maybe the cello?).

See #2 above.

5. Bake a cake or brownies from scratch (i.e. not out of a Betty Crocker box).

This might have to wait till we get a real oven, which really isn't a high priority for us right now. Also, till I become accustomed to spending time in the kitchen again.

6. Live in a place that I can afford to furnish with enough bookshelves for all our books.

Heavens, no. Though we keep buying more books! Again, I sense that money will be an issue for this ... Unless I learn to build my own shelves, which doesn't seem likely given the fact that it's usually a struggle for me to assemble Ikea furniture.

7. Finish this damn meme already.

Well, that's done, but it really doesn't count.

I think I need some better life goals.

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"Wacko the ducks"

So here I sit, reading the transcripts of David Marshall's oral history interview from the National Archives of Singapore, and I can't help noticing that he has something of an affection for the phrase, "Wacko the ducks". He seems to use it in the way one would react with great surprise or shock, sorta like "Get outta here!" (if you're American) or "No way!" (if you're a teenager) or "Well, slap me around and call me Suzy!" (if you're just colourful that way).

"Wacko the ducks," he recalls saying on more than one occasion, including when he was offered the position of French ambassador.

I have no idea where this phrase originates, as even Google helpfully informs me that "Your search - "wacko the ducks" - did not match any documents."

Wacko the ducks!

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Technorati Tags: Singapore, Wacko the ducks

Gah

I know language evolves and changes, and words take on new meanings and implications.

But when did "architect" become a verb??!!??!!?

As in: " ... so that companies can architect and coordinate their supply chains with ... "

!!!

Corporatespeak will be the death of me, I know.

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Technorati Tags: English, English language, pedant

24 things that took way more than 24 hours

So I've been tag-team-tagged by Chandler and a gecko's tale.

Once you've been tagged, write a post with 24 weird facts/things/habits about yourself then tag 6 other people.

1. If I don't do a meme straight away, I'll sit on it for weeks and weeks on end before finishing it. This one, for instance, took a good five days to get done.

2. I haven't not had a drink everyday since Sunday, 15 May.

3. Many moons ago, I went by the nick LizVader.

4. I frequently think of something, immediately forget it, and then spend ten minutes (or hours, or days) trying to dredge the thought up from the miasma of my brain. Yet another reason my domain is named what it is.

5. Before I went to university, I was painfully shy. Funny how it looked a lot to other people like I was being aloof, when I was just absolutely crippled by the thought that everyone else was too cool to be interested in me.

6. I still think everyone else is too cool to be interested in me.

7. I obssess about how untidy my handwriting is, even though a) I'm hardly twelve years old anymore, and b) I hardly ever handwrite anything anymore.

8. I have to practise my signature because at some point since the last time I renewed my passport, my signature's gotten a lot more indecipherable, to the point where official-type people have asked me to re-sign documents to make sure I really am the person I say I am.

9. My favourite comfort food is buttered toast with sugar sprinkled liberally on top.

10. I really didn't need or want an engagement ring, but Terz insisted.

11. When I was a kid, I quavered in fear some nights, thinking that giant monsters (?) would swoop down from the mountains (what mountains? Singapore has no mountains) and kidnap us away to their giant cave.

12. My nose is so sensitive to dust that cleaning up just one room in our tiny apartment is enough to send me into sneezing fits for the rest of the day.

13. I can't type the word "enlightenment" accurately on first try. The impulse is always to type "englishtenment" instead.

14. I have a cat who enjoys clambering into and sitting inside the washing machine drum, although he looks a little confused when he unintentionally sets the drum turning.


Clearly, he's no hamster.

(Okay, so this point is about how my cat may be weird, rather than about how I'm weird, but I'm running out of steam here.)

15. I remember song tunes rather well, but I'm hopeless at song titles and even worse at song lyrics. It's all about the melody.

16. I go to dance clubs to people-watch, not to dance, because I don't dance. More accurately: I can't dance.

17. I have a horrible poker face.

18. After consuming one unit of alcohol, I turn red faster than anyone I know. People who've never been out with me before often feel the need to point it out, probably because they're afraid I'll pass out on them or something. I've been told it's got something to do with good circulation and/or a particular enzyme that Asians are genetically predisposed to having. All I know is it means I can't have a drink over lunch and then go back to the office because everyone'll know I've been drinking.

19. I don't use makeup, except for a dash of lipstick when I remember to, but, more importantly, I don't know how to use makeup.

20. I typically IM in grammatical and correctly punctuated phrases. And I generally apologise for typos.

21. I have an incredibly poor gauge of distance. If there weren't markers on the ground where I run, I wouldn't have the faintest idea how far I'd run. If you ask me how far away something is, I can give you the dead distance in terms of how long it'd take to get there, but I'd be hard-pressed to say so in kilometres or, worse, miles.

22. I'm multiracial. That's less common than you'd think it was in ostensibly multiracial Singapore.

23. I'm a great believer in vibes. If I have bad vibes about a person/place/job, I probably won't pursue it. It's all about the gut instinct.

24. I don't mind the odd meme, but I feel guilty about tagging others, so a lot of the time, I just let the meme die with me.

Like this.

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Technorati Tags: Singapore, meme

Revelation of the day

So apparently, I am a Senior Researcher and Script Editor.

It's nice when other people make up nice-sounding titles for the work I do.

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Dead end

I just realised that the script I've been working on is nothing more than an excuse for the two characters to take turns playing the Exposition Fairy for this particular story. Pah!

Perhaps even more disturbing is that I have, of late, acquired an unholy prefernce for the font Times New Roman.

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Work things

[She was] a copy editor, possessed of the rare capacity to sit all day in a small cubicle, like a monk in a cell, and read with an almost penitential rigor.

--- David Leavitt

(Quoted on Testy Copy Editors.)

While I'm not a copy editor, my current line of work does involve some copy editing and it's a métier that's made it to my (very) shortlist. I would be quite happy to have that quote posted over my desk.

Speaking of which, I'm going to be moving desks, er, actually, moving offices soon. New contract, new workplace, new colleagues. I've had good vibes about this job since I met the people involved a few weeks ago. It's nice when you leave a business meeting with both a giddy, top-of-the-world feeling and a strong sense of harmony, as if everything's coming together in its proper place.

Funnily enough, that was on Valentine's Day.

Of course, the current workplace is good too. I will miss the creative vibe, the easy atmosphere, the adrenaline rush of trying to meet multiple overlapping deadlines, and of course, the copious amounts of good, cheap food in Chinatown.


It's been a good place to ease into my new line of work. And the nice thing about my line of work is that completing a job and leaving the colleagues doesn't mean I'm never coming back.

* * *
For the first time since the start of the year, I will not be parked at a table at Wala Wala tonight, soaking up the sounds of The UnXpected.



No, no --- my well-honed Confucian slash Protestant work ethic demands that I stay home and put in the required laptop-time for certain non-day job-related work (notice how accurately, though not necessarily clearly, I punctuated that contorted adjectival phrase?). That's what I get for taking on too many assignments with deadlines that are compressed into the same week.

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Nightcap

At our friendly neighbourhood 24-hour roti prata joint:

"Which is older, Sanskrit or Arabic? Are they related?"
"Sanskrit, I think --- "
"Don't think they're related --- "
"Sanskrit's older.
"Why do you ask?" Beat. "Because they both have squiggly script??"

The things that pass through our minds over overly sweetened coffee and Milo...

For the record, a little judicious Googling puts Arabic as dating back to the 4th century CE, while Sanskrit dates back to 2500 BCE.

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Technorati Tags: Sanskrit, Arabic

Bylines galore

If anyone was wondering where I disappeared to for a week last year: here's 10 ways to enjoy Padang, even more stuff to do in Padang, and some places to chill out in Singapore.

Apropos, addendum: Fear not frog leg soup, and other tips (link via Popagandhi; free subscription required). Helpful reminders, even to those of us who've been travelling free'n'easy for decades now.

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Technorati Tags: travel, Padang, Tiger Airways, Tiger Tales

Remember

Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.

--- Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

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Technorati Tags: freedom

Must be Monday

It's not everyday that I message the boss with the following:

Sorry, I will be late! My shoe broke, getting a replacement now.

I don't ordinarily pull off the Bohemian look, either, but desperate times call for desperate measures. If you saw a woman wandering barefoot in the basement levels of Plaza Singapura around 3 pm today, that was me. My sandal snapped irrevocably as I was entering the adjacent MRT station, so I had to hightail it over to the nearest shoe shops at the mall. It didn't help that I was supposed to be back at the office for a 3 pm meeting.

I like shoes, I like shoe shopping, but I don't like shopping for shoes under stress. For one thing, it automatically means that they won't have any shoes that I find attractive. They didn't today, in either X:odus or Charles & Keith. On the bright side, both stores were having post-Chinese New Year sales --- you know, the ones that come right after the post-Xmas and Chinese New Year sales --- so I didn't have to pay too much for the least offensive and least uncomfortable pair of shoes that I finally settled for.

I was highly apologetic at my lateness upon finally getting back to the office at 3:30 pm --- but as it turned out, due to other more compelling deadlines and appointments, we didn't have our meeting till 6 pm anyway.

The best word I found in the (online) dictionary today: abecedarian n. 1. One who teaches or studies the alphabet. 2. One who is just learning; a beginner. adj. 1. Having to do with the alphabet. 2. Being arranged alphabetically. 3. Elementary or rudimentary.

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Technorati Tags: shoes

Sex in the office

It is very difficult to have to write an advertising slogan about doing things in pairs when the job brief eschews all sexual innuendo. I keep thinking of lines like "Grow a pair" or "Tired of doing it by yourself?" --- when really, it's so, so wrong.

On the other hand, it is very amusing to read an email in which a colleague has written to our boss, "[Tym] & I have come out with 4 possible taglines ... " [emphasis mine]. Uh, he's not gay, either.

The best (non-sex-related) word I came across today: ambage n. archaic 1. Ambiguity. Often used in the plural. 2. ambages Winding ways or indirect proceedings.

Oh all right, I guess it could be sex-related if you tried hard enough.

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What you shouldn't write in your professional bio

I had to write a short professional bio for myself today and Ondine was whining about how she couldn't go running because it was raining, so I distracted her by making her help me.

Some help she turned out to be. We were trying to rephrase the idea that I "take challenges in [my] stride":

Ondine: [Tym] is very good at taking curveballs that are thrown at her?
ME: Ha ha
ME: Yes yes v good
Ondine: Just the hand-eye coordination cannot make it.
ME: Yah
ME: strictly metaphorical
ME: in actual ball games, she sucks
Ondine: And occasionally trips over herself and falls down.
ME: Argh
ME: You are evil

Needless to say, none of this made it into the final version of my bio.

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On writing

I can stare blankly at my laptop screen for half an hour

OR

I can head out to meet a friend for lunch and, in the ten minutes it takes me to walk there, come up with everything I needed to write, punch it into my cellphone so that I don't forget the exact words and transfer it all to an email to my colleague as soon as I'm back from lunch.

Damn this writing process.

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Technorati Tags: writing

Third day

Today it rained, then it stopped raining in time for lunch, then it picked up again, stranding me at the lunch place till we condescended to purchase an umbrella, then the sun came out an hour after lunch, then it really rained again, straight sheets of it, and now it's sunny and raining. Welcome to monsoonal Singapore.

I'm not complaining, by the way; I love the monsoon. I only chastise myself for forgetting an umbrella this morning.

It's nice working at a job where I get only about 30 emails a day --- as opposed to getting 30 emails every 30 minutes, as at one of my previous jobs.

The best word I found in the (online) dictionary today: commove tr.v. 1. To cause to move with force or violence; agitate; disturb. 2. To rouse strong feelings in; excite.

Other words that I actually used in work today: leverage (as a verb), position (as a verb), competencies and fundamentals (as a noun). Kill me now.

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First day

To let you know the kind of place this is, observe that I arrived at work just after the stipulated starting time of 9 am, and I was the first one in. In fact, technically I was the second one in, because I didn't have a security pass and so had to wait for someone else to show up and let me in.

The other thing is that this is the kind of place that doesn't specifically proscribe the installation of software on its computers --- which is how I come to be using Thunderbird (instead of the dreaded Outlook) for email, hurrah! Also, immediately after setting me up with an email account, the boss's next question is, "So, do you use MSN?"

At lunch, one of my colleagues pronounced me "gadgety" after admiring my 3G phone. I suppose this comes as a result of him also drooling over my Contax last week and nodding approvingly of my iPod some months ago.

The best word I found in the (online) thesaurus today: boodle n. counterfeit money or bribe.

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Go read

"Art, Truth & Politics", aka Harold Pinter's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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After the weekend

It's very strange to wake up after the word "gewgaw" has been dancing around your mind all night.

Oh, it's a real word, I assure you.

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Maunderings

From an email I sent to Stellou today:

... there are two public holidays this week (Tue and Thu, one is Hari Raya Puasa or Eid ul-Fitr as the rest of the Muslim world calls it, the other is Deepavali, not sure which is which because the bloody local press is helpful in using shorthand to refer to it as "Deeparaya" *puke*) ...

I have been having lacklustre meals of late (including TWO Burger King meals, ordered and eaten entirely of my own volition, it wasn't like we were on a desert island that had nothing to eat except Burger King), so we'll need to fix that in the coming week.

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The world is ending

I just heard a British talking head on the local ESPN channel say, "Who would want to be in the role of a goalkeeper, whereby you're in a position where you have to ... "

Whereby?!
Whereby?!($#(*$&@($@#($#@$#^@
It's where, WHERE, WHERE!!!

You know the war is lost when even the ostensible "native speakers" of English get it wrong.

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Related posts: The uses of A-level English, Grammar geekout, Public service announcement, Hope! for English teachers everywhere, SSLSB and Teen Girl/Grammar Queen!, Okay, look

Technorati Tags: grammar, English

Are you an armchair inclusivist?

This one's for Agagooga, who isn't online at the moment for me to share it with him: Butterflies and Wheels' Fashionable Dictionary --- "your guide to the language of pseudoscience and fashionable nonsense".

I particularly like:

• assumption: something to be examined when it is our opponent's and taken for granted when it is our own,
• bigot/fanatic: someone who believes something I don't believe, and
• paradigm: a thing that shifts, thus proving that scientists make up their findings.

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Scrabble babble

It's no secret that I love rainy weather, and nothing's better than a rainy afternoon spent at Book Cafe.



Especially when I finally win a Scrabble game for the first time in my life, and score more than 200 points (211, to be exact).



Huzzah!

Because merely playing Scrabble isn't enough, the four players are now invited to write something using all the words we played in each game in the order in which they were played, viz.:

• Game 1: dancer, an, glower, chad, coronet, ant, cages, axis, winter, die, goo, maven, hemp, goon, torn, awake, miller, proved, tearful, quit, zip, tearfully, doe, maxis, jay, sour, qi, fa, goo (yes, it made a second appearance).
• Game 2: scabby, boiling, horny, data, thorny, wholes, safe, silks, luau, peons, quiz, option, yen, confess, magnates, gamer, dew wend, divot, jived, latte, plod, ax, ex, turn, roil, re.

Contributions from non-players are welcome.

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Technorati Tags: Singapore, cafe, Scrabble, rainy day

Okay, look:

Empathy and sympathy are not the same thing. The two words are not interchangeable.

Empathy is when a person's experienced something and therefore understands how another person going through the same experience is feeling. E.g. I've failed a test before; you've failed your test; ergo, I can feel empathy for you and imagine how you feel.

Sympathy is when you care for another's misfortunes or situation because it evokes your feelings of compassion, pity, etc. E.g. I've never been through a hurricane, but I feel sympathy for what the victims of Katrina are going through; I cannot possibly empathise with them because I haven't been through what they've been through.

Dictionary.com has a useful analysis of the spectrum of related synonyms here (scroll down to about the middle of the page).

Get it right already.

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Technorati Tags: English, English language, synonyms, sympathy, empathy

SSLSB and Teen Girl/Grammar Queen!

Because everyone needs a superpower (or two).

(For my non-Singaporean readers, be warned that Singlish abounds. But I think it's still possible to get the gist of things.)

... brown: Self-Styled Leader of the Singapore Blogosphere
brown: will be my new title
Me: Is it time for a new MSN nick? :)
brown: yeah
Me: Whee!
Me: Power.
brown: as if i asked for it
brown: I like powerrrrrr
Me: Yah, you are a power-hungry monster.
Me: Just trying to take over tiny little Singapore with your blog power.
brown: ya
brown: sure there's no money in it
brown: but got POWERRRRRR
brown: laser beams shoot out from my eyes
Me: Guess we found you a superpower ;)
brown: Yeah.
brown: I like laser beams
Me: Hee hee.
Me: I always liked Marvel Girl. Telekinetic! Telepath! Tele-everything! That's my ideal superppower.
brown: Telephone!
Me: Eh.
Me: That is the superpower of ALL teenaged girls.
Me: Nothing speshul.
brown: ah
brown: but can call without handset!
Me: Ha. That is called telepathy already lor.
brown: no lah
brown: telepathy is mind to mind
brown: telephony is mind to phone
brown: different
brown: like Skype for brain
Me: Telepathy more powderful.
Me: Can spook people.
Me: Telephony - aiya, people just think I'm calling.
brown: not everyone has a brain
brown: but everyone has a phone
brown: so Telephony more useful
Me: HAHAHAHAHAHA
Me: You are evil.
brown: when I call with Telephony
Me: I should totally log this conversation and put it on my blog. [Ed: Because, you know, we think about blogging ALL the time.]
brown: your caller id says
brown: brown's mind
brown: no number one
Me: Hee hee. What a scary place to be!
brown: ahhh
Me: Sekali people hang up.
brown: haha
brown: then i will get momentary headache
brown: from the hang up
brown: oh dear, another brown silly moment on someone's blog
brown: hahaha
Me: Nah, it's ok.
brown: I dun mind
brown: haha
Me: We shall not embarrass ourselves TOO publicly.
brown: The Return of Teen Girl!
Me: Got reputation to protect, you know. You are self-styled leader whatever.
brown: no need lah
brown: protect what
brown: haha
brown: my name is mud liao
brown: Teen Girl: Telepathic, Telekinetic, and Telephonic!
Me: Mmmmmm ... I like.
Me: Your superpower name is too long, v hard to pronounce when in danger.
Me: "Help me, Teen Girl!" vs "Help me, Self-styled Leader of the Singapore Blogosphere!"
brown: Able to morph into any outfit
brown: SSLSB!
brown: that's me
brown: Blogger Maaaaaan!
Me: Yah, damn acronym.
Me: Truly Singaporean.
brown: ya
brown: Operating from an HDB underground bomb shelter
brown: something like bat cave
brown: but must vacate within 4 hours
Me: Ha ha ha ha ha.
brown: if the gahmen needs to use it
brown: My Blog Mobile no need COE
Me: Terz asks if you are gaming with them, SSLSB. Have you gotten holy permission?
brown: er the Popepess nair say
Me: Popess lah.
Me: Spell wrongly.
brown: orh
Me: Oh, that is my other superpower: Grammar Queen!
brown: Yeah
brown: Teen Girl and Grammar Queen
Me: Two-in-one superheroines.
brown: keeping the world safe from Fashion and Language Faux Pas
Me: Heroine.
Me: Eh, that is a good line! ...

Anyone feel inspired to design our superhero costumes?

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Technorati Tags: superhero, mrbrown, mr brown

cApS aLeRt

My cellphone is being wonky. Specifically, the # key, which toggles upper/lower case and the T9 dictionary for messaging, is not responding. This means that all SMSes sent henceforth may be improperly punctuated, except for the automatic capitalization of the first letter of each new sentence.

I cannot tell you how much this bothers me at a visceral level. I flinched when I had to send a message to Terz tonight with "Darren" spelled in lower case. Trickier yet will be abbreviations that ought to be in upper case to distinguish them from their lower case counterparts, e.g. "IT" vs. "it". I may actually have to go old-school on this point and punch it in as "I.T.", so that the intervening full-stops prompt the T9 dictionary to capitalize the subsequent alphabetletter.

All told, the cellphone's served me well since December 2003, particularly if you consider the fact that I dropped it into the toilet some time ago. I'll try to hold out as long as I can on getting a new one, since the bank account is highly displeased with me after last month's excesses (too many cab rides did it in, methinks).

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Technorati Tags: spelling, cellphone, cellphones, cell phones, mobile phones, sms, texting, T9

____. Take. Have.

I am really, really craving a good crossword puzzle right now. I firmly blame this on Little Miss Drinkalot's Sudoku obsession. If I recall correctly, the back of her Sudoku book described it as "a crossword puzzle without letters" --- which got me thinking about how long it's been since I did a good crossword... I suspect it was during the flights on last year's vacation.

I have no interest in Sudoku, at least, not at the moment. I like words, and meaning, and word play. It's not about hammering an assortment of alphabets letters into a black-and-white checkerboard; it's about marvelling at the connect/disconnect, and teasing your brain to make sense where, really, there oughn't to be any.

And now I want a crossword very badly --- in particular, a big ol' Sunday crossword --- and all the sites that used to be free are either charging money for their good crosswords (the New York Times) or their archive sites are mysteriously not responding (the LA Times). So I had to bring myself to register for access to the Washington Post, whose crosswords I've never done before but which I expect should be on par with the other two publications', and get myself a couple of printouts.

That's the thing about me and crosswords. Terz does the Yahoo! ones online, but I like pencilling (or rather 'penning') them in. Yes, even though I'm not actually very good at crosswords and constantly make mistakes, I still like using ink and making a big old mess of the grid.

I got a Borders book voucher for Teachers' Day a couple of weeks ago. I think I shall spend mine on a crossword puzzle book.

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Technorati Tags: crossword

Teachers' Day, redux

Nothing reminds you about the relentless penetration of new technology than receiving more Teachers' Day greetings via SMS than in person or handwritten missives, as was the abolute norm four years ago. Even more interesting was that I received numerous Teachers' Day greetings from non-students, including mother, aunts, friends and vendors. Has the holiday so penetrated the wider market that it's become, like Mother's or Father's Days, an occasion for automatic salutations-of-the-day to anyone you know who happens to fall into the category of what the Day is for?

Then I learned from First Aunt that her granddaughter's preschool instructed all the children to bring gifts for their teachers for Teachers' Day. Somewhere between my jaw dropping open in a rictus of astonishment and then freeing itself to yammer any number of outraged protestations, I remembered what Keat commented over at Top of Mind about "tacky plastic ornamental doodads" labelled for sale as Teachers' Day presents and decided that, clearly, the end is nigh because even Teachers' Day --- I mean, think about it, doesn't it sound vaguely Confucian-socialist, something no other developed nation would celebrate as a school holiday? --- has succumbed to the scourge of commercialisation.

tscd asked me in my previous post what my students gave me this year. To be honest, in composing that post, I was torn between publishing an inventory of loot and ignoring the situation altogether --- the former seemed tastelessly narcissistic while the latter might smell vaguely of premeditated false humility. Then, of course, there was the consideration that I didn't actually collect very much loot this year, so a short list could then leave the bitter aftertaste of the blatant clamouring for extravagant displays of affection or, conversely, the self-pitying blubbering of an inadequate mind clearly unsuited to the travails of teaching. And unlike trisha, I don't have the dignified modesty to reflect, "There's something worse than not getting any gift, it is getting something you don't think you deserve."

I have too many thoughts, I know.

Okay, here's the list, to satisfy curious readers. In publishing it, I hereby declare that I am not fishing for more pressies, I certainly don't need or want more stuff, and I'm certainly not trying to guilt anyone into wishing me happy T-day either. If you've said it, thanks! If you haven't, no hard feelings! Let's all get on with our lives already!

This year's loot from students:

• Two handwritten thank-you notes, both of which referenced my abhorrence of the adjectives "unique" and "unusual" in describing literary style --- hurrah for students who paid attention last week!
• A block of homemade cake that now sits in the fridge (too full from today's buffet to break into it yet).
  
• A poem (not written for me, but written by the student).
• Various SMSes received since Tuesday evening.

Thank you all.

What happens when two teachers and my grammatically strict mother go shopping? We talk about all the words that get mispronounced and mangled in Singapore. Pop quiz:

• How do you pronounce "their"?
• How do you pronounce the letter "H"?
• How do you pronounce "student"?
• How do you pronounce "resources"?
• How do you pronounce "mood" (not a trick question)?
• How do you pronounce "patronage"?
  

Answers:

• "their" --- it's "there", not "they're".
• the letter "H" --- it's "aitch", not "haitch".
• "student" --- it's "STEW-dent", not "STU-dent".
• "resources" --- try "re-ZAW-ces", not "re-SAW-ces".
• "mood" --- it's "mood", not "mode".
• "patronage" --- if you're British, it's "PAIR-tronage"; if you're American, it's "PAY-tronage"; either way, the last syllable should take a "niche" sound, i.e. "PAIR-tron-niche", not "PAIR-tron-nayge" (if you're British).

Thus endeth the lesson.

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An entry in the style of Agagooga

This post is dedicated to "old style" Agagooga, i.e. before mr brown convinced him to go one-post-per-topic.

On the VS-may-go-coed ruckus:

"For those who are not Victorian, i trust and hope you have seen this spirit within us, when we cheer, when we fight, when we sing! Will girls in Victoria be able to continue this spirit? because to be crudely honest, and i hope no one takes this the wrong way, but girls will NEVER be able to do what we did, to show what we displayed. Please do not get us wrong. We are not sexist, we are not opposed to change. However, when something like this comes along, and our 129 years of tradition and heritage are threatened, WE WILL NOT SIT BACK AND LET THIS HAPPEN."

--- Xi-Wei, "We are here"

This is akin to saying: "Please don't get us wrong. We are not racist, we are not opposed to change. However, when our hundreds-of-years-of-pre-civil-rights tradition and heritage are threatened, WE WILL NOT SIT BACK AND LET THIS HAPPEN. We should not consider integrating our all-white club because blacks will NEVER be able to do what we did, to show what we displayed."

Meanwhile, in the comments section of the above page, lauises writes: "Its true that girls cannot do some things that we do. Not in terms of the excellence, but in others like the way we speak or the way we can relate to each other. To me at least, Victorians communicate in a very mysterious way. As in, really communicate, not just through speech."

I realise that some people have a major hang-up about the fact that girls cannot pee standing up, break their voices or do away with the menstrual cycle without a hysterectomy. But in "the way [VS boys] speak or the way [they] can relate to each other" --- wth?! Are male Victorians psychic now? It's funny, I've never seen my father or uncle display the slightest bit of extra-sensory perception. Oh wait, maybe it's because I'm a girl and wouldn't be able to "really communicate" with them, "not just through speech".

Meanwhile, Agagooga's penned a critique of the furore.

***

O'Brien's has updated its menu! Yay to more chicken options that aren't slathered in mayonnaise.

***

The web is taunting me. I wasn't able to connect to Gmail all morning. Blogspot addresses keep returning initial "Document contains no data" error messages too, although they load fine when I reload the page. *growl*

***

It's amazing the things one can learn over coffee with Casey. How do you pronounce the words in bold?

1. Everyone has something to contribute to this project.
2. I'd like a slice of almond cake, please.
3. He's a very skilled political operative.
4. We must educate them better.
5. What are the economic effects of this change?
6. It's their problem, not ours.
7. What's your opinion on this issue?
8. We're unsure about the cause.
9. Where's the nearest MRT station?
10. Do you have any comment on the changes?

Answers:

1. kun-TRI-bute, not CON-tribute
2. AH-mon, not AL-mond
   
3. puh-LI-tical, not POR-litical
   
4. AIR-dju-cate, not AIR-du-cate
   
5. eco-NO-mic, not e-CON-nomic
   
6. there, not they're
   
7. IS-sue or I-SHUE are both acceptable
8. UN-shore if you're British, UN-shure if you're American
   
9. em-AHR-tee, not em-ARUH-tee
10. COM-ment, not com-MENT (regardless of whether the word is used as a noun or a verb)

***

Speaking of language use, here's a recent IM exchange with Agagooga:

Agagooga: "Dudes. /Nice/"
Agagooga: trying to get back into the groove ah
Me: I sometimes feel that slang best expresses the sentiment, when I have no time to sculpt amini-essay.
Agagooga: you're having a mid life crisis
Me: [MSN :P emoticon] See, you made me resort to emoticons

And more recently:

Me: Dude, NICE post on the VS stuff.
Agagooga: Yeah, Dudette!
Agagooga: your mid-life crisis is getting acute ;)
Me: Eh.
Me: I actually used "Dude" a few times in conversation last night. No one batted an eyelid.
Agagooga: I am observant lah
Agagooga: it's a seeming deviation from erstwhile conversational patterns

***

If you didn't know already, popagandhi is back in business, with a rubber ducky to cheer her on her way. Faster go and read!

***

So the media is trying to milk all they can out of the NKF saga. What about the fact that 4.5 million Singaporeans didn't get to vote in a presidential election because an election commission --- appointed by the ruling government, not elected by the people --- decided that there were no other suitable candidates than the incumbent?

***

To the "faceless, mediocre", "angsty, reticent", "recalcitrant" and "slow" former student: Thank you. And you were never faceless, mediocre, angsty, recalcitrant or slow. Reticent, perhaps, but I still have that Buffy calendar.

***

A conductor boarded the bus I rode home tonight. As it became apparent that she was going to check every passenger's bus ticket or ez-link card to make sure that everyone had paid or scanned the appropriate fares, a woman seated three rows from the front hastily pressed the bell to indicate that she wanted to alight at the next stop. Unfortunately, she didn't exit her seat quickly enough and had to submit her bus ticket to the conductor first. The conductor waved it at her, a gesture suggesting that the ticket wasn't sufficient for the woman's ride, to which the woman responded something along the lines of, "I know, I know," before clopping down the steps as soon as the bus had halted. I guess people do still try to cheat on their bus fares.

Bloody hell. They've got the red-and-white canopy set up outside our coffeeshop downstairs for the 7th Month dong-dong-chang. And I thought that with the coffeeshop under new management --- in fact, Terz thought the boss might be a Christian --- we could avoid the annual round of late-night rowdiness and shouting-into-the-mike.

I thought I'd halted the curse of the pilsener glasses, but the negative energy's merely been diverted: As I set down one glass tonight (without looking where exactly I was aiming it, as usual), it tapped the top of Terz's Coke glass and promptly chipped a whole piece off, while the offending pilsener glass remained intact. Oops.

I was going to finish my pile of marking after completing this post, but I had to spend almost half an hour excising random font tags that Blogger had wilfully inserted to confound my posting attempt. Now I go to bed, blind but all blogged out.

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Technorati Tags: Agagooga

A verbal chameleon

I was brought to another forceful realisation yesterday about how much my accent is capable of changing. I met a Singaporean who was back from the US, with an almost flawless American accent, and suddenly I felt like a hopelessly shabby speaker in comparison. I used to "Oh, really?" and "Awesome!" and "Cool!" with the best of them. Now I'm like, "Wah lau eh..."

But the environmental adaptation swings both ways. When I hang out with people who speak a slightly different brand of Singlish from what I grew up with, their linguistic idiosyncrasies start creeping into my conversations. Before this year, I'm pretty sure I never used sial, not even when I had a student six years ago who liberally punctuated his casual exclamation with that word (ampulets, remember him?). Thanks to Stellou (woman, call me already or at least email me your local cell number once you have it), I now flick off the cheh with panache and punch through with repeated, "And then?"s as well. (Stellou, nobody gets that reference except you and me. Bloody hell, now I'm tainted by your proclivity for parenthetical comments again.) I firmly blame Terz for the fact that I use "right" so often to express assent. And I say "no worries" all the time, even though it's apparently a distinctly Aussie turn of phrase and I haven't been Down Under since 1989.

Even in SMS I find that I gradually adopt the syntax, register and habits of the people I correspond with. If people use more Singlish, I respond in kind. Casey rarely punctuates his messages to me, so I'm a little lax with the punctuation when I SMS him --- even though the grammar cop in me gets really annoyed when that happens. Another friend tends towards punctuating his sentences with "ha ha" and I find myself reciprocating, using the phrase in lieu of the upper case U, umlaut (Ü) that's otherwise my default smiley symbol in SMS. Even the fact that I spell everything in full and construct grammatically sound sentences in SMS can be attributed to G-man, who inducted me into SMSing when I got my first cellphone. G-man and I can compose entire novellas through SMS, if we have to.

So much for the written/touch-typed word. Where does my accent lie? When I was in the US, people thought I sounded British. In the UK, they thought I was American. I've never had any trouble passing as local in Singapore, as opposed to the friend who encountered a cab driver who insisted, "You're not local!" because he had a not-very-Singlish (while still Singaporean) accent.

And then there's the voice in my head --- you know, the voice you think in. That one's Singlish-free, prone to Americanisms like "like", frightfully grammatical, except when it doesn't complete its sentences, but also completely accent-free. It doesn't drawl, it doesn't slouch, it articulates each word one by one. I may not say it like I think it, depending on the environment in which I'm saying it, but the original thought lingers, in the hum of its pure neutrality.

Weird, huh?

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