Today's word is MY word!:) and ... some current thoughts on being a Malaysian

From Wordsmith.org The Magic of Words

Apr 5, 2010
This week's theme
Miscellaneous words

This week's words
desideratum

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

For a change, this week we don't fit words into pigeonholes, we don't put labels on them, we don't assign them to a particular category or arrange them into a theme. We just let them be.

The five words we've selected have nothing in common... well, if you try hard enough, you can probably find something, but enjoy this bouquet of assorted words, or a salmagundi of syllables, if you will.

desideratum

PRONUNCIATION:
(di-sid-uh-RAY-tuhm, -RAA-)

MEANING:
noun: Something considered necessary or desirable.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin desideratum (something desired), from desiderare (to desire).

USAGE:
"The researchers also asked what qualities the two groups [well-off vs street children] of young people would like to see in an 'ideal' Russian president. Twenty-nine percent of both groups said that the ideal president should be kind and tough, with the children of the street slightly more inclined than their better-off counterparts to stress kindness as a desideratum."
Paul Goble; Wealthier Moscow Teenagers More Inclined to View U.S. as Russia's Enemy; The Moscow Times (Russia); Jun 21, 2009.

Explore "desideratum" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
A gun gives you the body, not the bird. - Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

*******************************

Since DPM Muhyiddin Yassin pronounced he's "A Malay first, and a Malaysian second...", many Malaysians have spent lots of column cm giving their 3sen's worth -- two sen recapping the second-ranked politician's words, followed by their own one sen's, if original and not quite expected.

Let me say I was gievn a Mandarin name at name more closely reflected by CHOONG REN LOONG, but along the Malaysian bureacratic ways -- idiosyncratic? -- my documents carry two versions, Chong Yen Long (which appeared in my birth cert, thanks to the registration officer mostly likely ranked mere Constabel/Mata-mate in Mambau -- Yes, I came from the ulu. Later in life, I had to rationalise my name with the Dad's citizenship documentation -- otherwise, out right of abode in Malaysia may be in question? -- and I landed now with Choong Yen Loong. Because most buddies know me as Chong, I officially flag myself off as YL Chong the Journalist.

From Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, paraphrasing: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

The creative writer in me maketh me adopt Desiderata in my teenage years as a penname. Yes, I unconsciously was a disciple of The Bard's dictum though that "rosy" connection did not arise.

In my twilight years, I hjope to be able to write a Malaysian novel to rival "The Year of Living Dangerously" -- the seeds of imaginings had long been sowed, but the germination process is a bit/byte slow. So my dear ER, oif a decade from now I'm still stuck at Chapter 4, take a deep breath, and chorus with Desi: "Sei-Loh!" LOL!

To be continued...
See a borrowed Post dated April 18, 2010 -- YL, Desi