Faith on the Hill

This Saturday's wordplay is ezy as Elie -- I'm not falling back on conventional ABC, or xyz becos... actually somtimes one does NOT give Da Rationale! -- do you guys (which must include the males as well! lest I be accused of jest having a predilection of pleasing the fair sex! Just, not fair!) still remember one Dr who promised a big sum of money for charities and Desi was waiting with unabated breath for a phone call to get to that Our I-Land; RM20million, ''member?

Okay, as I was saying, it's so easy so I shall impose on my ER -- there's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch in this Hole of a Worlde, rite! -- on a detour, which is an EUPHEMISM for a blogger's luxury, digression. If you gonna ask Desi what digression is,you aren't no mGf, no, not nyet! As for the other B'G WORD, from your most friendly, accessible 24/7 like 7ELEVEN where you go for a freebie five days a week ...AMERICAN HERITAGE DICK:

EUPHEMISM. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

...The act or an example of substituting a mild, indirect, or vague term for one considered harsh, blunt, or offensive:
Euphemisms such as slumber room , abound in...

(Desi being quiet Ignoramus wonders if 'abound in' stands for, in polite terms, what
Sophia LorAn, or Dolly Platoon stood for? Or slimmer versions that Lolita and our very own AMBER CHIA, appearing in an 8-page spread in PLAYBOY making its debut in INdonesia; I wonder why not in NegaraKu? digression away from Digression, maybe the effects of the Tsunami...or isit a Dr Tatsumi? stand for? Beautiful abundance, or abandon, rings a belle?)

So as I was saying, teaching YoungOnes some English was my Sunday's pastime on Desiderata.English once-upon-a-dime which earned me some moola from a certain POST nigh Catsville. Re that de-detour about Dr TATSUMI, please visit a new mansion of mGf @yantouch.wordpress.com taeling "Still on Your Story, Healing Caropenter" today. Once in a w'ile, I would teach these YoungUns that if you wish to aspire towards Exquisite English ala-Shakespeare, there is such a thing as getting your Sperring(Ok, no Da Desi Code, Spelling...) right, especially if you don wanna be a half-past4 reporter like this Err-ing one-lah!

definite NOT definate
focused NOT focussed
Johns Hopkins University NOT John Hopkins or Johns Hopkin

and their Singular forms too

criterion NOT criteria
phenomenon NOT phenomena

And finally,

bastard NOT mustard!if you have to swear at that halfpastSE7EN o'c'ock .......

I hear some YoungOnes whispering:
Desi, behave yourself, there are some Readers here below the Age of Non-Dissent.
Ya-lah, all of you from that Age of Renaissance. Beasting thyself at that 5-star 'otel while Desi eats humble pie like CON BF on a Sundae by a wayside (which is TOmorrow! Lols!) Hehehe, Desi has mastered some blogsworld ways of excalaiming JOY. OR isit MASOCHISTIC ecstasy?

MASOCHISM, according to that Dick again:


...The deriving of sexual gratification, or the tendency to derive sexual gratification, from being physically or emotionally abused. 2. The deriving of pleasure, or...


And at one mGf site one day, some haopoh said his family still buys the Bintang newspaper as the Way to Go to maintain some English standard, and humble Desi came in with a sly suggestion, maybe, just perhaps, he should adVICE his keluarga to go the N(a)st(y) way for badder language desserts after morning BF! I hope my half-awake ER got me on this one!

Ah, ne'er mind, I ENJOYED meself thus far,
and you can say that as the most IMPortant and IMPish diversion of A WRITER'S PATH, besides settling down to mundane Writing for Wat? ....wood for some Dreamers.:) Not Idiotic as mGf poetically, MASOCHISTICALLY, desicribes him/(her) self. Dreamers are genderless, you know. Like Angels.


Okay, I prime for one newspaper for its higher quality English because IMHO, it surely beats its rivals for its Q-CONTROL in its strogner Sub-Editorial Department. Please note the COMPARATIVE forms of the two highlighted adjectives (bolded-lah, like this, within brackets!) and it's deliberatel;y done not without any rationale. See the double negatives in the preceding?

I hereby acknowledge with thanks to JOHAN JAAFAR, columnist for the NST, for making this selection as ezy as Elie, as it's Cut&Paste time/no need dime:

~~~~~~~

Point Blank: A Prime Minister’s fine obsession

Johan Jaafar

AS the studio lights dimmed and the credits rolled, observant viewers saw the Prime Minister wiping his tears on TV.

The most frequently asked question I encountered was, did Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi actually shed tears during the interview? At some point, he appeared overwhelmed by emotion and carefully chose his words at the end.

And yes, he acknowledged how difficult it was to handle the loss of his beloved wife last October in the midst of preparing what is probably the most important document in his tenure as Prime Minister — the Ninth Malaysia Plan.

It was difficult to ask anyone of his or her bereavement. But Pak Lah made it known to his countrymen that he could not be distracted by what happened.

"I cannot ignore my responsibilities only because of a personal loss."

My next question was: "But did it not summon an immense strength from you to ensure that you had the guiding light to continue such a great effort?" His reply spoke volumes. "Pray to God. I pray. I am entrusted to discharge my responsibilities. My way might not be the same as others. My level of patience might not be the same. All of us are not the same. But there are similarities. Our faith in Allah is the same."

I had the honour of interviewing him for RTM1 on the 9MP last Monday. He spent 58 minutes of his precious time at a special studio in Putrajaya talking openly about his beliefs, dedication and hopes for the future. Even before the taping, as we were talking casually about his well-received speech in Parliament the previous Friday, he was bullish about the response from the rakyat and how he envisioned the grand plan becoming a reality "even when we are not around to witness it".

"He spoke from the heart," Information Minister Datuk Zainuddin Mydin (Zam) told me later, and Malaysians who watched the broadcast that Monday night couldn’t agree more.

The Prime Minister addressed another question many wanted to hear: Why continue "Wawasan 2020" (Vision 2020) despite its close association with former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad? It had become synonymous with Tun. Why not start something new so that people will say, "Oh, this is Pak Lah’s."

His answer was vintage Abdullah. "I am committed towards the aim of Vision 2020, just like Tun Mahathir. It was started when Tun Mahathir was with the Government and I was one of the members of that Government. And we have worked in a number of ways over the last 15 years to achieve that aim. We are halfway there. Why would I want to have a new mission just to inscribe my name (on it)?"

Anyone watching the programme certainly agreed with me on how passionate he was on the 9MP. I joked with Zam later that the PM must have memorised every full stop and comma in the 500-page document. He was at ease articulating some of the minor points ignored by the media. He explained how the document differed from previous ones. He wanted the people to look at the Plan in totality, so it was crafted not in thematic form.

Even the implementation was part of the planning. Take the case of human capital, he pointed out. The entire structure and progress that we want would depend on human capital, so it appeared in every one of the five thrusts. It was an integral part of the entire formulation.

Do we have the right mindset, attitude and values to pursue the Plan’s aims? He didn’t mince words. We cannot have two different wavelengths in the country. We must forgo personal differences and interests. We have to strive for excellence. And the world is changing.

"So there are times when we need to change our ways of doing things.

"Even laws are not cast in stone, no law should remain unchanged except the Quran. So we need to change our ways, our attitudes, so, too, our views at a particular period of time."

He implored the people to change with the times, to discard old baggage and to shift our paradigms. The issue about a first-class mentality and First World values is not "cakap kosong" (empty talk). We have to work to achieve that. We have the strength, the capabilities and the infrastructure, and we can do it. To him, failure is not an option.

He was also concerned about racial unity. Again, he was forthright, and argued for the need for the education system to play a unifying role. He said we had to empower education to unite our people.

He even apologised "for taking a long time" to empower our schools. "We need to hasten it …to make the national school the school of choice."

Another matter that moved him was the environment. "It touched my heart, made me disappointed, made me angry." He disagreed that the desecration of the environment was inevitable due to development. It was due to "the way development was carried out". He has instructed state leaders to make sure "we have clean beaches, clean seas and clean rivers".

He told me he was more committed than ever to fight corruption in his party, Government and country. Eradicating corruption was not easy, he admitted. (Emphasis is all Desi's)

"People want to see blood. They want to see how many get slaughtered, how many get prosecuted." But he stressed the importance of prevention. He wanted to rid this country of the culture that allows corruption. Yes, it is a tall order. In his speech in Parliament, he used a Malay proverb to stress his determination: "Patah sayap bertongkat paruh, tetapi hasrat tidak luntur." (If the wing is broken, the beak will support the weight, but the aim will not falter.)

You can’t find fault with a man with such an obsession.

~~~~~~~~

DESIDERATA:

Since Pak Lah assumed the reins of NegaraKu's CEO-ship on November 1, 2003,
I have written occasionally about my faith in his leadership. He comes across as sincere, caring and sharing, and IMHO, most important of all, GOD-FEARING.

If all the team members in his Canioent were like him with an awe of, and an abiding faith in, the Almighty, the Prime Minister's mission, and OUR NATIONAL MISSION, would have been much easier.

The question is: how many members of his team, and the underlings, and sub-ordinates, and those in the corporate world - and YOU and ME -- will go along with Pak Lah?

WALKING THE SAME LINE ...To Be Or Not To Be, that's the perennial question.

I have Faith yet in our PM, dearest Pak Lah, as re-affirmed in my Post just yesterday,as the Nation's Chief Executive Officer, trying his level best to lead up up that Hill.

~~~~~~~


If I Should Fall Behind

FAITH HILL Lyrics

We said we'd walk together
Baby come what may
Back from the twilight
Should we lose our way
As we were walking
A hand should slip free
I'll wait for you
Should I fall behind wait for me

Swore we'd travel together
Darlin' side by side
We'd help each other
Stay in stride
Each lover steps on
So differently
So I'll wait for you
Should I fall behind wait for me

Everyone dreams of
A love lasting and true
You and I know what this world can do
So let's make ourselves be
That the other may see
And I'll wait for you
Should I fall behind wait for me

There's a beautiful river
In the valley ahead
There need be no drought
Soon we will wed
Should we lose each other
In the shadow of the evening dreams
Oh, I'll wait for you
Should I fall behind wait for me
Darlin' I'll wait for you
Should I fall behind wait for me

Wait for me
If I should fall behind wait for me
Wait for me