"Be true to your work, your word, and your friend." -- Henry David THOREAU
Time is first a neutraliser, then an eraser, and for most Malaysians, memory fades rather quickly. Desiderata likes to treasure the Nuggets in writing as From Moment to Moment, as "momentous" means something or event of import or impact that registers in our consciousness that much longer compared with the ordinary events -- normally mundane and inconsequential.
Five years ago today I wrote a two-part article of which I am very proud. A writer in his professional output will always look back and stand tall on certain works he has had crafted. Today on Sept 19, 2005, I reprise a NUGGET to share with those not in the kNOw, and for those who have read it before, it's a re-visit which Desi feels is worthwhile, because it is about Malaysia's important crossroads.
It was significant because I believe the nation took a quantum leap into maturing as a democracy, the main Players pursuing political agendas, yet with others pursuing their dreams, main and bit parts players, like in a Shakespearean Play, caught in the current that swept them along, some as passersby, and some as victims Desi would categorise as The Unsung Heroes. The Bard had likened the world as a stage, and all the people are the actors (actresses are contained within the 'actors':) -- Mama Mia, I hope the feminists don't get out a hitgal on Desi!:(
I just pray my EsteemedReaders won't choose to remain as mere spectators. Cos Malaysia belongs equally to everyone of US -- which includes You and Me. We have equal stakes in the present, and the future, in this land called MALAYSIA -- NegaraKu.
Face Off, the book (Part I)
Sept 19, 2000
RUMINATIONS
Chong Yen Long
I deliberately titled this piece thus as after reading Sabri Zain's journal of our country's traumatic times, I believe it could easily be the script for a movie too, not just a book.
Dare we dream that a Malaysian Peter Weir could emerge to give us a visual feast of FACE OFF: A Malaysian Reformasi Diary (1998-99)?
As I read over the weekend the 200-odd pages slowly, digesting it for a "review", I can't help but recall a film I had seen "The Year of Living Dangerously", in which the protagonist is also a newsman.
Sabri's chronicles benefit from his journalism background as most of his paintings and narratives were objective enough, though the choice of words, emotive and descriptive ones, clearly reflects the bent of his
loyalties to the burning issue of the day: the reformation movement spawned by former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.
From the outset, I must make clear this is not the usual book review, as I take the liberty of randomly highlighting segments that to me are telling gems, and Ruminations breaks a tradition by bringing the
reflection in two parts.
First, I quote from Rehman Rashid's foreword which he began with a familiar refrain: "Try to remember the kind of September" which I believe stirs a lot of nostalgia among us, of better times past?
To the romantic at heart ... if anything one expects presaged by the refrain a romantic setting of poetry and song, wine or the intoxicating journalist's brew - teh-tarik - or women in red (I prefer the word "lasses" and in blue too, but some colleagues object) lazing by a sidewalk café in Paris in the springtime, Sabri's diary is not "it".
"It" is romance of the political kind and of a higher plane ... The kind that has a bearing and great import on dear Malaysia's future for a long time yet and it is precious for all of us, Malaysians, to be involved. It is not of normal plane because this year-long sojourn does not instill just momentary pleasure, it aims to touch the inner heartstrings of Malaysians. I hope these feeling Malaysians are a majority of the 22 million here.
Also, Sabri's diary will stand up as an important historical document, with wit thrown in to dilute the reader's swelling anger perhaps, which future generations of Malaysians will treasure ... and not waste
precious time poring over reams and reams of newspaper cuttings to ever get near to any approximation of the truth of momentous history still in progress.
For those who missed the "action" where it happened, centred mainly around Dataran Merdeka (Independence Square) and its vicinity starting in September two years ago, Sabri brings the readers to the arena where the episodes of Malaysian history were played out. The writer's baptism that led him to cross Anwar's path - that Abim kid, his term of endearment - was that moment in 1974 where it started with a
demostration exactly 26 years ago - led by that "Abim kid" highlighting peasants' plight in Tasek Utara, Johor.
For whom the bell tolls
Key figures revolved around Anwar and his family and, of course, the puppet master or script writer or political conductor himself, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, in person, or via his proxies, and the band of Malaysians that visiting American vice-president Al Gore proudly described as "brave Malaysians". (I actually agree with him and 'em, even if you call me "unpatriotic", so be it; as a journalist, I
subscribe to the motto: Don't shoot the messenger!)
Most importantly, the less heralded players, nameless yet exalted, faceless and unobtrusive yet endearing and enduring, are the ordinary Malaysians whom Sabri observed and recorded their "involvement". These bit players cared, and stood up to be counted. To me, the diarist has done them justice by his anecdotes of the true Malaysians ... the sum total of their contributions will form the substance of the reformasi, not just the rhetoric of politicians, though their roles should not be under-estimated.
In "Shopping For Justice" (Oct 10, 1998), Sabri notes:
* "Despite the attacks on demonstrators in the weeks before, despite the warnings almost every day this week that the authorities would crack down on any form of demonstration, despite the fear, despite the
threats, despite the solemn pronouncements by the powers-that-be that the Reformasi ... movement is dead - tens of thousands of Malaysians came out today - defiant and free."
Sabri was more than a little astute when he made some observations in "We Don't Tell Lies ... Up To a Point"( Nov 9, 1998), viz:
* "The only memorable news about Anwar in the weeks leading up to his sacking were denials by him and Mahathir that there was a rift between them and Anwar was being called on to resign. Mahathir was even quoted as willing to "kiss him on the street" to prove the point - a very risky proposition, considering the nature of the sexual accusations that were to emerge later."
* "The news of the country losing its Deputy Prime Minister was the third or fourth segment in the TV3 news that evening - after the top news of a change in the elementary school curriculum and some insignificant official opening by some insignificant minister in some insignificant place I can't even remember."
In "Waiting For Justice" (Nov 13,1998), the introduction quoted Tun Salleh Abas, former Lord President (from the book with K Das, May Day For Justice): And justice cannot be done hastily. And justice cannot be done in the dark ..."
Sabri's diary records the dark moments in Malaysia's justice delivery system ... today it may be Anwar, but tomorrow, the question on many minds was:"For whom will the bell next toll?"
However, the consolation is that Anwar was never alone in facing his travails.
At the Kuala Lumpur High Court:
* "My little group started discussing the reasons they were here. Some of them were here for the first time, others were relative "veterans". 'I've been here almost every day since the trial began,' said the Malay gentleman in the faded batik shirt. 'Sometimes I managed to get in, but most times I can't. I'm just here to show my support for Brother Anwar ...'."
* "The (elderly Malay) lady admitted she was very confused by everything that was happening. 'I don't know if he is guilty or innocent. But even if he is guilty, I don't understand why they are treating him like
this. Our leaders are coming out with so much filth in the papers. It shames his family and it shames our race.'"
In "Changing Times" (Feb 2, 1999), the uplifting observation is that the times in Malaysia, are a-changing ... for the better I believe, as denoted by the revelation that all the panelists in a political forum organised by the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall Civil Rights Committee were all Malays, namely PRM president Dr Syed Husin Ali, PAS Youth chief Mahfuz Omar and PRM's Rustam Sani (now Barisan Alternatif Information Chief).
As recorded in the diary, Rustam noted:
* "One of the changes was that it was now a global world. 'With the Internet, people know there are much better alternatives to what you are fed in the local press! And Internet writers like Sabri Zain now have far more credibility than almost all the chief editors in our local newspapers!'"
Make no mistake, the compliment to the author was not self-trumpeted, but from a respected academician-writer himself, Rustam, whose father was the great Independence fighter Ahmad Boestamam, and whose freedom fight will assuredly continue with many of his family members after
him.
Salute to heroes
And Malaysians must always treasure another veteran freedom fighter - Syed Husin, who was quoted as saying:
* "Race has always been - and still is - used by the rich and powerful to divide and rule. The government's recent scare-mongering campaign among the Chinese community is a classic example of this divide and rule tactic. To protect itself from the wrath of the people, the government is now trying to turn Reformasi in Malaysia into a racial issue. Malays will riot, they say. Malays will burn Chinese shops, they say. Malays will rape Chinese women, they say. And their loudest message of all - remember Indonesia."
The above entry was dated Feb 2, 1999 and today, one and half years later, Syed Husin's reminder still rings true to warn us Malaysians to remain vigilant: Witness the Umno Youth's recent demonstration in front of SCAH housing Malaysian Chinese Organisations' Election Appeals Committee (Suqiu) office to demand an apology for its 17-point appeal allegedly questioning Malay special rights (Genuine appeals must gain govt's hearing: PRM, Sept 18).
In the chapter on "Heroes" (Feb 13, 1999), Sabri salutes the ordinary man in the street who shines, as Malaysia undergoes growing pains in a phase when the "worst of times frequently brings out the best in people".
At a demonstration at Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman on Sept 20, the day of Anwar's arrest, was recalled:
* "... an ordinary security guard became a hero to dozens of people - simply by doing his job. The security guard of a firm located on Jalan TAR allowed drenched, injured demonstrators into the building, locking the grilled gate after them - much to the annoyance of their baton-waving, red-helmeted pursuers. The FRU troopers shouted curses at the security guard, kicking the grill with their boots and demanding to be let in. The security guard - though visibly shaken and frightened - stood firm. This was private property."
"A junior supervisor refused to allow FRU personnel into a fast-food restaurant where demonstrators had sought refuge. They battered the glass door of the restaurant with their batons until it cracked - but the supervisor ensured his "customers" finished their hastily-ordered meals unmolested."
There is another episode of a Malaysian Samaritan - a retired headmaster - who stopped along Jalan Parliamen to help a young man lying on the road, and found himself "in the middle of hundreds of riot police
pursuing demonstrators who had marched to the Prime Minister's official residence that night".
* "An FRU officer in full-riot gear approached him and asked if a car accident had happened! "Can't you see?! This boy's been badly beaten by your own officers!" The policeman then warned the pensioner to leave the injured man alone and let the police "deal" with him. "He's a Malay," the officer said. "You're an Indian - don't get mixed up in this."
The pensioner refused. "Are you stopping a Malaysian from helping another fellow Malaysian in need?"May there be more such God-fearing Malaysian standing tall out there - just carrying out their duties and acting human as human beings should ... We have hopes for this young nation yet.
/\__/\
o o
={_!_}=
Monday, September 19, 2005
Sunday, September 18, 2005
So you want to be a reporter?
desiderata.english
Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty. -- Albert EINSTEIN
INTRO:
After yesterday's Downer of a Ranting, Desi would like to feel spirited this Sunday morn so that we can feel the birds sing, the flowers fragrance and the intoxicating scent of a new-born baby's day. So here's to set thee in a mood for
A Lover's Concerto ...
How gentle is the rain
That falls softly on the meadow
Birds high up in the trees
Serenade the clouds with their melody
Oh! See there beyond the hills
The bright colors of the rainbow
Some magic from above
Made this day for us
Just to fall in love
You hold me in your arms
And say once again you love me
And if your love is true
Everything will be just as wonderful
...
Now you're ready to take that Baby Step towards Being a First Class News Person. Mayhaps.:) Desi is being very Down-to-Earth sometimes. Up too much of an Upper Lifter, neither be a Damned Downer be ... moderation in everything.:)
BODY:
Language is just a tool -- and like any invented by Man, it can be used for Good, or Evil. The components of a modern language are written or oral words, which when combined together, frame an idea or convey a statement or seek information via a question. Emotive words like “Congratulations! Happy birthday!” can give joy and laughter, or, like “You’re stupid; Get lost!” can result in the opposite reactions, sadness and tears. Compare this tool of language with a common kitchen knife, for instance, which can be used to cut vegetables, slice meats or bread, and combined with fork and knife, used to eat a formal continental meal of lamb chop or beef steak. But the same knife can be used to hurt an animal with a slash, or even commit murder most foul of another human being through stabbing the knife into the body!
Then let's compare language with a chopstick, surely this qualifies as another tool invented by Homo sapiens? A YoungFriend nicked Eagle Wings recently wrote an essay featured in this column citing the case of when two sticks are being put together, they serve the purpose of picking up food deftly to feed into a hungry mouth.
Ah food, Chinese cuisine, and exquisite looking chopsticks -- symbols of fine dining at the Emperor's Palace, usually comprising at least eight courses including shark’s fin soup, served by ladies-in-waiting dressed in cheong-sam at a five-star hotel. Have your parents treated the family to a celebration of a member’s wedding day in such a lavish dinner? If your answer is yes: Is describing the meal as an “exquisite dining experience” justified?
But this humble and harmless looking chopstick, when seized by a jealous lover, which can be male or female, can turn murderous, as the wielder in a state of frenzy seizes the weapon and pokes it into the surprised recipient's eyes. Cry Murder Most Foul if the force emits from a lover spurned.
So also language can cut both ways – when used positively it can lift a recipient’s spirit, when wielded as a weapon, it can dampen the human spirit, even destroying it. So when a person uses this tool, it has to be handled with care, like medicine. What this Teacher has been trying to promote here is the use of the English language in a refined and exquisite manner, befitting a cultured society, and like good cuisines throughout the world – be it Chinese, European or Japanese – to cater to fine and exquisite tastes to create the fullest enjoyment possible.
Language is a medium, for better or worse
Language therefore serves mainly to communicate, through body language in the early days before the queer invention of this thing called words, and by symbols ingenuously used by this creature called Man who needed company. When words are used to communicate, the medium plays a role to connect at least two people, the speaker, and the listener or recipient of the message. But often the audience is larger, so there are certain formal rules and etiquette to follow so that there is mutual understanding and acceptance, to reduce tension and confusion. At the individual level, language enables the Inner Voice in each individual to be vocalised for public consumption -- as he/she tries to communicate feelings such as the individual’s needs, emotions like love, hate, and joy and laughter, sadness and defeatism too. This highly “social” role in society defines the level of progress of a community, whether it is lowly and crass, civil and progressive, cultured and advanced.
The world is made up of many countries, but because of technological and scientific quantum jumps in the last few decades, the various communities have become so easily and closely connected the world has become what is aptly called a “global village”.
To Desiderata, modern society has seen a great impact made by the advent of the computer, and especially the Internet, which facilitates an almost instantaneous communication from the four corners of the world to any place with the telecommunications enabling the worldwide web to function, turning the world into truly a borderless one.
And as with any human invention, language usage holds tremendous potential for good, as well as for doing bad. The choices are in the human hands wielding this powerful tool. Emailing has almost made the conventional writing and posting of letters written in long hand a fast disappearing art, which was also the most popular medium used by people across the globe to communicate until just ten years ago.
For Desiderata, it is sad to note that the email use has resulted in people writing less in depth, spending less time in crafting properly worded pieces of writing even an editor would be proud to use in a newspaper. I spy too often emails written in incomplete sentences and “grammer” (deliberately spelt wrongly here, but hey, it does happen, all too frequently!) is thrown out of the window. Even graduates cannot write a short properly-worded business letter of just 100 words nowadays because most of them have fallen into the trap of writing in phrases and clauses, with no beginning or ending, just conveying the points.
All of us have to make decisions at certain crossroads at our lives. Robert Frost had composed a poem that depicts this situation so well that it is impossible not to mention THE ROAD NOT TAKEN when we discuss about the dilemma of being caught in such situations of crucial and critical decision-making. What I’m leading to is an issue some of you Readers-Students may soon be facing on finishing High School or pre-university College studies. What degree courses and career options can you look at should you be inclined towards writing, with some lucky ones being gifted with the natural flair for writing? Some may aspire to become journalists, advertising or creative copy-writers, or even as an editor like Desiderata. What is a suitable course to pursue and the skills to acquire?
One discipline suitable for studies that comes to mind is Mass Communications at the degree level, which is available at several local universities such as Universiti Sains Malaysia and Universit Kebangsaan Malaysia. Such a course would expose the students to various types of writing, writing methodologies, and maybe the latest industry changes in the practices, and styles brought on or affected by the advent of Internet. An obvious career that follows is that as a Journalist, starting from field work as a Reporter. The rest of today’s article will take you through the type of writing encountered in the daily routine of a reporter’s life.
First, this story from Rudyard Kipling's "The Elephant Child" which is relevant:
I keep six honest serving men
(They taught me all I knew),
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
The six words are in media circle referred to as the five Ws and one H -- of "What, Why, When, Where and Who, plus How" – which are the key pointers to news writing, in a format commonly named the INVERSE PYRAMID. A pyramid has a strong foundation which is the base, or main points, of the story (as a news report is called) in the base area, and the body and details would flow upwards to the apex.
So a reporter will be considered “incompetent” if he has the key points near the apex as this part will be the first to be “cut” or subbed (short for sub-edited) – which means the readers are not justly served with a good story! I have had the unpleasant task to ask some reporters, even senior ones with more than five years’ experience, why he/she put the venue of the news event in the last paragraph in a 9-para (short for nine-paragraph) story! Not fiction, but luckily most were humble enough to learn, except for some recalcitrant ones. I normally give up on the latter category after just two reminders. See what I mean that Desiderata is an exacting and demanding, though kind and considerate, teacher!
TEACHER’S GUIDE
Readers are now requested to read a recent report from a local newspaper:
Colourful graft buster charged – with graft
BEIJING (Wednesday): A Chinese official who said he had to wear a bullretproof vest for six years and hire bodyguards after receiving death threats during his fight against corruption has been charged (yesterday) with … corruption.
Huang Jingao, who in a letter to the Communist Party’s newspaper a year ago styled himself as a graft-busting pit-bull terrier, has been accused of taking bribes of nearly USD1million in cash, gems, jewellery, a gold brick and a laptop computer, Xinhua news agency reported.
The one-time party chief of Lianjiang county in Fujian province also kept four mistresses and was fond of prostitutes, media said. - Reuters
The exercise here is to analyse with you where or which of the five Ws and 1H are.
(1) What? Charged with corruption,
(2) Why? Accused of taking bribes.
(3) When? Tuesday (the day before the date stated in the dateline)
(4) Where? Beijing.
(5) and Who? Huang JinGao, a Chinese official.
(6) plus How? Taking bribes of nearly USD1million in cash, gems, jewellery, a gold brick and a laptop computer.
In closing, and for general knowledge that you may be acquainted with some journalism terms, note that:
* The headline or header “Colourful graft buster charged – with graft” is always highlighted.
* A dateline is the Place and Date/Day of the report sourced i.e. Beijing, Wednesday.
(Note that many people mix this word with “deadline”, which is the closing date/time for an event!) For example: The deadline for CHALLENGE 5 -- The Review of TUESDAYS with MORRIE by Mitch Albom is midnight, Septemeber 30, 2005.
*Xinhua (normally in italics) is the news agency usually relied upon for official news out of China.
*Reuters (normally in italics) is the source of this news report, hence it can be considered as a secondary source, using the original filed by Xinhua.
CONCLUSION:
Desiderata has planted many seeds from his Xperience as a Journalist at his Sunday's desiderata.english columns. For newbies to Desi's Place, please travel back in time -- you're able too, as Einstein 's Law of Relativity teaches us -- if you travel faster than c, which is the speed of light. Do it, and you don't ned to use anti-ageing creams or lotions, to get Younger and Youngest, as you grow from 40 this year to 39 next year, and muinus two the followin. Try it, Desi does it every now and then, and I see all my fRiends running around like kindie kids. :)
For a GOoD role model of a journalist, please raed about Kee Thuan Chye as featured in theSUN Weekender. If you bear the postage of 30sen, I'll post thee a hard copy c/- Balai Polis, Stating your PD please!:( Nah, too lazy to venture out as Desi gets lost easily in the Seremban Maze. furthermore, I'm listening to the Lover's Concerto. PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB.
BONUS READING FOR SUNDAY BECAUSE DESIDERATA IS IN A HEIGHTENED MOOD
NOTE: Thiis may be hazardous for your Mental Haelth if you have a short attention span and suffer easily from Information Overload.
With a glass of tehtarik to every obedient pupil, Desi offers some Tit-bits after a lesson in English to ponder:
The other side of EINSTEIN
LONDON: Albert EINSTEIN was the outstanding genius of the 20th century (as was polled by the TIME magazine at the turn of the millennium), but he was also an ordinary man who had many affairs during his two marriages,
This other side of the German-born scientist is explained in a new exhibition to mark Einstein Year. – Reuters
If you have not heard of this equation, you’ve not done justice to the memory of my fav scientist.
Mathemathical equation E = Mc(squared)
E is Energy, M is Mass, and c is the speed of light
•
o
> Media
And from The Independent is a feature on the Great Reporters in America, in the eyes of DAVID RANDALL.
Newspapers: They went, they saw, they filed: hail the reporter as conquering hero.
Great reporters are the subject of a new book by David Randall. Their modern-day counterparts, he says, need to get out more.
Published: 11 September 2005
Imagine, if you will, James Cameron reporting from the Berlin Airlift today. There he is in a bar, about to order another whisky, when his phone rings. "James, desk here, Bild website are saying flights are due to start. Can you re-nose your piece?"
Or William Russell in the Crimea, receiving yet another email from the office: "Bill, Sky coverage of Charge pretty thorough. Can you stick to the colour and keep it to 700? There's a royal story breaking. Return to office soonest, please."
When you’ve just written, as I have, a book that chronicles the greatest reportersin newspaper history, you’re apt to finish the task asking yourself questions about the directions reporting is going on.
Among others views, Randall’s point worthy of note is quoted here: “(But) we ought to be concerned about the down-grading of news, and the increasingly office-bound lives of most reporters.
“They should be going into the world and poking about where authority does not want them to look. If they don’t, editors will have nothing worth editing, and columnists nothing worth twittering about.
“Reporters should be the information hunter-gatherers of any society. But what, now, are they hunting? How are they gathering? And why are so many of them still hanging around the camp-fire?”
His book profles his 13 best of all time — three women and10 men.
Here I excerpt the one which intrigues me the most:
MEYER BERGER,
REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Berger left school at 13, was shy and unassertive; his eyesight wasn’t up to much, and he was cursed with a stomach complaint which prevented him from starying too long from home.
Thus handicapped, he went on to the streets of the toughest city in the world and became, in my view, the best reporter who ever lived.
A prolonged spell as a rewrite man, taking stories apart and putting them together again, as his university. No one has ever written intros that better encapsulated a story’s facts and spirit in a few lines.
On te death of a blind musician in the subway: “The sixth sense that had preserved Oscar England from harm rhough the thirty-four dark years of his life betrayed him yesterday. One step too many in the MBT Union Square station and he was wedged, lifeless, between a north-bound express and the concrete platform.”
And on a failed circus escape: “Jackie, a young but lassitudinous circus lion, won more thanan hour of freedom by escape from his cage in Madison Square Garden baasement yesterday,but frittered it away in dreamy brooding.”
His career climaxed with a report of a multiple shooting for which he interviewed 50 people in a day, returned to the office and wrote a story of 4,000 words in two and a half hours, not one word of which was changed.
The story brought Berger a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize. He continued to spend days off, notebook in hand and camera over shoulder, scouring the city’s sidewalks for stories. More than anyone else, Berger is the reporter’s reporter. – The Independent
PS: Please pay your weekly fee of USD10,000 on the >>>>>>>WAY OUT of spiritedestination-to-be.
Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty. -- Albert EINSTEIN
INTRO:
After yesterday's Downer of a Ranting, Desi would like to feel spirited this Sunday morn so that we can feel the birds sing, the flowers fragrance and the intoxicating scent of a new-born baby's day. So here's to set thee in a mood for
A Lover's Concerto ...
How gentle is the rain
That falls softly on the meadow
Birds high up in the trees
Serenade the clouds with their melody
Oh! See there beyond the hills
The bright colors of the rainbow
Some magic from above
Made this day for us
Just to fall in love
You hold me in your arms
And say once again you love me
And if your love is true
Everything will be just as wonderful
...
Now you're ready to take that Baby Step towards Being a First Class News Person. Mayhaps.:) Desi is being very Down-to-Earth sometimes. Up too much of an Upper Lifter, neither be a Damned Downer be ... moderation in everything.:)
BODY:
Language is just a tool -- and like any invented by Man, it can be used for Good, or Evil. The components of a modern language are written or oral words, which when combined together, frame an idea or convey a statement or seek information via a question. Emotive words like “Congratulations! Happy birthday!” can give joy and laughter, or, like “You’re stupid; Get lost!” can result in the opposite reactions, sadness and tears. Compare this tool of language with a common kitchen knife, for instance, which can be used to cut vegetables, slice meats or bread, and combined with fork and knife, used to eat a formal continental meal of lamb chop or beef steak. But the same knife can be used to hurt an animal with a slash, or even commit murder most foul of another human being through stabbing the knife into the body!
Then let's compare language with a chopstick, surely this qualifies as another tool invented by Homo sapiens? A YoungFriend nicked Eagle Wings recently wrote an essay featured in this column citing the case of when two sticks are being put together, they serve the purpose of picking up food deftly to feed into a hungry mouth.
Ah food, Chinese cuisine, and exquisite looking chopsticks -- symbols of fine dining at the Emperor's Palace, usually comprising at least eight courses including shark’s fin soup, served by ladies-in-waiting dressed in cheong-sam at a five-star hotel. Have your parents treated the family to a celebration of a member’s wedding day in such a lavish dinner? If your answer is yes: Is describing the meal as an “exquisite dining experience” justified?
But this humble and harmless looking chopstick, when seized by a jealous lover, which can be male or female, can turn murderous, as the wielder in a state of frenzy seizes the weapon and pokes it into the surprised recipient's eyes. Cry Murder Most Foul if the force emits from a lover spurned.
So also language can cut both ways – when used positively it can lift a recipient’s spirit, when wielded as a weapon, it can dampen the human spirit, even destroying it. So when a person uses this tool, it has to be handled with care, like medicine. What this Teacher has been trying to promote here is the use of the English language in a refined and exquisite manner, befitting a cultured society, and like good cuisines throughout the world – be it Chinese, European or Japanese – to cater to fine and exquisite tastes to create the fullest enjoyment possible.
Language is a medium, for better or worse
Language therefore serves mainly to communicate, through body language in the early days before the queer invention of this thing called words, and by symbols ingenuously used by this creature called Man who needed company. When words are used to communicate, the medium plays a role to connect at least two people, the speaker, and the listener or recipient of the message. But often the audience is larger, so there are certain formal rules and etiquette to follow so that there is mutual understanding and acceptance, to reduce tension and confusion. At the individual level, language enables the Inner Voice in each individual to be vocalised for public consumption -- as he/she tries to communicate feelings such as the individual’s needs, emotions like love, hate, and joy and laughter, sadness and defeatism too. This highly “social” role in society defines the level of progress of a community, whether it is lowly and crass, civil and progressive, cultured and advanced.
The world is made up of many countries, but because of technological and scientific quantum jumps in the last few decades, the various communities have become so easily and closely connected the world has become what is aptly called a “global village”.
To Desiderata, modern society has seen a great impact made by the advent of the computer, and especially the Internet, which facilitates an almost instantaneous communication from the four corners of the world to any place with the telecommunications enabling the worldwide web to function, turning the world into truly a borderless one.
And as with any human invention, language usage holds tremendous potential for good, as well as for doing bad. The choices are in the human hands wielding this powerful tool. Emailing has almost made the conventional writing and posting of letters written in long hand a fast disappearing art, which was also the most popular medium used by people across the globe to communicate until just ten years ago.
For Desiderata, it is sad to note that the email use has resulted in people writing less in depth, spending less time in crafting properly worded pieces of writing even an editor would be proud to use in a newspaper. I spy too often emails written in incomplete sentences and “grammer” (deliberately spelt wrongly here, but hey, it does happen, all too frequently!) is thrown out of the window. Even graduates cannot write a short properly-worded business letter of just 100 words nowadays because most of them have fallen into the trap of writing in phrases and clauses, with no beginning or ending, just conveying the points.
All of us have to make decisions at certain crossroads at our lives. Robert Frost had composed a poem that depicts this situation so well that it is impossible not to mention THE ROAD NOT TAKEN when we discuss about the dilemma of being caught in such situations of crucial and critical decision-making. What I’m leading to is an issue some of you Readers-Students may soon be facing on finishing High School or pre-university College studies. What degree courses and career options can you look at should you be inclined towards writing, with some lucky ones being gifted with the natural flair for writing? Some may aspire to become journalists, advertising or creative copy-writers, or even as an editor like Desiderata. What is a suitable course to pursue and the skills to acquire?
One discipline suitable for studies that comes to mind is Mass Communications at the degree level, which is available at several local universities such as Universiti Sains Malaysia and Universit Kebangsaan Malaysia. Such a course would expose the students to various types of writing, writing methodologies, and maybe the latest industry changes in the practices, and styles brought on or affected by the advent of Internet. An obvious career that follows is that as a Journalist, starting from field work as a Reporter. The rest of today’s article will take you through the type of writing encountered in the daily routine of a reporter’s life.
First, this story from Rudyard Kipling's "The Elephant Child" which is relevant:
I keep six honest serving men
(They taught me all I knew),
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
The six words are in media circle referred to as the five Ws and one H -- of "What, Why, When, Where and Who, plus How" – which are the key pointers to news writing, in a format commonly named the INVERSE PYRAMID. A pyramid has a strong foundation which is the base, or main points, of the story (as a news report is called) in the base area, and the body and details would flow upwards to the apex.
So a reporter will be considered “incompetent” if he has the key points near the apex as this part will be the first to be “cut” or subbed (short for sub-edited) – which means the readers are not justly served with a good story! I have had the unpleasant task to ask some reporters, even senior ones with more than five years’ experience, why he/she put the venue of the news event in the last paragraph in a 9-para (short for nine-paragraph) story! Not fiction, but luckily most were humble enough to learn, except for some recalcitrant ones. I normally give up on the latter category after just two reminders. See what I mean that Desiderata is an exacting and demanding, though kind and considerate, teacher!
TEACHER’S GUIDE
Readers are now requested to read a recent report from a local newspaper:
Colourful graft buster charged – with graft
BEIJING (Wednesday): A Chinese official who said he had to wear a bullretproof vest for six years and hire bodyguards after receiving death threats during his fight against corruption has been charged (yesterday) with … corruption.
Huang Jingao, who in a letter to the Communist Party’s newspaper a year ago styled himself as a graft-busting pit-bull terrier, has been accused of taking bribes of nearly USD1million in cash, gems, jewellery, a gold brick and a laptop computer, Xinhua news agency reported.
The one-time party chief of Lianjiang county in Fujian province also kept four mistresses and was fond of prostitutes, media said. - Reuters
The exercise here is to analyse with you where or which of the five Ws and 1H are.
(1) What? Charged with corruption,
(2) Why? Accused of taking bribes.
(3) When? Tuesday (the day before the date stated in the dateline)
(4) Where? Beijing.
(5) and Who? Huang JinGao, a Chinese official.
(6) plus How? Taking bribes of nearly USD1million in cash, gems, jewellery, a gold brick and a laptop computer.
In closing, and for general knowledge that you may be acquainted with some journalism terms, note that:
* The headline or header “Colourful graft buster charged – with graft” is always highlighted.
* A dateline is the Place and Date/Day of the report sourced i.e. Beijing, Wednesday.
(Note that many people mix this word with “deadline”, which is the closing date/time for an event!) For example: The deadline for CHALLENGE 5 -- The Review of TUESDAYS with MORRIE by Mitch Albom is midnight, Septemeber 30, 2005.
*Xinhua (normally in italics) is the news agency usually relied upon for official news out of China.
*Reuters (normally in italics) is the source of this news report, hence it can be considered as a secondary source, using the original filed by Xinhua.
CONCLUSION:
Desiderata has planted many seeds from his Xperience as a Journalist at his Sunday's desiderata.english columns. For newbies to Desi's Place, please travel back in time -- you're able too, as Einstein 's Law of Relativity teaches us -- if you travel faster than c, which is the speed of light. Do it, and you don't ned to use anti-ageing creams or lotions, to get Younger and Youngest, as you grow from 40 this year to 39 next year, and muinus two the followin. Try it, Desi does it every now and then, and I see all my fRiends running around like kindie kids. :)
For a GOoD role model of a journalist, please raed about Kee Thuan Chye as featured in theSUN Weekender. If you bear the postage of 30sen, I'll post thee a hard copy c/- Balai Polis, Stating your PD please!:( Nah, too lazy to venture out as Desi gets lost easily in the Seremban Maze. furthermore, I'm listening to the Lover's Concerto. PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB.
BONUS READING FOR SUNDAY BECAUSE DESIDERATA IS IN A HEIGHTENED MOOD
NOTE: Thiis may be hazardous for your Mental Haelth if you have a short attention span and suffer easily from Information Overload.
With a glass of tehtarik to every obedient pupil, Desi offers some Tit-bits after a lesson in English to ponder:
The other side of EINSTEIN
LONDON: Albert EINSTEIN was the outstanding genius of the 20th century (as was polled by the TIME magazine at the turn of the millennium), but he was also an ordinary man who had many affairs during his two marriages,
This other side of the German-born scientist is explained in a new exhibition to mark Einstein Year. – Reuters
If you have not heard of this equation, you’ve not done justice to the memory of my fav scientist.
Mathemathical equation E = Mc(squared)
E is Energy, M is Mass, and c is the speed of light
•
o
> Media
And from The Independent is a feature on the Great Reporters in America, in the eyes of DAVID RANDALL.
Newspapers: They went, they saw, they filed: hail the reporter as conquering hero.
Great reporters are the subject of a new book by David Randall. Their modern-day counterparts, he says, need to get out more.
Published: 11 September 2005
Imagine, if you will, James Cameron reporting from the Berlin Airlift today. There he is in a bar, about to order another whisky, when his phone rings. "James, desk here, Bild website are saying flights are due to start. Can you re-nose your piece?"
Or William Russell in the Crimea, receiving yet another email from the office: "Bill, Sky coverage of Charge pretty thorough. Can you stick to the colour and keep it to 700? There's a royal story breaking. Return to office soonest, please."
When you’ve just written, as I have, a book that chronicles the greatest reportersin newspaper history, you’re apt to finish the task asking yourself questions about the directions reporting is going on.
Among others views, Randall’s point worthy of note is quoted here: “(But) we ought to be concerned about the down-grading of news, and the increasingly office-bound lives of most reporters.
“They should be going into the world and poking about where authority does not want them to look. If they don’t, editors will have nothing worth editing, and columnists nothing worth twittering about.
“Reporters should be the information hunter-gatherers of any society. But what, now, are they hunting? How are they gathering? And why are so many of them still hanging around the camp-fire?”
His book profles his 13 best of all time — three women and10 men.
Here I excerpt the one which intrigues me the most:
MEYER BERGER,
REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Berger left school at 13, was shy and unassertive; his eyesight wasn’t up to much, and he was cursed with a stomach complaint which prevented him from starying too long from home.
Thus handicapped, he went on to the streets of the toughest city in the world and became, in my view, the best reporter who ever lived.
A prolonged spell as a rewrite man, taking stories apart and putting them together again, as his university. No one has ever written intros that better encapsulated a story’s facts and spirit in a few lines.
On te death of a blind musician in the subway: “The sixth sense that had preserved Oscar England from harm rhough the thirty-four dark years of his life betrayed him yesterday. One step too many in the MBT Union Square station and he was wedged, lifeless, between a north-bound express and the concrete platform.”
And on a failed circus escape: “Jackie, a young but lassitudinous circus lion, won more thanan hour of freedom by escape from his cage in Madison Square Garden baasement yesterday,but frittered it away in dreamy brooding.”
His career climaxed with a report of a multiple shooting for which he interviewed 50 people in a day, returned to the office and wrote a story of 4,000 words in two and a half hours, not one word of which was changed.
The story brought Berger a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize. He continued to spend days off, notebook in hand and camera over shoulder, scouring the city’s sidewalks for stories. More than anyone else, Berger is the reporter’s reporter. – The Independent
PS: Please pay your weekly fee of USD10,000 on the >>>>>>>WAY OUT of spiritedestination-to-be.
Taken for a ride? Part 2
Sub-title: Who got fixed?
Desiderata was planning for a light&easy Saturday after posting the latest at 12.10am in the devilish hours of the day when Others Sleep amd this Journo Works for his Supper and also that the Addicts can get their FIX!
Until this morn’s news headline at my BF (non-CON, that’s to look forward for tomorrow…)stares at me:
From The Star, 17 September 2005 frontpage:
Customs D-G:
I was fixed
Customs and Excise Department director-general Tan Sri Abdul Halil Mutalib admitted that he was the unidentified department head in the RM5mil retirement parties controversy, but said the story was circulated to smear his name.
In an interview with The Star,
He claims that those out to get him are:
Customs offocials eyeing his job.
Smugglers whom he had brought to book.
AP holders who abuse their permits.
ALLEGATIONS
RM5mil bill for lavish farewell paries
State Customs directors instructed to pay RM1,000
to buy souvenirs for Halil and his wife
Golfing “simmit” cum holiday in Langkawi
Nepotism in the award of APs to his son, Abdul Hairel
REPLIES
$$$Usual amount spent on any retiring director-general State Cutoms directors told that they could contribute any amount,or even refuse to pay, for a farewell dinner for Halil
A meeting of all state directors to discuss departmental issues
Son applied in his own right as bona-fide car importer
DESIDERATA: My first reaction on reading The Star’s headline quoting that D-G: I was fixed
was:
“Hey, we the people are the ones being fixed, again and again!”
Or to put in euphemistically, we the Rakyat, have been taken for many a ride, -- repeatedly, do you politicians/government leaders and officials, hear us? -- so much so that many of us, like Sabrina Tan, regular GUEST BLOGGER here, H J Angus, esteemed conversationist here, both also writing in their own blogs, have grown mighty tired, using another fellow writer Mito-C’s line: “tired of being tired”!
TELL YOU WHY.
We’ve seen repeats of Government infrastructure projects that failed to be properly completed after all the monies had been paid, roofs of buildings that collapsed in less than a year of occupation, School Laboratories 90 percent (yes, nine in 10 built) could not qualify for CF (certificate of Fitness), issuance of TAXI Licences and APs (Approved Permits), and other rent-seeking licences (like 007 -- making a killing?) going to the wrong hands (already rich-and-quiely infamous until former PM did us a favour for asking that the AP recipients be exposed, like the Emperor’s new clothes!), …so mang déjà vu that Desi has seen his spirits decline to an ebb,to a point sometimes one is inclined to call it a day. But like some masochistic (?) phonenix, writers often come back after a hiastus, strive again, and again, with the mutual help of kindred spirits, to rise, then stumble again, and yet get up, trying to Soar like with Eagle Wings?
I’m not going to reprise many of the same issues I’ve covered in my earlier posts, they may get Boringer and Boringer -- rest assured won't get to that Boringest level, someone already took the honours!:) -- but ask these two questions:
• After the controversial AP issue had been publicized for weeks on end, it had then quitened, now seems buried – so what’s the purpose and consequences of the whole exercise? RIP1? • After the senior Vice-President of UMNO Isa Samad was found gilty of “money politics” bu his party disciplinary board, all he suffred was “suspension for six years” and loss of his political appopintments, including as Federal Territories Minister. He remains as Member of Prliament. So what's the purpose and cosnsequence of the 'hole exercise? RIP2?
DESIDERATA: Just a JoePublic member, using common sense, aren't we justified in feeling that the two cases cited here should warrant further investigation by the ANTI-CORRUTION AGENCY, of not just the protagonists who were exposed, but also the accomplices to the acts? The givers, and other receivers of “money/monies/favours/things in kind like permits, licences -- are they above the law because some have some funnny prefixes in front of their names, perhaps? Some are related to the political leaders, maybe?? Some are married to parties in high palaces, mayhaps???
I can only hazard educated GU'SSes, yes? That can be hazardous too! Not good for my health, but well, I'm truly now in the well (dalam kandungan sihat, see, I kNOw some Bahasa steal:)..., ah, the luxury of DIGRESSION:), at least I'm not practising EXPLOITATION.:( I really don't kNOw anymore.
I’m sorry to spoil my EsteemedReaders' weekend when I had actually planned for a satay night out later, then a film fiesta with my buddies for the morrow, but you don’t kNOw if these news updates would dampen their spirits. As a trained Journalist (hey, go read about Kee Thuan Chye, a GOoD role model of a Journalist if there is one -- in theSUN, grab a copy from the 7ELEVEN! See I'm just and fair, promoting ALL the English dailies...:), I know I’ll rise again after a breather, but many of JoePublic members have long given up – I know some of my buddies have resigned themselves to becoming mere spectators on the sidelines of the grand Malaysian sandiwara, opera, wayang … they tell me: "Chong (some call me YL), we apprecaite what you're doing. We'll support you in spirit-lah..."
Someone moans I was fixed
Desi mourns: We Malaysians have been fixed from way back when …?
POsTSCRIPT:
For more of the same, please read THE NST frontpage news headlined:
SHOCKING EVIDENCE
THE LOWDOWN ON THAT UPCOMING RM5 MILLION FAREWELL BASH
(And on pages 2 and 3, a more lifting reaction form dear Pak Lah, well-meaning as usual…)
Over the top send-off, says PM
Even Dr M’s farewell ‘didn’t cost that much’&
I am not that stupid, says Halil
which the NST reported, among others:
Contacted by phone (today), Halil denied that his department had held or been asked to hold lavish parties to mark his retirement.
Sounding agitated by the focus on his department since the NST story, he said: “I have never spent the department’s money for such a purpose, neither have I sanctioned such a thing.”
DESIDERATA’s parting shots to Halil’s highlighted replies:
• Halil’s quotes to the NST and the Star seem to contracdict each other on the main charge. But I’ll go by relying on The Star’s summary of Halil’s defence on the main allegation against him that RM5mil was being spent on farewelling him, and Halil was quoted as saying it was the “Usual amount spent on any retiring director-general”.
If indeed Halil’s reply to the Star were true, Malaysians have very good reason to be afraid, to be very afraid. JeffOoi of Screenshots used to end by saying in learning of such wastage of the taxpayers’ monies, and nimcompoopish replies of such chincanery and buffoonery: “I weep for Malaysia.”
Desiderata has similarly on several occasions, writ: I weep for my country.
Sometimes, I say it differently: I don’t kNOw whether to laugh or to cry.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Taken for a ride? I really don't kNOw anymore...
Recently I greeted a Blogger-Friend who droppped by after some hiatus:
desiderata said...
"Hi h j angus:
Long time no see, how's the going so far?
I hope you are enjoying the ride, I do, tho I sometimes get overwhelmed by the "bad" vibes shooting at JoePublic from all directions.
We "seniors" just have to try seeing as many Rainbows from among the clouds, eh?"
And this was exerpted from his reply:
H J Angus said...
*"...Blogging is OK so far but appear to be running out of issues as most are the same old ones. ..."*
I can emphatise with H J Angus -- I had the same feeling for the past few months, yet the reality is that for most Malaysians, life goes on us usual.
Can any individual make a difference? I often ponder over this at night before I catch more than 40 winks.
Don't lose sleep over it, H J, you are not the only lONEly one feeling such "resignation" ... sometimes we become "tired of being tired..."
WHY? WHY? WHY?
Let's see, I recap some news headlinesin recent days which Desi was too tired" to comment on, because in H J Angus' words ..."...as most are the same old ones. ..."*
RM5m farewell parties for D-G
The NST September 15, 2005 Page 6 report says "Lavish farewell parties costing more than RM5million are being organised by a goevrnment department for its retiring director-general.
Departmetal sources said the functions, like roadshows, were being held in almost all States for the officer who would be retiring next month."
Next headline: UPSR English paper may have been leaked
The NST same date Page 4 report says "The faith of Malaysians in the confidentiality of the public examination system is being tested yet again, afteer the exam paper leaks of recent years.
This time the alleged leakinvolves English Paper 2 in the Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah held on Sept 7."
Next headline: Najib: We need details to prove graft
Again, the NST September 16 Page 6 report says "Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has asked for more details on allegations of corruption in the construction sector.
"It is hard to act on a general statement," he said, commenting on yesterday's (Sept 14's) allegation of rampant corruption in the indsutry by Malay Contractors Association president Datuk Roslan Awang Chik.
"Roslan had, among others, alleged that contractors forced to bribe officials for projects would not report the matter for fear of being blacklisted."
As far as DESIDERATA has on record, it's the same old record being played out, again and again, except the background details vary. It's a case of everyone knows it's happening, except for the gatekeeper and wardens to the palatial grounds and safe-deposit boxes.
Desi, like H J and Mito-C, sometimes sighs: I don't really kNOw anymore!
Compare this with an analogous scene at the Technosphere:
a news item I sighted as reported by
Asia Business Consulting
I simply don't know
"With all the talks about 3G, CDMA, faster internet, VoIP, broadband, and so on, people get confused, for sure. It is like coming to a new country or working in a new company.
It is lingo, not understandable by those who are not very familiar with this terminology. As a company, you need to understand how the consumer thinks, and not create a language that actually puts a barrier between you and the consumer. A survey in Australia by IDC has now found that that Australians are clueless about 3G mobile technology, even so it has been around in Australia for the past 2 years."
Only in Australia? I guess it is a global phenomena. And I believe that only when language gets easier and people start to understand, 3G and related content will become more widespread.
Desi won't elaborate, except he hopes EsteemedReaders can see some connectivity with the contents of the AsiaBusinessConsulting report and the National News as highlighted with those headlines that say it all.
Now I touch yet again on another matter that Desi has constantly harped on: PETRONAS and OUR COUNTRY's oil resource. If I sound like an old granny, I don't apologise, because our country's future -- yours and mine too -- hangs in the balance.
A Sept 5, 2005 news agency report said that oil prices are set to crash from the previous week's record highs as a speculative market bubble bursts with an impact that could make the hi-tech bust of 2000 "look like a picnic", business publisher Steve Forbes has predicted.
Forbes said the high oil prices currently dampening the US economy, which peaked at more than US$70 barrel (since fallen back a little) as Hurricane Katrina headed for the US Gulf Coast, would fall to USD30-35 a barrel within a year.
"I'll make a bold prediction... in 12 months, you're going to see oil down to USD35-40 barrel," he said, according to Agence France-Presse.
"It's a huge bubble, I don't know what's going to pop it but eventually it will pop - you cannot go against supply and demand, you cannot go against the fundamentals forever."
DESIDERATA: I hope that Forbes is right in his prediction, then it gives a chance to prove that the Government has been taking us for a ride.
Background: The Government said whenever the world oil price goes up. Malaysia has NO CHOICE but to raise the pump prices. Every time this happens, of course it leads to INFLATION, as every business would be affected in some way by the increased transportation chages.
In the last eight months, the pump prices had been raised FOUR TIMES, as the world oil prices rose.
But when the world oil price comes down, do you think the Government will lower the pump prices.
DESIDERATA's prediction: Should Forbes prediction come true, i.e. world oil prices plummet to about half the present levels, the Government will still maintain the pump prices. Pump prices, once raised, will never go down. Let's be patient and see what happens come December...
DESIDERATA has been consistently arguing that we have been taken for a ride because it's always a case of Heads the Government&Petronas win, Tails the People lose.
CONCLUSION: I really don't kNOw anymore What the F...s (no, cesnor that!); What the Hell is going on in my country!
FOR THE RECORD:
Another report from The NST,
Chief Secretary orders probe into ‘absurd’ splurge
PUTRAJAYA, Sept 15:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"What! RM5 million?"
Chief Secretary Tan Sri Samsudin Osman’s reaction was enough to describe his feelings about the humongous bill for farewell parties being held for a retiring director-general.
"This cannot be left unchecked. I am going to raise the matter with the minister responsible for the department," he said.
Samsudin has also directed Public Service Department director-general Datuk Ismail Adam Samsudin to investigate the matter.
He said ministries should justify expenditure for such events, adding that it was "absurd" to splurge on farewells for any retiring civil servant.
"If this is truly the case, it is worrying. Government earnings from consolidated funds should only be used by agencies for beneficial purposes."
desiderata said...
"Hi h j angus:
Long time no see, how's the going so far?
I hope you are enjoying the ride, I do, tho I sometimes get overwhelmed by the "bad" vibes shooting at JoePublic from all directions.
We "seniors" just have to try seeing as many Rainbows from among the clouds, eh?"
And this was exerpted from his reply:
H J Angus said...
*"...Blogging is OK so far but appear to be running out of issues as most are the same old ones. ..."*
I can emphatise with H J Angus -- I had the same feeling for the past few months, yet the reality is that for most Malaysians, life goes on us usual.
Can any individual make a difference? I often ponder over this at night before I catch more than 40 winks.
Don't lose sleep over it, H J, you are not the only lONEly one feeling such "resignation" ... sometimes we become "tired of being tired..."
WHY? WHY? WHY?
Let's see, I recap some news headlinesin recent days which Desi was too tired" to comment on, because in H J Angus' words ..."...as most are the same old ones. ..."*
RM5m farewell parties for D-G
The NST September 15, 2005 Page 6 report says "Lavish farewell parties costing more than RM5million are being organised by a goevrnment department for its retiring director-general.
Departmetal sources said the functions, like roadshows, were being held in almost all States for the officer who would be retiring next month."
Next headline: UPSR English paper may have been leaked
The NST same date Page 4 report says "The faith of Malaysians in the confidentiality of the public examination system is being tested yet again, afteer the exam paper leaks of recent years.
This time the alleged leakinvolves English Paper 2 in the Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah held on Sept 7."
Next headline: Najib: We need details to prove graft
Again, the NST September 16 Page 6 report says "Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has asked for more details on allegations of corruption in the construction sector.
"It is hard to act on a general statement," he said, commenting on yesterday's (Sept 14's) allegation of rampant corruption in the indsutry by Malay Contractors Association president Datuk Roslan Awang Chik.
"Roslan had, among others, alleged that contractors forced to bribe officials for projects would not report the matter for fear of being blacklisted."
As far as DESIDERATA has on record, it's the same old record being played out, again and again, except the background details vary. It's a case of everyone knows it's happening, except for the gatekeeper and wardens to the palatial grounds and safe-deposit boxes.
Desi, like H J and Mito-C, sometimes sighs: I don't really kNOw anymore!
Compare this with an analogous scene at the Technosphere:
a news item I sighted as reported by
Asia Business Consulting
I simply don't know
"With all the talks about 3G, CDMA, faster internet, VoIP, broadband, and so on, people get confused, for sure. It is like coming to a new country or working in a new company.
It is lingo, not understandable by those who are not very familiar with this terminology. As a company, you need to understand how the consumer thinks, and not create a language that actually puts a barrier between you and the consumer. A survey in Australia by IDC has now found that that Australians are clueless about 3G mobile technology, even so it has been around in Australia for the past 2 years."
Only in Australia? I guess it is a global phenomena. And I believe that only when language gets easier and people start to understand, 3G and related content will become more widespread.
Desi won't elaborate, except he hopes EsteemedReaders can see some connectivity with the contents of the AsiaBusinessConsulting report and the National News as highlighted with those headlines that say it all.
Now I touch yet again on another matter that Desi has constantly harped on: PETRONAS and OUR COUNTRY's oil resource. If I sound like an old granny, I don't apologise, because our country's future -- yours and mine too -- hangs in the balance.
A Sept 5, 2005 news agency report said that oil prices are set to crash from the previous week's record highs as a speculative market bubble bursts with an impact that could make the hi-tech bust of 2000 "look like a picnic", business publisher Steve Forbes has predicted.
Forbes said the high oil prices currently dampening the US economy, which peaked at more than US$70 barrel (since fallen back a little) as Hurricane Katrina headed for the US Gulf Coast, would fall to USD30-35 a barrel within a year.
"I'll make a bold prediction... in 12 months, you're going to see oil down to USD35-40 barrel," he said, according to Agence France-Presse.
"It's a huge bubble, I don't know what's going to pop it but eventually it will pop - you cannot go against supply and demand, you cannot go against the fundamentals forever."
DESIDERATA: I hope that Forbes is right in his prediction, then it gives a chance to prove that the Government has been taking us for a ride.
Background: The Government said whenever the world oil price goes up. Malaysia has NO CHOICE but to raise the pump prices. Every time this happens, of course it leads to INFLATION, as every business would be affected in some way by the increased transportation chages.
In the last eight months, the pump prices had been raised FOUR TIMES, as the world oil prices rose.
But when the world oil price comes down, do you think the Government will lower the pump prices.
DESIDERATA's prediction: Should Forbes prediction come true, i.e. world oil prices plummet to about half the present levels, the Government will still maintain the pump prices. Pump prices, once raised, will never go down. Let's be patient and see what happens come December...
DESIDERATA has been consistently arguing that we have been taken for a ride because it's always a case of Heads the Government&Petronas win, Tails the People lose.
CONCLUSION: I really don't kNOw anymore What the F...s (no, cesnor that!); What the Hell is going on in my country!
FOR THE RECORD:
Another report from The NST,
Chief Secretary orders probe into ‘absurd’ splurge
PUTRAJAYA, Sept 15:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"What! RM5 million?"
Chief Secretary Tan Sri Samsudin Osman’s reaction was enough to describe his feelings about the humongous bill for farewell parties being held for a retiring director-general.
"This cannot be left unchecked. I am going to raise the matter with the minister responsible for the department," he said.
Samsudin has also directed Public Service Department director-general Datuk Ismail Adam Samsudin to investigate the matter.
He said ministries should justify expenditure for such events, adding that it was "absurd" to splurge on farewells for any retiring civil servant.
"If this is truly the case, it is worrying. Government earnings from consolidated funds should only be used by agencies for beneficial purposes."
Friday, September 16, 2005
Threads of our lives
Is it coincidence?
Is it an Invisisble Hand at work?
Or it’s just meaningful progression?
Desiderata thinks it’s a combination of all the above… that led to the spinning of some unusual golden threads in my life. It all began with a decision I made on the historic day in Julius Caesar’s life too – the Ides of March, but it’s centuries later, off course. Julius lost his life while I won gold.
I hope it did the same to my Esteemed Visitors – the threading of gold through your life’s journey as you set foot at Desi’s Place. On visiting other Blogs, I have become enriched; similarly I pray Desi's Guests have found some:
“*
Silver Threads Among the Gold
Darling, I am growing old,
Silver threads among the gold
Shine upon my brow today,
Life is fading fast away.
But, my darling, you will be, will be,
Always young and fair to me,
Yes, my darling, you will be,
Always young and fair to me.
Chorus:
Love can never more grow old.
Locks may lose their brown and gold,
Cheeks may fade and hollow grow,
But the hearts that love will know,
Never, never, winter's frost and chill,
Summer warmth is in them still;
Never winter's frost and chill,
Summer warmth is in them still.
For the record, “Silver Threads Among the Gold” was written by H. P. Danks in 1872, based on a poem by Eben Rexford. YLChong just borrowed some of the shiny threads.
TODAY as I begin the first day of the 2H (in financial reporting, this stands for The Second Half) of Y1 (for First Year – See, Desi provides free tuition in Journalism 101!) of Desiderata2000, I think it appropriate that I look back at the footprints I made, as well as my EsteemedReaders left behind, as fellow travellers in this cyber journey. Desi comparatively as an infant, as a Reader akikonomu made me realise in his comment two days ago that he had he spied that item featured in “Euro English heading for kios” in the Internet passage in the 1990s!
As I retraced the grounds, turfs and gardens I traversed in leisurely drive around other blogs, I find some threads permanently weaved around my wavelengths. I’m proud to have been inspired by JeffOoi’s screenshots to start my own Blog, and generally, I am also impressed by the wide array of choice readings gifted by fellow Bloggers, which span across the age barriers, gender too, and the most gratifying, the racial divide. I believe if there is one medium where people don't look at the writers' and conversationists' ethnic origins, it's the Blogosphere, Blogsworld, whatever one calls it. Let's continue to jointly explore it, mine it, this precious mindscape. Still Young. Still inviting all comers.
I'm also intrigued by some 'not so insignificant' IgnorantCows coming on board so early in their teenage years to “journal-ise” about their schooldays, fundays, and days of palships and even courtships? Don't undrestimate these Cows, they also have as fRiends the birds and the bees!
For DESIDERATA, Blogging’s also a meaningful progression of his writing craft, from mainstream journalism, to not-so-mainstream, then freelance journalism getting along like a church-mouse (factually), but finding it more fun and fulfilling in indulging in truly freewheeling prose and poetry, at last,there is no deadline presure, or that darn'd censorship, mostly self-imposed.
Yet I must share with mGf (for myGOodfRiends) some worries. Desiderata as a writer sometimes has to snake one’s way through when the subject/s (e.g. Corruption and those damedn politicians playing the Race Card …) proves/prove too challenging and defying. We don't know what the limits are in quoting "unnamed" sources, yet we believe they are "reliable". I hesitate to stick my head out too much, so fall back on the axiom that "discretion is the better part of valour".
I also mention “threads” in my post title because I discern from among mGf-Bloggers taking up subjects where I lead of, and occasionally, I pick up the threads from something they started. This is healthy as it leads to "reinforcement, especially of views of society's problems and concerns". Sometimes it leads to COLLABORATION, which is a highly satisfying exercise and gratifying goal, I can assure you, from embarking on the SERIES OF ESSAYS FOR MERDEKA 2005.
I'm also highly privileged and honoured to welcome as Guest Bloggers like Sabrina Tan, YoungKyels, Ginger, Mitochondra...and of course, a constant morale-booster YAN of yancorner.blogspot.com.
Yan often threads me via her Posts (I guess she is enjoying my writing from DayOne – earning an accolade I bestowed her – Maiden Visitor at Desi’s Place – and when I promised, or premised that Desiderata2000 would go on even if there is just One Reader a Day, I know she’s the one to be constantly In Touch...:)from the far-flung corner of Catsville.
Sabrina and Kyels, of course, have grown to become more than CONversationists – they honoured Desi with co-hosting appearances, most notably in conjunction with the NASTIONAL DAY ESSAY SERIES broadly themed THE MALAYSIAN DILEMMA, and that CHALLENGE to name OUR I-LAND, a RM20million fantssy -- yet believable -- project.
A pleasant surprise was Mitochondria (I like to shorten it to mito-C …:) who contributed an excellent post in flagging off the National Day Series on August 26, 2005, and then made an MIA move, pleasantly announcing her return quietly just a few days ago via a commento.
Yes, blogging is an enjoyable journey. But travelers who make an effort to make the company enjoyable and interesting interactively is what makes for new fRiendships. This to Desi is the most precious prize for undertaling the Malaysian Nation-building Journey together via Blogosphere.
I often find that fellow travelers all have a sincere wish to see the Malaysian Nation progress, maybe soar, but we are also realitic, there are indeed many obstacles along the way. Each of us can contribute in small, li'l ways, but everyone is essential and unique as a gifter. There are indeed many mountains to climb and rivers to cross.
I created a sort of UTOPIA to aspire towards creation. Imaginenation of da mind. Giving birth to spiritedestination.Those who played THE CHALLENGE know its rationale -- those who did not, I can only advise you travel back in time to that Challenge Period at Leisure. What is this lkife if, full of care/ You have no time to stand and stare? ENJOY! (times SEVEN as 7 is Desi's fav number.)
Having served a dozen years with the Australian diplomatic mission in Kuala Lumpur, I have a fondness for the Other Lucky Country besides Malaysia, and there are also several threads bidning us with those easy-going fair-dinkum Aussies. I’m glad many Malaysians studying in Australia, or staying there as an adopted country, have all tried to build bridges to bind these two lucky lands.
To Sweetspirits from the Land of Oz, and Malaysians overseas in the UK, such as HOWSY, who provides intellectual company, and BORINGEST, who is NOT boring at all, and in the USA (Letti) or even Americans like Luke, and Dr Howdy, a few of whom I have identified as guests to Desi’s Place, I say Terima Kasih:) with a TehTarik from mGf Haridas, nicked Hari Hari Does It! -- you surely do, I vouch for It, especially when you add in a pinch of Ha-Lia!:)
Some visitors I can recall, with whom I have struck up intimate conversations over a cuppa or glass of TehTarik, are: Primrose, Fashionasia, Imran, Moses, H J Angus, Mistyeiz, Dangerous Variable; and an early bird, SH Tan, where is my Char-Keoy-Teow? Dezmond and Timothy Su; and others who are occasional chitchatters, or at whose strawberry fields I left some footprints 4ever, like LONE,Mack, Zorro, mamat, MWT, sepetgal,kennysia, kamigoroshi,aspot, najah, thescarfer, simontalks, centerpide, multimid, Golf Addix, Alex, KSTang, yvonnefoong, suresh naidu, lobaksoup, bkworm, mudpond, maya kirana, DuaSen depreciated to mayhaps 1.9sen, or APpreciaed to 2.1sen?; ....... (I'll add on as I recall from my mental archives, KO?:) and many times, who the hell is that Anonymous, of course.
Here I extract some CONversations with GUESTS to Desi’s Place, but if there’s any hint of selective treatment, Desi admits guilt, but that's only because of necessary Omission, OR it would be taxing and never-ending, isn't it, reproducing all that old stuff? This is A RHETORICAL QUESTION, a luxury this Blogger often abuses, Minta Maaf, ia! Also, it’s because Desi does not have a secretary – I advertised for a sexy-one But the respondents say I’m a MCP! It’s okay, some Tiger has already called me a closet …wat?:
From my First Post, in the name of nostalgia: "what is desiderata?"
Yan said...
Hi,
Stumbling into your blog is a delight. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I certainly look forward to be delighted again and again.
I also keep some thoughts at yancorner.blogspot.com. Thought it's much of thoughts of a little woman, but certainly I want to add some delights to my visitors.
Yan
7:43 PM
InMine said...
Hi, we cross path (under my other ID)at screenshots a few times. I keep my blog at inmine.blogspot.com (my second blog page after killing the first one). Definitely will stop by again to read whay you have to say.
10:29 PM
Lone said...
Hi, great to see another blogger startup. And this with poetry too. Will visit to be delighted and entertained and be informed.
7:55 AM
desiderata said...
To yan, inmine and lone, a Warm Welcome to my new cyberhome and make yourself comfy and chatty.
Let's be engaged in Conversations; sometimes we may even disagree in our views, but always I subscribe to the maxim: agreeing to be agreeable in our disagreements.
Wishing you Good Health, and All Things Beautiful&Nice!
5:52 PM
Anonymous said...
Hello,
Stumbled upon your blog by chance from Yasmin's site. Glad we all enjoyed her movie Sepet.
Do drop by my humble blog at sepetgal.blogspot.com.
Look forward to chat with u soon. Take care...
12:28 AM
desiderata said...
Sepatgal:
Welcome, clearly you're a film-fan and creative.
I'm an avid movie-goer too, enjoy a wide spectrum of genres --western, detective, espionage, romance, classics, NOT the latest action-packed techno-crazy ones! just over-doing the tech stuff and no credible story lines, sometimes the producer, director treat the audience as kinddie kids, or worse, nimcompoops...(I sometimes can't avoid seeing such over TV just so that I can expand my hroizon, thus give my views...) See you again, I'd visit thee at thy abode too.
1:18 AM
HOPE Desiderata will write a post twice as spirited in another S'X MONTHS time:) Meanwhile, I'll stealthily pluck some Blue Roses from Bloom, Flowers, Bloom as I need to visit mGf who was once TheGalNextDoor. SeYa!:);)
Is it an Invisisble Hand at work?
Or it’s just meaningful progression?
Desiderata thinks it’s a combination of all the above… that led to the spinning of some unusual golden threads in my life. It all began with a decision I made on the historic day in Julius Caesar’s life too – the Ides of March, but it’s centuries later, off course. Julius lost his life while I won gold.
I hope it did the same to my Esteemed Visitors – the threading of gold through your life’s journey as you set foot at Desi’s Place. On visiting other Blogs, I have become enriched; similarly I pray Desi's Guests have found some:
“*
Silver Threads Among the Gold
Darling, I am growing old,
Silver threads among the gold
Shine upon my brow today,
Life is fading fast away.
But, my darling, you will be, will be,
Always young and fair to me,
Yes, my darling, you will be,
Always young and fair to me.
Chorus:
Love can never more grow old.
Locks may lose their brown and gold,
Cheeks may fade and hollow grow,
But the hearts that love will know,
Never, never, winter's frost and chill,
Summer warmth is in them still;
Never winter's frost and chill,
Summer warmth is in them still.
For the record, “Silver Threads Among the Gold” was written by H. P. Danks in 1872, based on a poem by Eben Rexford. YLChong just borrowed some of the shiny threads.
TODAY as I begin the first day of the 2H (in financial reporting, this stands for The Second Half) of Y1 (for First Year – See, Desi provides free tuition in Journalism 101!) of Desiderata2000, I think it appropriate that I look back at the footprints I made, as well as my EsteemedReaders left behind, as fellow travellers in this cyber journey. Desi comparatively as an infant, as a Reader akikonomu made me realise in his comment two days ago that he had he spied that item featured in “Euro English heading for kios” in the Internet passage in the 1990s!
As I retraced the grounds, turfs and gardens I traversed in leisurely drive around other blogs, I find some threads permanently weaved around my wavelengths. I’m proud to have been inspired by JeffOoi’s screenshots to start my own Blog, and generally, I am also impressed by the wide array of choice readings gifted by fellow Bloggers, which span across the age barriers, gender too, and the most gratifying, the racial divide. I believe if there is one medium where people don't look at the writers' and conversationists' ethnic origins, it's the Blogosphere, Blogsworld, whatever one calls it. Let's continue to jointly explore it, mine it, this precious mindscape. Still Young. Still inviting all comers.
I'm also intrigued by some 'not so insignificant' IgnorantCows coming on board so early in their teenage years to “journal-ise” about their schooldays, fundays, and days of palships and even courtships? Don't undrestimate these Cows, they also have as fRiends the birds and the bees!
For DESIDERATA, Blogging’s also a meaningful progression of his writing craft, from mainstream journalism, to not-so-mainstream, then freelance journalism getting along like a church-mouse (factually), but finding it more fun and fulfilling in indulging in truly freewheeling prose and poetry, at last,there is no deadline presure, or that darn'd censorship, mostly self-imposed.
Yet I must share with mGf (for myGOodfRiends) some worries. Desiderata as a writer sometimes has to snake one’s way through when the subject/s (e.g. Corruption and those damedn politicians playing the Race Card …) proves/prove too challenging and defying. We don't know what the limits are in quoting "unnamed" sources, yet we believe they are "reliable". I hesitate to stick my head out too much, so fall back on the axiom that "discretion is the better part of valour".
I also mention “threads” in my post title because I discern from among mGf-Bloggers taking up subjects where I lead of, and occasionally, I pick up the threads from something they started. This is healthy as it leads to "reinforcement, especially of views of society's problems and concerns". Sometimes it leads to COLLABORATION, which is a highly satisfying exercise and gratifying goal, I can assure you, from embarking on the SERIES OF ESSAYS FOR MERDEKA 2005.
I'm also highly privileged and honoured to welcome as Guest Bloggers like Sabrina Tan, YoungKyels, Ginger, Mitochondra...and of course, a constant morale-booster YAN of yancorner.blogspot.com.
Yan often threads me via her Posts (I guess she is enjoying my writing from DayOne – earning an accolade I bestowed her – Maiden Visitor at Desi’s Place – and when I promised, or premised that Desiderata2000 would go on even if there is just One Reader a Day, I know she’s the one to be constantly In Touch...:)from the far-flung corner of Catsville.
Sabrina and Kyels, of course, have grown to become more than CONversationists – they honoured Desi with co-hosting appearances, most notably in conjunction with the NASTIONAL DAY ESSAY SERIES broadly themed THE MALAYSIAN DILEMMA, and that CHALLENGE to name OUR I-LAND, a RM20million fantssy -- yet believable -- project.
A pleasant surprise was Mitochondria (I like to shorten it to mito-C …:) who contributed an excellent post in flagging off the National Day Series on August 26, 2005, and then made an MIA move, pleasantly announcing her return quietly just a few days ago via a commento.
Yes, blogging is an enjoyable journey. But travelers who make an effort to make the company enjoyable and interesting interactively is what makes for new fRiendships. This to Desi is the most precious prize for undertaling the Malaysian Nation-building Journey together via Blogosphere.
I often find that fellow travelers all have a sincere wish to see the Malaysian Nation progress, maybe soar, but we are also realitic, there are indeed many obstacles along the way. Each of us can contribute in small, li'l ways, but everyone is essential and unique as a gifter. There are indeed many mountains to climb and rivers to cross.
I created a sort of UTOPIA to aspire towards creation. Imaginenation of da mind. Giving birth to spiritedestination.Those who played THE CHALLENGE know its rationale -- those who did not, I can only advise you travel back in time to that Challenge Period at Leisure. What is this lkife if, full of care/ You have no time to stand and stare? ENJOY! (times SEVEN as 7 is Desi's fav number.)
Having served a dozen years with the Australian diplomatic mission in Kuala Lumpur, I have a fondness for the Other Lucky Country besides Malaysia, and there are also several threads bidning us with those easy-going fair-dinkum Aussies. I’m glad many Malaysians studying in Australia, or staying there as an adopted country, have all tried to build bridges to bind these two lucky lands.
To Sweetspirits from the Land of Oz, and Malaysians overseas in the UK, such as HOWSY, who provides intellectual company, and BORINGEST, who is NOT boring at all, and in the USA (Letti) or even Americans like Luke, and Dr Howdy, a few of whom I have identified as guests to Desi’s Place, I say Terima Kasih:) with a TehTarik from mGf Haridas, nicked Hari Hari Does It! -- you surely do, I vouch for It, especially when you add in a pinch of Ha-Lia!:)
Some visitors I can recall, with whom I have struck up intimate conversations over a cuppa or glass of TehTarik, are: Primrose, Fashionasia, Imran, Moses, H J Angus, Mistyeiz, Dangerous Variable; and an early bird, SH Tan, where is my Char-Keoy-Teow? Dezmond and Timothy Su; and others who are occasional chitchatters, or at whose strawberry fields I left some footprints 4ever, like LONE,Mack, Zorro, mamat, MWT, sepetgal,kennysia, kamigoroshi,aspot, najah, thescarfer, simontalks, centerpide, multimid, Golf Addix, Alex, KSTang, yvonnefoong, suresh naidu, lobaksoup, bkworm, mudpond, maya kirana, DuaSen depreciated to mayhaps 1.9sen, or APpreciaed to 2.1sen?; ....... (I'll add on as I recall from my mental archives, KO?:) and many times, who the hell is that Anonymous, of course.
Here I extract some CONversations with GUESTS to Desi’s Place, but if there’s any hint of selective treatment, Desi admits guilt, but that's only because of necessary Omission, OR it would be taxing and never-ending, isn't it, reproducing all that old stuff? This is A RHETORICAL QUESTION, a luxury this Blogger often abuses, Minta Maaf, ia! Also, it’s because Desi does not have a secretary – I advertised for a sexy-one But the respondents say I’m a MCP! It’s okay, some Tiger has already called me a closet …wat?:
From my First Post, in the name of nostalgia: "what is desiderata?"
Yan said...
Hi,
Stumbling into your blog is a delight. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I certainly look forward to be delighted again and again.
I also keep some thoughts at yancorner.blogspot.com. Thought it's much of thoughts of a little woman, but certainly I want to add some delights to my visitors.
Yan
7:43 PM
InMine said...
Hi, we cross path (under my other ID)at screenshots a few times. I keep my blog at inmine.blogspot.com (my second blog page after killing the first one). Definitely will stop by again to read whay you have to say.
10:29 PM
Lone said...
Hi, great to see another blogger startup. And this with poetry too. Will visit to be delighted and entertained and be informed.
7:55 AM
desiderata said...
To yan, inmine and lone, a Warm Welcome to my new cyberhome and make yourself comfy and chatty.
Let's be engaged in Conversations; sometimes we may even disagree in our views, but always I subscribe to the maxim: agreeing to be agreeable in our disagreements.
Wishing you Good Health, and All Things Beautiful&Nice!
5:52 PM
Anonymous said...
Hello,
Stumbled upon your blog by chance from Yasmin's site. Glad we all enjoyed her movie Sepet.
Do drop by my humble blog at sepetgal.blogspot.com.
Look forward to chat with u soon. Take care...
12:28 AM
desiderata said...
Sepatgal:
Welcome, clearly you're a film-fan and creative.
I'm an avid movie-goer too, enjoy a wide spectrum of genres --western, detective, espionage, romance, classics, NOT the latest action-packed techno-crazy ones! just over-doing the tech stuff and no credible story lines, sometimes the producer, director treat the audience as kinddie kids, or worse, nimcompoops...(I sometimes can't avoid seeing such over TV just so that I can expand my hroizon, thus give my views...) See you again, I'd visit thee at thy abode too.
1:18 AM
HOPE Desiderata will write a post twice as spirited in another S'X MONTHS time:) Meanwhile, I'll stealthily pluck some Blue Roses from Bloom, Flowers, Bloom as I need to visit mGf who was once TheGalNextDoor. SeYa!:);)
Euro English heading for kios
INTRO: I recieved this peice of shocker from mGf Ian C. I hope it's NOT true -- but nowadays, anything is probable, so I won't rule it out! For once I must say: I don't kNOw!:):( see one sign for s-mile, the second for s-cowl.Exquisite English that Desi advocates may just have to make way, make way, for the European ros ...
BODY: The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English
will be the official language of the European Union rather than German,
which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that
English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-
year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will
make the sivil servants jump with joy.
The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up
konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the
troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like
fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted
to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have
always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag
is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th"
with "z" and "w" with "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining
"ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze
forst plas. If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.
KONKLUSEN: I don no!
BODY: The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English
will be the official language of the European Union rather than German,
which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that
English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-
year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will
make the sivil servants jump with joy.
The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up
konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the
troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like
fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted
to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have
always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag
is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th"
with "z" and "w" with "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining
"ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze
forst plas. If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.
KONKLUSEN: I don no!
Man, Desi longs to get that Booker!
I have a clear favourite in the Shortlist for this year’s MAN BOOKER PRIZE.
*He’s JULIAN BARNES, 59, twice previously shortlisted, “who was immediately installed aas the bookmakers’ favourite with Arthur & George, a work which relies heavily on a true-life story involving the writer Arthur Conan Doyle”. And dear I.Cowws, please do not angrify Desi on Thursday morning thinking this Conan is of that Barbaric fame, OK!
The above (ref: B Prize shortlist, not the Ignorant Cows who roam Desis Place…)was extracted from ManBookerprize.com) press release:
**
Thursday 08 September 2005 15:30 -
THE 2005 MAN BOOKER PRIZE FOR FICTION SHORTLIST
'The richest year for contemporary British and Commonwealth fiction since the launch of the Booker Prize in 1969’
- The Observer, 7 August 2005
JOHN BANVILLE, JULIAN BARNES, SEBASTIAN BARRY, KAZUO ISHIGURO, ALI SMITH and ZADIE SMITH are the six authors shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the UK’s best known literary award. The shortlist was announced by the chair of judges, John Sutherland, at a press conference at the Man Group offices in London today (Thursday 8 September).
The six shortlisted books were chosen from a longlist of 17 and are:
Author Title Publisher
Banville, John The Sea Picador
Barnes, Julian Arthur & George Jonathan Cape
Barry, Sebastian A Long Long Way Faber & Faber
Ishiguro, Kazuo Never Let Me Go Faber & Faber
Smith, Ali The Accidental Hamish Hamilton
Smith, Zadie On Beauty Hamish Hamilton
John Sutherland, Chair of Judges, comments:
“The selection of a shortlist, the judges felt, was an unusually difficult process this year. There was sufficient quality for two distinguished lists. We were aware that the rules require that the award be to the best novel. The strength of the year’s competition can be measured by the fact that three good books by previous Man Booker winners were finally not selected. This shortlist, we believe, witnesses to the remarkable quality of the current state of fiction. We look forward to the final round."
The winner receives £50,000 with a guaranteed increase in sales and recognition worldwide. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their own book.
The judging panel for the 2005 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is: John Sutherland (Chair); fiction editor of the Times Literary Supplement, Lindsay Duguid; writer and antiquarian book dealer, Rick Gekoski; novelist, Josephine Hart; and literary editor of The Evening Standard, David Sexton.
The winner will be announced on Monday 10th October at an awards ceremony at Guildhall, London and will be broadcast live on BBC TWO.
-ends-
***
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
Jonathan Cape, £17.99
Arthur and George grow up worlds apart in late nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, and then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, George remains in hardworking obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events that made sensational headlines at the time as ‘The Great Wyrley Outrages’.
With both detailed research and vivid imagination, Julian Barnes brings to life this long-forgotten case, and the inner lives of these two very different men with stunning clarity. This is a novel in which the events of a hundred years ago constantly set off contemporary echoes, a novel about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race; about what we think, what we believe, and what we know.
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester 1946 and educated in London and Magdalen College, Oxford. He has written nine novels, including Metroland, (won 1981 Somerset Maugham Award); Flaubert's Parrot, (shortlisted 1984 Booker Prize, won Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and precipitated Barnes being the first Englishman to be awarded the Prix Medicis); A History of the World in 10 and ½ Chapters (1989); England, England (shortlisted 1998 Booker Prize); and Love etc (2000), and two collections of short stories, Cross Channel and The Lemon Tree.
Barnes received the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1986) and was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Artes et des Lettres (1988). He was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation of Hamburg (1993).
For further information or interview requests please contact Christian Lewis on 020 7840 8539 or email clewis@randomhouse.co.uk
***************INTERRUPTUS FOR OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT***********
BTW, Desi’s Place is six months old today.
When I started surfing blogs like my Sifu’s (JeffOoi's screenshots, who else!), I though BTW was for “between the two of us”.
HeHeHe… was easy to GU’SS. (The last stated of course refers to that brand, Desi uses, also can.:)
S’X was even easier. If you’re straight, it stands for SiX. If your are gay, it stands for SeX. If you are in-between, it stands for SuX! If you’re nONE of the above, it stands for SoX. If still you’re far from all these, but like Desi, like to blow somethin’ once in a while, it stands for SaX. But any other variations also-can, for today ends where it’s started yesterday as FORePlay, now it’s PoSTPlay.
PoST stands for after, behind the main act, second-class dish, For drifters like Sab, kyels who asked: what’s Challenge 3? After the game had ended the day after the day before. …you’ve got my drift … the cleaning up following the Fat Lady’s Song ….
But some shorties like WTF or WTFs followed by the Xcalmation mark like this ! still stump me. I seldom use such four-letter shorts because it is not like NICE, which is also 4-letter, like Hell, which is also 4-…I digress ‘nuff, which is also 4-….You get the draft.
So Desi has caught on, created my own branding – like mGf – if you have to ask, then you’re not mf fRiend!
Then I often end in”Chow” until one OZ lad’ took it to mean a swear word from a baddie Jinjang Chinaman (Malaysian equivalent to Croc Dundee), so I rarely have used this parting shot sin(ned)ce. Only to mGf in the plural, where any MISsunderstanding is easily smoothened over with just “soly” and two TTariks, maybe a fly 'iss ...(not KakiTarik – that one is for pulling the legs), T is for The, from Hari Hari Does It.
Also, L’VE, so there is no connonotation of that relations bewteen two people (lovers;)?) – it’s LiVE and LoVE.
So on this auspicious day in youngDesi’s life, here’s Happy Six-Months’ Birthday to Me. Reminds me, like Mr Bean in one lONEly Xmas episode when he sent himself a Xmas card!, that I have to get meself a Birthday Cake, and later adjourn to Haridas this evening at 8PM to celeb. Jointly, Haridas’ great achievement on the Tamilfront, YLChong in anticipation of that Hooker’s Prizelist!
CHOW! ;)
Go Get a L’VE!:)
BTW, mGf Haridas received was weighed down by garlands (no, not Judy, she’s of another planet) on being honoured at the Seremabn Town Hall by the South Indian arts council for hid “literary” works in Tamil.
YLChong is waiting in the wings for his nama to be called --- for the Man Booker prize, if not, (WO)man Hooker One, also can!
BTW, wat's the short for "between the two of us"?
*He’s JULIAN BARNES, 59, twice previously shortlisted, “who was immediately installed aas the bookmakers’ favourite with Arthur & George, a work which relies heavily on a true-life story involving the writer Arthur Conan Doyle”. And dear I.Cowws, please do not angrify Desi on Thursday morning thinking this Conan is of that Barbaric fame, OK!
The above (ref: B Prize shortlist, not the Ignorant Cows who roam Desis Place…)was extracted from ManBookerprize.com) press release:
**
Thursday 08 September 2005 15:30 -
THE 2005 MAN BOOKER PRIZE FOR FICTION SHORTLIST
'The richest year for contemporary British and Commonwealth fiction since the launch of the Booker Prize in 1969’
- The Observer, 7 August 2005
JOHN BANVILLE, JULIAN BARNES, SEBASTIAN BARRY, KAZUO ISHIGURO, ALI SMITH and ZADIE SMITH are the six authors shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the UK’s best known literary award. The shortlist was announced by the chair of judges, John Sutherland, at a press conference at the Man Group offices in London today (Thursday 8 September).
The six shortlisted books were chosen from a longlist of 17 and are:
Author Title Publisher
Banville, John The Sea Picador
Barnes, Julian Arthur & George Jonathan Cape
Barry, Sebastian A Long Long Way Faber & Faber
Ishiguro, Kazuo Never Let Me Go Faber & Faber
Smith, Ali The Accidental Hamish Hamilton
Smith, Zadie On Beauty Hamish Hamilton
John Sutherland, Chair of Judges, comments:
“The selection of a shortlist, the judges felt, was an unusually difficult process this year. There was sufficient quality for two distinguished lists. We were aware that the rules require that the award be to the best novel. The strength of the year’s competition can be measured by the fact that three good books by previous Man Booker winners were finally not selected. This shortlist, we believe, witnesses to the remarkable quality of the current state of fiction. We look forward to the final round."
The winner receives £50,000 with a guaranteed increase in sales and recognition worldwide. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their own book.
The judging panel for the 2005 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is: John Sutherland (Chair); fiction editor of the Times Literary Supplement, Lindsay Duguid; writer and antiquarian book dealer, Rick Gekoski; novelist, Josephine Hart; and literary editor of The Evening Standard, David Sexton.
The winner will be announced on Monday 10th October at an awards ceremony at Guildhall, London and will be broadcast live on BBC TWO.
-ends-
***
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
Jonathan Cape, £17.99
Arthur and George grow up worlds apart in late nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, and then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, George remains in hardworking obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events that made sensational headlines at the time as ‘The Great Wyrley Outrages’.
With both detailed research and vivid imagination, Julian Barnes brings to life this long-forgotten case, and the inner lives of these two very different men with stunning clarity. This is a novel in which the events of a hundred years ago constantly set off contemporary echoes, a novel about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race; about what we think, what we believe, and what we know.
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester 1946 and educated in London and Magdalen College, Oxford. He has written nine novels, including Metroland, (won 1981 Somerset Maugham Award); Flaubert's Parrot, (shortlisted 1984 Booker Prize, won Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and precipitated Barnes being the first Englishman to be awarded the Prix Medicis); A History of the World in 10 and ½ Chapters (1989); England, England (shortlisted 1998 Booker Prize); and Love etc (2000), and two collections of short stories, Cross Channel and The Lemon Tree.
Barnes received the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1986) and was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Artes et des Lettres (1988). He was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation of Hamburg (1993).
For further information or interview requests please contact Christian Lewis on 020 7840 8539 or email clewis@randomhouse.co.uk
***************INTERRUPTUS FOR OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT***********
BTW, Desi’s Place is six months old today.
When I started surfing blogs like my Sifu’s (JeffOoi's screenshots, who else!), I though BTW was for “between the two of us”.
HeHeHe… was easy to GU’SS. (The last stated of course refers to that brand, Desi uses, also can.:)
S’X was even easier. If you’re straight, it stands for SiX. If your are gay, it stands for SeX. If you are in-between, it stands for SuX! If you’re nONE of the above, it stands for SoX. If still you’re far from all these, but like Desi, like to blow somethin’ once in a while, it stands for SaX. But any other variations also-can, for today ends where it’s started yesterday as FORePlay, now it’s PoSTPlay.
PoST stands for after, behind the main act, second-class dish, For drifters like Sab, kyels who asked: what’s Challenge 3? After the game had ended the day after the day before. …you’ve got my drift … the cleaning up following the Fat Lady’s Song ….
But some shorties like WTF or WTFs followed by the Xcalmation mark like this ! still stump me. I seldom use such four-letter shorts because it is not like NICE, which is also 4-letter, like Hell, which is also 4-…I digress ‘nuff, which is also 4-….You get the draft.
So Desi has caught on, created my own branding – like mGf – if you have to ask, then you’re not mf fRiend!
Then I often end in”Chow” until one OZ lad’ took it to mean a swear word from a baddie Jinjang Chinaman (Malaysian equivalent to Croc Dundee), so I rarely have used this parting shot sin(ned)ce. Only to mGf in the plural, where any MISsunderstanding is easily smoothened over with just “soly” and two TTariks, maybe a fly 'iss ...(not KakiTarik – that one is for pulling the legs), T is for The, from Hari Hari Does It.
Also, L’VE, so there is no connonotation of that relations bewteen two people (lovers;)?) – it’s LiVE and LoVE.
So on this auspicious day in youngDesi’s life, here’s Happy Six-Months’ Birthday to Me. Reminds me, like Mr Bean in one lONEly Xmas episode when he sent himself a Xmas card!, that I have to get meself a Birthday Cake, and later adjourn to Haridas this evening at 8PM to celeb. Jointly, Haridas’ great achievement on the Tamilfront, YLChong in anticipation of that Hooker’s Prizelist!
CHOW! ;)
Go Get a L’VE!:)
BTW, mGf Haridas received was weighed down by garlands (no, not Judy, she’s of another planet) on being honoured at the Seremabn Town Hall by the South Indian arts council for hid “literary” works in Tamil.
YLChong is waiting in the wings for his nama to be called --- for the Man Booker prize, if not, (WO)man Hooker One, also can!
BTW, wat's the short for "between the two of us"?
Thursday, September 15, 2005
FOREPLAY and WORDPLAY
Sometimes it’s good to be a contrarian.
If you're an IMPATIENT one today, please STOP reading here, because I;m going to tax you a lot. Tax collection has been privatised to responsible rakyat like Desi!:) Hey, meet me at the coffe-shop, everythin' can be discussed, then Kau Dim with an under-the-table handshake, two also can.
What comes from now is X-rated, not in the S'X department, in the MORALS one. When the word FOREPLAY is mentioned, people want to peek in, like voyeurs of the extinct Mat Skodeng Squad of famous Malacca -- the town is famous, the squad is not! -- I'm writin' DH LAWrence's stuff. DH stands for DeviantHeArt and Law is that which is applicable on spiritedestination on a knotty day like Today:)
Knotty means Desi's not on the best of his behaviour, but WTH/(F), again, pick 1 of 2 to suit thy taste! -- it's GOod to play around sometimes, IT"S ONLY WORDS, AND WORDS ARE ALL I HAVE, To take your heArt away ... B-Gs remember? MistyEiz, I'm also borrowing, like thee ...also-can?
Normally when one blogs, it’s either writin’ in Prose, or those more gifted, in Poetry. Today Desi writhes in Q & A, behaving like a steno-journalist. The lazy way out when all you need is a tape-recorder, and I just picked one freebie up from the Prime Rose Garden.
Furthermore, I must practise what I preach. Today’s a Wednesday – a Day of Woe.
So being a contrarian, I go the opposite – Deliver Joy and go-Go!-Gol! (Just saw MU playing the Devils lastnite, beat the Satinastas 11-1, ELEVEN since every MU player scored one gol each, and that 1 was put in by the Referee as consolation to the Devils so they won’t haunt him that night for dis-gracing them (Desi @@have -- following The Star's English, you'll undersatnd later if you art patient -- not sinned Gol&Gincu yet, so Desi can’t write about the Gin and the Cu, is there such a brand of lipSTUCK?;)
Q: Why behave thus?
A: Why not? That’s be-heading like an UMNO or MCA politician, as I’m a sworn Opposition member. Closet socialist remember, so the Contrarian is for Today a 110% capitalist and bourgeosie. I need Tiger to verify if my political education is on the 'rite Track, must not lead my DemeanedReaders down (or isit up? English can be so CONfusing!) the Gardner path…. Primrose, have you counted how many blooms are MISSing from thy garden?
Q: Why politician, and not a journalist?
A: A politician in Bahasa is writ Politikus, thus behaving like a RAT. A journalist is writ wartawan, but 99 percent of Malaysians lament they don’t live up to the Nama, News Number One?
Q. Desi, you had served as a BizWartawan, any tips?
A: I'm a little like some (see stress here!) OZ, or some1 from Up North, no tips. Kedekut, remember?
Q. No-lah, not that tip-lah, Stock-market tips, can or not!
A. Oh, I see. (Tho, in reality, I don't, but have to please my readers today.) My advice: For long life, Don’t enter the market. It either burns you, or it gets thee wet. For example, if you’re playing the stock market,where mGf Wong works he's always hot under the collar, and many of his clients suffer heartburns; OR enter the Seremban fish market, where mGf Gan works, he always perspiring and sighing, having started work at 1AM, and his clients always complain of smelling like stinking water after walking the wet market.
(Wong is in one dialect means Lucky; Gan in another means Rolled Over, can maen Mati, Die-lah... (correct me if I’m w®ong-lah…)
Q: Then give us advice where to invest. This is not a Q! OK, okay – re=word: If I want to print money, where do I go? Better. “Lebih bayi”, some ones in the Pasar Seremban says, as he tries to sell you one-week-old prawns, made to have a shiny sheen by topping up with “some per-oxide”, defined as “sum of the oxygen molecules you can count in the prawn on close scrutiny, that is, if thy sight is not blind”. If you don’t know what it means, Desi2,so it's alright. Ignorance is Bliss, most times.
A: Hey, you digressed. You are the questioner, I’m the answerer, I can digress, you can’t!
Now give me can (Bahasa for chance – I’m using some of our National Language because the questioner and his mates like to show their patriotism, using it pasar-style. Now I'm enjoying the LUXURY OF DIGRESSION, better than AGGRESSION yes/no? in building a united nation. Back to answering the unanswered Q – how to make money?
mGf Vong says your chance of winning when playing the local stock market is LESS than winning at the 21-table at Genting Highlands. So following this logic, it’s something like 80 percent of players at the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (though it’s now called somethin’ else which is not very interestin’..) would lose their pants there.
So when you play the KLSE, go against the herd, and chances at winning would be 80-20. Follow Desi’s logic, and emerge a whiner. Cos it’s said that the final winner is the investor who just enjoys FORePLAY, which is defined in investors relations as STUDY THE FUNDAMENTALS; DON'T RUSH IN LIKE MADONNA -- A VIRGIN -- GO IN LIKE James FOXX, did I get the reference right? Left also can-lah. This is not sitting for the KLSE Licence Exam!
Q: So why is Desi enaged in wit today when it is a WedNurseDay, defined as a Day of Woe?
Cos he’s going behaving like de-virgin Mary today, Mary, Mary quite contrary …remember
TRUTH BE TOLD, it's motivated by mGf blogger H J ANGUS (http://malaysiawatch.blogspot.com) who responded to my asking:"How's the going?":
"Blogging is OK so far but appear to be running out of issues as most are the same old ones. Also not many comments on my blog, unlike yours! Gee I'm getting jealous."
No need to get jealous, H J, some of these commenters, or EsteemedReaders I call them, sometimes walk around like in a Haze or a Maze, then stumble onto Desis Place like Li'l Red Riding Hoods like they knwo not where they're going, so I feed 'em with some TehTarik left over from HariDas the nire before, add in some Ha-Lia, heat it up, Wallah, they are addicted! See, the LUXURY OF BLOGGING! So H J, try some, no, not the TenTarik, altho that's OK2, try some DIGRESSION, it's good for the DIGESTION, of cyber-food.:);)
Q. And why always spell today as WedNurseDay?
A> Just being knotty some times, can? Remember that TV3 Pronouncer, shouting "Chowtic" instead of Chaotic, and everybody rushed to Chow Kit Street to add to the commotion instead of staying away from the explosion.
For the record, the third day of da week should be pronounced Wensday, the nurse is staying very quiet in order not to wake up da patients, you see, or you ‘ear! Similarly, medicine is pronounced "medcine minus the "di" sound, hear me, I.Cows, which rhymes with I.Culs, which is a type of investing instrument, ah ....I digress!
Okay, now I’ve put the record strait (spelling to conform with The St*r style today)on that pronunciation (NOTE this spelling, drop the ‘u” in the noun form compared with da Verb, pronounce, OK!), let’s look at the meaning of FOREPLAY.
Fore means “ahead, in front, leading off…”
Play means “main-main or saying words before you adjourn for the night that tomorrow morning you’ll wake up, don’t linger at da wake!” in Phua Chu Kang’s lingo. I don’t enjoy his shows, but have to watch so I can commeto like today. No choys-lah, PCK says so. Desi says Play is play, pray is pray, don’t mix up those ‘l” and “r”, you Chinamen (see, the women are not included, cos they seldom commit this omission, or commission, can or also-cunt. Some proFUNity in Desi’s ‘ick!, ah, which means “supporting or professing FUN in the cause of Unity). I’m getting knotty today:),as Mack would decry.
DESIDERATA: in closing I say, if I offended anyone, Minta Maaf, ia; I bagi tehtarik dan CurryPuff dari Seremban, Satu makan! Dua mau!!
I was all most finishing my Post today when I underwent email (fe-mail?) interruptus.
The postmaster/mistress was so coy he/she wouldn't want to give Desi his/her name, as nowadays, you can't tell whether it's a wolf hunting down li'l Red Riding Hood.
"*A young man married a beautiful woman who had previously divorced ten husbands. On their wedding night, she told her new husband, "Please be gentle; I'm still a virgin."
"What?" said the puzzled groom. "How can that be if you've been married ten times?"
"Well, husband #1 was a Sales Representative; he kept telling me how great it was going to be."
"Husband #2 was in Software Services; he was never really sure how it was supposed to function, but he said he'd look into it and get back to me."
"Husband #3 was from Field Services; he said everything checked out diagnostically but he just couldn't get the system up."
"Husband #4 was in Telemarketing; even though he knew he had the order,he didn't know when he would be able to deliver."
"Husband #5 was an Engineer; he understood the basic process but wanted three years to research, implement, and design a new state-of-the-art method."
"Husband #6 was from Administration; he thought he knew how, but he wasn't sure whether it was his job or not"
"Husband #7 was in Marketing; although he had a product, he was never sure how to position it."
"Husband #8 was a psychiatrist; all he ever did was talk about it."
"Husband #9 was a gynecologist; all he did was look."
"Husband #10 was a stamp collector; all he ever did was..... God, I miss him!"
"But now that I've married you, I'm so excited!"
"Good," said the husband, "but, why?"
"You're with the Government. This time I know I'm gonna get screwed!" ***"
@@PS: The reference to The Star above, read this:
(Page 2 caption:( "IT IS UNACCEPTABLE: Rafidah said she never expect to hear factories .......
(Page 8 caption:( "BUDGET ON HER MIND: Programmer Yoong really have to stretch .......
Desi, shaking head after downing ecstasy mayhaps ... to escape the fantasy of the *'s Engrise...says: Mind/Mine thy language!
If you're an IMPATIENT one today, please STOP reading here, because I;m going to tax you a lot. Tax collection has been privatised to responsible rakyat like Desi!:) Hey, meet me at the coffe-shop, everythin' can be discussed, then Kau Dim with an under-the-table handshake, two also can.
What comes from now is X-rated, not in the S'X department, in the MORALS one. When the word FOREPLAY is mentioned, people want to peek in, like voyeurs of the extinct Mat Skodeng Squad of famous Malacca -- the town is famous, the squad is not! -- I'm writin' DH LAWrence's stuff. DH stands for DeviantHeArt and Law is that which is applicable on spiritedestination on a knotty day like Today:)
Knotty means Desi's not on the best of his behaviour, but WTH/(F), again, pick 1 of 2 to suit thy taste! -- it's GOod to play around sometimes, IT"S ONLY WORDS, AND WORDS ARE ALL I HAVE, To take your heArt away ... B-Gs remember? MistyEiz, I'm also borrowing, like thee ...also-can?
Normally when one blogs, it’s either writin’ in Prose, or those more gifted, in Poetry. Today Desi writhes in Q & A, behaving like a steno-journalist. The lazy way out when all you need is a tape-recorder, and I just picked one freebie up from the Prime Rose Garden.
Furthermore, I must practise what I preach. Today’s a Wednesday – a Day of Woe.
So being a contrarian, I go the opposite – Deliver Joy and go-Go!-Gol! (Just saw MU playing the Devils lastnite, beat the Satinastas 11-1, ELEVEN since every MU player scored one gol each, and that 1 was put in by the Referee as consolation to the Devils so they won’t haunt him that night for dis-gracing them (Desi @@have -- following The Star's English, you'll undersatnd later if you art patient -- not sinned Gol&Gincu yet, so Desi can’t write about the Gin and the Cu, is there such a brand of lipSTUCK?;)
Q: Why behave thus?
A: Why not? That’s be-heading like an UMNO or MCA politician, as I’m a sworn Opposition member. Closet socialist remember, so the Contrarian is for Today a 110% capitalist and bourgeosie. I need Tiger to verify if my political education is on the 'rite Track, must not lead my DemeanedReaders down (or isit up? English can be so CONfusing!) the Gardner path…. Primrose, have you counted how many blooms are MISSing from thy garden?
Q: Why politician, and not a journalist?
A: A politician in Bahasa is writ Politikus, thus behaving like a RAT. A journalist is writ wartawan, but 99 percent of Malaysians lament they don’t live up to the Nama, News Number One?
Q. Desi, you had served as a BizWartawan, any tips?
A: I'm a little like some (see stress here!) OZ, or some1 from Up North, no tips. Kedekut, remember?
Q. No-lah, not that tip-lah, Stock-market tips, can or not!
A. Oh, I see. (Tho, in reality, I don't, but have to please my readers today.) My advice: For long life, Don’t enter the market. It either burns you, or it gets thee wet. For example, if you’re playing the stock market,where mGf Wong works he's always hot under the collar, and many of his clients suffer heartburns; OR enter the Seremban fish market, where mGf Gan works, he always perspiring and sighing, having started work at 1AM, and his clients always complain of smelling like stinking water after walking the wet market.
(Wong is in one dialect means Lucky; Gan in another means Rolled Over, can maen Mati, Die-lah... (correct me if I’m w®ong-lah…)
Q: Then give us advice where to invest. This is not a Q! OK, okay – re=word: If I want to print money, where do I go? Better. “Lebih bayi”, some ones in the Pasar Seremban says, as he tries to sell you one-week-old prawns, made to have a shiny sheen by topping up with “some per-oxide”, defined as “sum of the oxygen molecules you can count in the prawn on close scrutiny, that is, if thy sight is not blind”. If you don’t know what it means, Desi2,so it's alright. Ignorance is Bliss, most times.
A: Hey, you digressed. You are the questioner, I’m the answerer, I can digress, you can’t!
Now give me can (Bahasa for chance – I’m using some of our National Language because the questioner and his mates like to show their patriotism, using it pasar-style. Now I'm enjoying the LUXURY OF DIGRESSION, better than AGGRESSION yes/no? in building a united nation. Back to answering the unanswered Q – how to make money?
mGf Vong says your chance of winning when playing the local stock market is LESS than winning at the 21-table at Genting Highlands. So following this logic, it’s something like 80 percent of players at the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (though it’s now called somethin’ else which is not very interestin’..) would lose their pants there.
So when you play the KLSE, go against the herd, and chances at winning would be 80-20. Follow Desi’s logic, and emerge a whiner. Cos it’s said that the final winner is the investor who just enjoys FORePLAY, which is defined in investors relations as STUDY THE FUNDAMENTALS; DON'T RUSH IN LIKE MADONNA -- A VIRGIN -- GO IN LIKE James FOXX, did I get the reference right? Left also can-lah. This is not sitting for the KLSE Licence Exam!
Q: So why is Desi enaged in wit today when it is a WedNurseDay, defined as a Day of Woe?
Cos he’s going behaving like de-virgin Mary today, Mary, Mary quite contrary …remember
TRUTH BE TOLD, it's motivated by mGf blogger H J ANGUS (http://malaysiawatch.blogspot.com) who responded to my asking:"How's the going?":
"Blogging is OK so far but appear to be running out of issues as most are the same old ones. Also not many comments on my blog, unlike yours! Gee I'm getting jealous."
No need to get jealous, H J, some of these commenters, or EsteemedReaders I call them, sometimes walk around like in a Haze or a Maze, then stumble onto Desis Place like Li'l Red Riding Hoods like they knwo not where they're going, so I feed 'em with some TehTarik left over from HariDas the nire before, add in some Ha-Lia, heat it up, Wallah, they are addicted! See, the LUXURY OF BLOGGING! So H J, try some, no, not the TenTarik, altho that's OK2, try some DIGRESSION, it's good for the DIGESTION, of cyber-food.:);)
Q. And why always spell today as WedNurseDay?
A> Just being knotty some times, can? Remember that TV3 Pronouncer, shouting "Chowtic" instead of Chaotic, and everybody rushed to Chow Kit Street to add to the commotion instead of staying away from the explosion.
For the record, the third day of da week should be pronounced Wensday, the nurse is staying very quiet in order not to wake up da patients, you see, or you ‘ear! Similarly, medicine is pronounced "medcine minus the "di" sound, hear me, I.Cows, which rhymes with I.Culs, which is a type of investing instrument, ah ....I digress!
Okay, now I’ve put the record strait (spelling to conform with The St*r style today)on that pronunciation (NOTE this spelling, drop the ‘u” in the noun form compared with da Verb, pronounce, OK!), let’s look at the meaning of FOREPLAY.
Fore means “ahead, in front, leading off…”
Play means “main-main or saying words before you adjourn for the night that tomorrow morning you’ll wake up, don’t linger at da wake!” in Phua Chu Kang’s lingo. I don’t enjoy his shows, but have to watch so I can commeto like today. No choys-lah, PCK says so. Desi says Play is play, pray is pray, don’t mix up those ‘l” and “r”, you Chinamen (see, the women are not included, cos they seldom commit this omission, or commission, can or also-cunt. Some proFUNity in Desi’s ‘ick!, ah, which means “supporting or professing FUN in the cause of Unity). I’m getting knotty today:),as Mack would decry.
DESIDERATA: in closing I say, if I offended anyone, Minta Maaf, ia; I bagi tehtarik dan CurryPuff dari Seremban, Satu makan! Dua mau!!
I was all most finishing my Post today when I underwent email (fe-mail?) interruptus.
The postmaster/mistress was so coy he/she wouldn't want to give Desi his/her name, as nowadays, you can't tell whether it's a wolf hunting down li'l Red Riding Hood.
"*A young man married a beautiful woman who had previously divorced ten husbands. On their wedding night, she told her new husband, "Please be gentle; I'm still a virgin."
"What?" said the puzzled groom. "How can that be if you've been married ten times?"
"Well, husband #1 was a Sales Representative; he kept telling me how great it was going to be."
"Husband #2 was in Software Services; he was never really sure how it was supposed to function, but he said he'd look into it and get back to me."
"Husband #3 was from Field Services; he said everything checked out diagnostically but he just couldn't get the system up."
"Husband #4 was in Telemarketing; even though he knew he had the order,he didn't know when he would be able to deliver."
"Husband #5 was an Engineer; he understood the basic process but wanted three years to research, implement, and design a new state-of-the-art method."
"Husband #6 was from Administration; he thought he knew how, but he wasn't sure whether it was his job or not"
"Husband #7 was in Marketing; although he had a product, he was never sure how to position it."
"Husband #8 was a psychiatrist; all he ever did was talk about it."
"Husband #9 was a gynecologist; all he did was look."
"Husband #10 was a stamp collector; all he ever did was..... God, I miss him!"
"But now that I've married you, I'm so excited!"
"Good," said the husband, "but, why?"
"You're with the Government. This time I know I'm gonna get screwed!" ***"
@@PS: The reference to The Star above, read this:
(Page 2 caption:( "IT IS UNACCEPTABLE: Rafidah said she never expect to hear factories .......
(Page 8 caption:( "BUDGET ON HER MIND: Programmer Yoong really have to stretch .......
Desi, shaking head after downing ecstasy mayhaps ... to escape the fantasy of the *'s Engrise...says: Mind/Mine thy language!
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Another Tuesday with Worries
BEFRIENDERS HELPLINE: 03 - 7956-8144
I’m sorry we have to retrace another heart-breaking and depressing subject –- suicides -- which was highlighted just last week.
The New Straits Times of September 12, 2005 front page leads off with a headline that cannot be any sadder:
MALAYSIANS
KILL
THEMSELVES
EVERY DAY
1,700 SUICIDES SO FAR THIS YEAR
* That’s 2,555 lives lost every year
* That’s 12 family members and friends, directly
or indirectly, affected for evry suicide
• That’s 30,000 traumatised people a year.
(It was 8 per 100,000 in the ‘80s.
9-12 per 100,000 in 2003)
The Page 4 report said that:
In Malaysia, there are an average of seven suicides a day. Compared with Singapore, one a day and Thailand 13 a day.
A Health Ministry’s official Wan Rokman Wan Yaacob was quoted as saying
the following are the main REASONS for suicide:
* Poverty
* Unemployment
* Loss of loved ones
* Breakdown in relationships
* Depression
* Family history.
He said that suicides occurred when emotional pain brought on by stress factors exceeded the ability to cope.
He added that early identification and treatment of mental disorders was an important strategy in preventing suicides.
DESIDERATA: The statistics stated paint a worrisome picture of the mental health of Malaysians in general, and the resultant effects of suicide victims or even those who attempt suicide leave deep and lasting mental scars among the families left behind. The picture is indeed GRIM – a total of 30,000 victims suffer from “trauma” every year in relation to “Suicide” cases.For every life lost, more than 20 others have attempted suicide.
AND we need more organizations like THE BEFRIENDERS to answer to these “desperate” cries for help – every day.
One unanswered call from potentially SEVEN X 20 people in need of help acn mean another life lost.
And after listening to some feedback from several readers, Desi has this appeal:
DO NOT BE JUGMENTAL.
DO NOT BE QUICK TO MOCK.
DO NOT CONDEMN, IF YOU CAN’T HELP –
REFER FOR PROFESSIONAL HELP!
Those who can become VOLUNTEERS, please do.
Lend a helping hand
Lend your friends in need a shoulder to cry on
Lend a sympathetic ear.
And here is a voice from a Regular Guest SABRINA TAN at Desi's Place who truly shares and cares (writing from an Xperience of someone who had walked that close to the precipice, and can now reflect with and for us:
"*People always say that the people who attempt that are stupid. Yes, they are, it's because no one gave them the hope to live on. That's why I strongly feel that in many ways, we could have prevented suicide. If we can detect that something's wrong with our friends, ( gals, listen up! as most often your instincts are good!) then just be there for them. Talk to them.
Don't lecture them/ nag them, 'cos that's the last thing that they need. If anything you are just accelerating the process.
All you can do is just show small gestures to be there for them. Show them that you care.
Show them that you want them to live on in this world.
That's the least you can do as a human being....
Sabrina *"
If it is of any consolation, Desi often finds comfort in these lyrics:
I Believe
I believe for every drop of rain that falls
A flower grows,
I believe that somewhere in the darkest night
A candle glows.
I believe for everyone who goes astray
Someone will come to show the way.
I believe,
Oh, I believe.
I believe above the storm
The smallest prayer, will still be heard.
I believe that someone in that great somewhere
Hears every word
Every time I hear a newborn baby cry,
Or touch a leaf
Or see the sky,
Then I know why I believe.
Every time I hear a newborn baby cry,
Or touch a leaf
Or see the sky,
Then I know why I believe.
*
*
*
UPDATE @ 11.11AM
The Star on page 10 carries this report today headlined
Guidelines for media to help prevent copycat suicides
Media reports of suicide cases, especially those involving celebrities, can have a fatal influence on those with suicidal tendencies, and the Health Ministry has issued “Guidelines for Media Reporting on Suicide”.
The media is advised NOT to publish specific details of the methodsused to commit suicide photographs of suicide scenes and suicide notes on the front page.
Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said in a speech at the launch of the Suicide Prevention Month 2005 that the way the media reported a suicide could influence readers’ action.
“Suicide is preventable. We can help by taking complaints seriously, being good and caring listeners and ensuring that those who are contemplating suicide receive proper help from experts,” he added.
The Befrienders KL chairman Zilfalila A. Rahman said it was estimated that while there were seven suicides a day, there were 70 more people making attempts to end their lives.
She said those who wanted to talk about their problems could call The Befrienders 24-hour hotline at 79568144/8145, and that their anonymity was guaranteed.
I’m sorry we have to retrace another heart-breaking and depressing subject –- suicides -- which was highlighted just last week.
The New Straits Times of September 12, 2005 front page leads off with a headline that cannot be any sadder:
MALAYSIANS
KILL
THEMSELVES
EVERY DAY
1,700 SUICIDES SO FAR THIS YEAR
* That’s 2,555 lives lost every year
* That’s 12 family members and friends, directly
or indirectly, affected for evry suicide
• That’s 30,000 traumatised people a year.
(It was 8 per 100,000 in the ‘80s.
9-12 per 100,000 in 2003)
The Page 4 report said that:
In Malaysia, there are an average of seven suicides a day. Compared with Singapore, one a day and Thailand 13 a day.
A Health Ministry’s official Wan Rokman Wan Yaacob was quoted as saying
the following are the main REASONS for suicide:
* Poverty
* Unemployment
* Loss of loved ones
* Breakdown in relationships
* Depression
* Family history.
He said that suicides occurred when emotional pain brought on by stress factors exceeded the ability to cope.
He added that early identification and treatment of mental disorders was an important strategy in preventing suicides.
DESIDERATA: The statistics stated paint a worrisome picture of the mental health of Malaysians in general, and the resultant effects of suicide victims or even those who attempt suicide leave deep and lasting mental scars among the families left behind. The picture is indeed GRIM – a total of 30,000 victims suffer from “trauma” every year in relation to “Suicide” cases.For every life lost, more than 20 others have attempted suicide.
AND we need more organizations like THE BEFRIENDERS to answer to these “desperate” cries for help – every day.
One unanswered call from potentially SEVEN X 20 people in need of help acn mean another life lost.
And after listening to some feedback from several readers, Desi has this appeal:
DO NOT BE JUGMENTAL.
DO NOT BE QUICK TO MOCK.
DO NOT CONDEMN, IF YOU CAN’T HELP –
REFER FOR PROFESSIONAL HELP!
Those who can become VOLUNTEERS, please do.
Lend a helping hand
Lend your friends in need a shoulder to cry on
Lend a sympathetic ear.
And here is a voice from a Regular Guest SABRINA TAN at Desi's Place who truly shares and cares (writing from an Xperience of someone who had walked that close to the precipice, and can now reflect with and for us:
"*People always say that the people who attempt that are stupid. Yes, they are, it's because no one gave them the hope to live on. That's why I strongly feel that in many ways, we could have prevented suicide. If we can detect that something's wrong with our friends, ( gals, listen up! as most often your instincts are good!) then just be there for them. Talk to them.
Don't lecture them/ nag them, 'cos that's the last thing that they need. If anything you are just accelerating the process.
All you can do is just show small gestures to be there for them. Show them that you care.
Show them that you want them to live on in this world.
That's the least you can do as a human being....
Sabrina *"
If it is of any consolation, Desi often finds comfort in these lyrics:
I Believe
I believe for every drop of rain that falls
A flower grows,
I believe that somewhere in the darkest night
A candle glows.
I believe for everyone who goes astray
Someone will come to show the way.
I believe,
Oh, I believe.
I believe above the storm
The smallest prayer, will still be heard.
I believe that someone in that great somewhere
Hears every word
Every time I hear a newborn baby cry,
Or touch a leaf
Or see the sky,
Then I know why I believe.
Every time I hear a newborn baby cry,
Or touch a leaf
Or see the sky,
Then I know why I believe.
*
*
*
UPDATE @ 11.11AM
The Star on page 10 carries this report today headlined
Guidelines for media to help prevent copycat suicides
Media reports of suicide cases, especially those involving celebrities, can have a fatal influence on those with suicidal tendencies, and the Health Ministry has issued “Guidelines for Media Reporting on Suicide”.
The media is advised NOT to publish specific details of the methodsused to commit suicide photographs of suicide scenes and suicide notes on the front page.
Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said in a speech at the launch of the Suicide Prevention Month 2005 that the way the media reported a suicide could influence readers’ action.
“Suicide is preventable. We can help by taking complaints seriously, being good and caring listeners and ensuring that those who are contemplating suicide receive proper help from experts,” he added.
The Befrienders KL chairman Zilfalila A. Rahman said it was estimated that while there were seven suicides a day, there were 70 more people making attempts to end their lives.
She said those who wanted to talk about their problems could call The Befrienders 24-hour hotline at 79568144/8145, and that their anonymity was guaranteed.
When I’m 64…
The type of role model for citizens in spiritedestination was spotted by Desiderata at lunchtime today – so appropriate, First Primeday.
“I have a heart problem and went through much stress, tension and plenty of burning the midnight oil. I am proud to have finally done it.” – Dr T.S. N. Rathakrishnan who graduated from the Melaka Manipal Medical College.
That was the lead highlight on the frontpage of The Star 12 September 2005.
The full story on page 6 further quoted the good doctor at that young age of sixty-four: “I almost called the whole thing off during the first two years of study in India ,,, studies and reference work were proving were proving to be too much.”
I was tempted on tHis lazy afternnon after a wealthy lunch to stop here, but THE bless'd Primeday RAINS THAT CAME ABOUT 1.00PM HELPS TO COOL DOWN DESI'S RISING BLOOD PRESSUE DUE TO SLEEP DEPRIVATION, also I haer some protestation. So to live up to my name which I said in my previous post means “charitable”, I am typing out a paraphrase of some 4 more paras from The Star report for mGf such as IMran who don’t want to part with RM1.20 to spend on a copy (he claims tightening the belt’, getting too fat, but Desi suspects he’s a real’kedekut” from Up North?...). So the report continues:
Heading: He’s finally a doctor at 64
MALACCA: It has always been T.S.N. Rathakrishnnan’s drem to be a doctor.
He had to skip the convocation ceremony on Saturday as he was helping a friend set up another medical college, where he is to be the principal. His wife is a radiologist at a Kuala Lumpur private hospital while their son is a registrar at the neurology department of an university hospital in Singapore.
It took Rathakrishnan, a retired plantation manager SEVEN years to complete his medical studies, after he first enrolled at India’s Manipal Medical College.
DESIDERATA: That’s the role model for citizens at OUR I-LAND – demonstrating TRUE GRIT. Like Primrose, Yan – winners all. Desi qualifies not be age of 64, but being the Initiator for the i-land project, HOPE there is no objection please. We are very DEMOKRATIK on spiritedestination, as long as you do not proteseth too much against the founder-members, who comprise ……..
Mayhaps Desi's next Challenge is to ask Readers to GU'SS his age. I won't becos nobody will get it rite! Desi subscribes to Mark TWAIN's definition -- it is an issue of Mind over Matter!
A hint is that Desi is almost forty, going on 39 next year, 38 the year after ...On spiritedestination, we also enjoy Time Travel, as mGf Julese Verne taught founder Desi S-well. LoLs!:) as mGf fella (NOT sheila!) founders SweetS, Sab, and Kyels, will yell.:););)
Beatles song lyrics
by John Lennon/Paul McCartney
****When I'm 64****
When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a Valentine,birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out 'till quarter to three,would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?
Hmm------mmm---mmmh.
You'll be older, too.Aaah, and if you say the word, I could stay with you.
I could be handy, mending a fuse, when your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside, sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four?
Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wightif it's not to dear. We shall scrimp and save.
Ah, grandchildren on your knee, Vera, Chuck, and Dave.
Send me a postcard, drop me a line stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say, yours sincerely wasting away.
Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forever more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four?
“I have a heart problem and went through much stress, tension and plenty of burning the midnight oil. I am proud to have finally done it.” – Dr T.S. N. Rathakrishnan who graduated from the Melaka Manipal Medical College.
That was the lead highlight on the frontpage of The Star 12 September 2005.
The full story on page 6 further quoted the good doctor at that young age of sixty-four: “I almost called the whole thing off during the first two years of study in India ,,, studies and reference work were proving were proving to be too much.”
I was tempted on tHis lazy afternnon after a wealthy lunch to stop here, but THE bless'd Primeday RAINS THAT CAME ABOUT 1.00PM HELPS TO COOL DOWN DESI'S RISING BLOOD PRESSUE DUE TO SLEEP DEPRIVATION, also I haer some protestation. So to live up to my name which I said in my previous post means “charitable”, I am typing out a paraphrase of some 4 more paras from The Star report for mGf such as IMran who don’t want to part with RM1.20 to spend on a copy (he claims tightening the belt’, getting too fat, but Desi suspects he’s a real’kedekut” from Up North?...). So the report continues:
Heading: He’s finally a doctor at 64
MALACCA: It has always been T.S.N. Rathakrishnnan’s drem to be a doctor.
He had to skip the convocation ceremony on Saturday as he was helping a friend set up another medical college, where he is to be the principal. His wife is a radiologist at a Kuala Lumpur private hospital while their son is a registrar at the neurology department of an university hospital in Singapore.
It took Rathakrishnan, a retired plantation manager SEVEN years to complete his medical studies, after he first enrolled at India’s Manipal Medical College.
DESIDERATA: That’s the role model for citizens at OUR I-LAND – demonstrating TRUE GRIT. Like Primrose, Yan – winners all. Desi qualifies not be age of 64, but being the Initiator for the i-land project, HOPE there is no objection please. We are very DEMOKRATIK on spiritedestination, as long as you do not proteseth too much against the founder-members, who comprise ……..
Mayhaps Desi's next Challenge is to ask Readers to GU'SS his age. I won't becos nobody will get it rite! Desi subscribes to Mark TWAIN's definition -- it is an issue of Mind over Matter!
A hint is that Desi is almost forty, going on 39 next year, 38 the year after ...On spiritedestination, we also enjoy Time Travel, as mGf Julese Verne taught founder Desi S-well. LoLs!:) as mGf fella (NOT sheila!) founders SweetS, Sab, and Kyels, will yell.:););)
Beatles song lyrics
by John Lennon/Paul McCartney
****When I'm 64****
When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a Valentine,birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out 'till quarter to three,would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?
Hmm------mmm---mmmh.
You'll be older, too.Aaah, and if you say the word, I could stay with you.
I could be handy, mending a fuse, when your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside, sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four?
Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wightif it's not to dear. We shall scrimp and save.
Ah, grandchildren on your knee, Vera, Chuck, and Dave.
Send me a postcard, drop me a line stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say, yours sincerely wasting away.
Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forever more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four?
FIRST PRIME-DAY!
Sub-title:
OF NAMES and ASPIRATIONS
It's a our First PRIMEDAY. It's also a GREATDAY, aka to the Internet-savvies here, a Gr8Day. It's also a GOoday.
No, not a Bluesundane Day; or Mayday, or Careday, or Shareday.
Just a lifting, prime-ministerial PRIMEDAY.
For new-comers, Primeday is Defined as that EIGGHTDAY on spiritedestination.:):):):););););)
So Today's Post will see NO MONDAY’S BLUES, Desi asssures you.
We have enough of September 11 and SEVEN7 recollections to last us one ‘hole year.
There may be some Indecentstuff here, that's not nrmal of Desi, so blame it on too much Teh-Si last nite, or Balame it on the Seremabn Maze!!
Starting this week, spiritedestination will implement an EIGHT-DAY WEEK.
We obseve the conventional Monday, Tuesday, Wednurseday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sundae; but on OUR I-LAND the Good Lord has bless’d us with ONE MORE DAY, yeah, the Beatles’ creatively styled EIGHT DAYS A WEEK, I luv u…, remember?
So what’s in a name?
Desiderata thinks it’s a flaming lot! Some may say it’s li’l, yes, of no importance, or not much consequence. Let’s see, a legion of the second category among the Chianmen (here I include Myself, hence it is not used in any derogatrory manner, why should I want to de-mean myself, unless I have gone bonkers .. or isit bangers?)
From here onwards, if you’re over the Age of Non-Dissent, please stop reading, because Desi has some salty language flowing:
WHY DO YOU THINK SOME FOLKS LAND UP BEING CALLED?
• Teow Ah Kow …(close to F… that which goes moo, moo:)
• Seet Ah Choo …(close to Eat that which goes oink, oink:)
• Yeap Ham Sap … (close to Salt the itchy hands that roam down the lad’s thigh:)
* Lan Chow Kar...(close to a swear word, Dirty Smelly Bastard!)
• Chin Lan Keow … (here get some Hakka lang to translate for you, I plead IgnorantMooMoo on this one), but the narrative that follows may give some hint.
"*Malaysia’s news agency BERNAMA was quite a leader among ASEAN bros&sis. So when Vietname joined the august organization called the Association of South-East Asian Nations, it sought (not seeked, I.Cowws!) then already advanced Malaysia’s help to set up its own news org.
Everything was smooth and sailing – “Swimmingly Well” as Desi would describe it – so the Wise Men gathered at the boardroom to decide on a NAME for the proud infant, the Vietnamese news agency.
Like I.Cowws working their brains OT yesterday at Desi's Place, tho I felt a wee bit short=changed after the continuous stream of HariDas’ tehtarik till YAN came up with that stunner -- whoops, the LUXURY OF BLOGGONG DIGRESSION! – the two ASEAN teams downed a lot of tehtarik and mao-the, some sort of brain-raising tea in Vietnam, I ‘ear!.
Finally, the chef-de-mission of the Ho®sts smartly said, waking up from their reverie, or stupour:
“We will combine the Best of both worlds.
We will use the commonest – not communist, in case some of you are hard of hearing --like mixing Crime for prime, Hood for good, and Greed for Gr8…--names from our two countries.
"The name that comes to mind from Vietnam is DIEU ...as a lot of our famous families are proud of THAT SIR-NAME.”He cited a few political names. but Desi has censored them, out of modesty, not their part, many already are deceased, on Desi's part, for I'm kicking&akive! The Vietnam head sat down on his butt, feeling so proud of having over-done himself.
The humble Malaysian counterpart rose slowly, graciously, bowed several times, buying T-I-M-E, not the mabagzine, you IC…., the minutes, seconds …as he wracked/wrecked his mostly unworked brain. Ah, the light bulb lit up JIT! (Howsy, tell my mates here wat’s JIT, nits indeed.)
“We are damn bloody proud of our national news agency …BERNAMA. ‘Ber’ means possession’, ‘NAMA’, you kNOw-lah, means ‘NAME’.”
So now you know why we have an internationally renowned agency called: Dieu-nama…
Lols, Desi is blushing now, turning pinkish, red Indian red, finally LOBSTER RED!
As the gr8 Bard said:
“**
What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.- William Shakespeare
But for Lone Michigan artist, Bearclaw Jack, any other name just wouldn't do.
**”
Basing on my weak memory recall, somefullish1 said:
Woman, thy name is Vanity!
Moral of the story so far:
Parents ... besides remembering on what Dau your Child is born, please SELECT a GOoD NAME for the Child to have a GOoD satrt in this Clallengin Life, that he may aspire to fulfill the inherent character of his/her name; maybe, perhaps, MYAhaps, that child could gow into the Prime Minister post-2020? then he/she can appoint Desi as Menteri Bernama, mayhaps?
TomGf who are mail OR even fe=mail, you may not agree with the earlier citation. Ne'er mind, quoting VOLTAIRE yet again:
"I may disgaree with what you say, but I will defend, to the death, your right to say it."
That's what democratic discourse or intercourse is all about. Now -- Sab, Sweets, kyels -- you can FLAME ME on the frontpage! If they are flammingly Gooder, I'll promote from Comments to Frontpage, as I do today with Xchanges with C S'X winner, Yan, that Catsville woman.
Me.I think I L'VE up to my name. I'm Kind and a Humble bee.
Born. Many readers say: on Thursday -- has far to go.
GO WHERE: spiritedestination, where else in deed!:)
"****CHALLENGE S'X REVIEW****"
Yan said...
Prime day?
Crime day?
6:43 AM (americano time-Msian time 9.43PM)
desiderata said...
Yan: I hear you loud&clear.
BUTT where is the RAT-iuonale? Mousey one also can, like I did when Xplaining C4, remember.
The month of September,
Readers are supposed to Remember...
Well, Primeday ...very positive
Mispronounced Crimeday ...very negative,
But pray, my Friday's Child?, the Rationale please, before 12midnite?
7:28 AM (msian time 9.28PM)
desiderata said...
ALL CHALLENGEES!!!!!!!!
Eight Xcalmation marks, strewn throughout;
Yes, it points to Eight Days a Week>Beatles link
Now someone has got the PM's and the C4Winner's links, but quick, the RATIONALE!
Others may hitch a ride to Xplain2!
I'm bringing forawrd the DEADLINE to 11PM, so it's 30minutes to go, cos we more or less have a WINNER, but she's steall trying to catch a RAT in Catsville; can fellow CHALLENGEES help her to act like KUCHING gals&boys, catch that Fat RAT, or is it a soaring&lifting one, or mis-pronounced, a messy&deadly one?
L'VE!
10.33PM, just 27mins to go!
Desi's taking a BREAK! Ain't it Great??
Ain't it Gooder???
7:34 AM
desiderata said...
""CLUES:
(1) Somewhere buried in that post “FRIDAY'S CHILD IS LOVING AND GIVING...” are a sprinkle of clues.
(2) This ditty also provides some leads:
The Beatles could be a mover, I suppose
Pak Lah could be a Friday’s Child, like Primrose
If it’s not Monday, Tuesday, Wednurseday
Thursday, Friday or Saturday
It can Never be a Sundae
So Pak Lah, like Desi, could be born
That Special Day
Appropriate for a PM
It's a .....day!
So think outside the box
Desi’s riddle is born of a fox.
(3) That NAME Desi’s decided is a soaring one, lifting Malaysians’ spirit towards Towering status, come what may;
But slightly mis-pronounced, can be disastrous, dangerous even, for then anarchy and violence could rule the day.""
RESULTS & EDESI’S RATIONALE!
At 11.01PM, Sunday; deadline forwarded, suffers SleepDeprivation!
(A) Yes, we have a WINNER – YAN, from Catsville – with Primeday!
(B) The misPronounced is Crimeday!!
(1)YAN was also the First Valiant Challengee, also got on track with Baby Step of linking BEATLES with their song “EIGHT DAYS A WEEK”.
This means an unconventional day, a creative day, a day BORN of the Imagination … and the Beatles also had a song called Imagine…remember that 1?
Further, "mover" often suggests "Prime" mover, yes? No?
YAN’s answer fulfilled most of the Clues&Hints Desiderata provided, the portions reproduced at the top.
Appropriate for a PM – PM is PRIME Minister, remember2?
(3) With reference to
soaring&lifting, this ACCORDS with Prime … which means to lift up, take to greater heights .. to Towering perhaps.
If slightly mis-pronounced, PRIME can sound like CRIME, which would be indeed be disastrous, danegrous, YES3?
So it’s Primeday, which wins for YAN that copy of Sherlock Holmes stotries by Arthur Conan Doyle(my fav detective), HELPS I.COWWS to thonk CRITICALLY and LOGICALLY, desiderata.faculyies to solve riddles and crimes!
8:01 AM
desiderata said...
TWO fallback answers, which did not have to be used as a basis to decide the winner -- are:
(2) Greatday OR Gr8day
Mispronounced: Greeday! Greedday!!
(3) GOoDay OR Gooday
Mispronounced: Hooday!
GOoDNite, it's exactly 11.07pm;
Desi's heading, in Sweets words, for Zzzzzland, not NewZ....!
8:07 AM
desiderata said...
I.Cows and Over-aged Dissenters are ALLOWED, encouraged to be ALOUD, to flame the judge for his disgraceful decisions,and for mGf IMRAN who is still pondering over the CLUES, thinking the deadline is just another 50minutes away; Slly mate, FLAME DESI!
Minta Maaf ia!, IM:)
CURTAINS CERTAINLY DOWN @ 11.11PM, NEVER on SUNDAE!!!!!!!!
PS: Eight Xclamation marks for 8, isn't that Gr8????????-day!
8:11 AM (equivalent to 11.11PM, Sundae!)
sweetspirit said...
i think Desi
should be given a challenge by us hehe. cheers
1:46 PM
myEsteemedReaders: See(4) how YAN PLAYED SHERLOCK HOLMES, a desrving winner in deed!
Yan said...
Hi, Desi, thanks for picking me as the winner.
I would have given up - but the clue "that" mover in the last minute gave me the "prime" mover.
So, prime minister
primrose, the winner
came to the mind.
Then, I went to sleep.. right after sending in the answer. Did not know have to give rational leh..
Thnaks for allowing my mind to work yesterday.
Yan
(First Primeday Morning o'lady!)
desiderata said...
CONGRATS 8X to YAN!
Desi in the rush to BRING THE CURTAINS DOWN last nite -- he was truly weary and tired (not of Mito-C's type of tried of being tired=ness!) -- that He did not extend his CONGRATULATIONS to the S'X-y Winner from Catsville.
OF NAMES and ASPIRATIONS
It's a our First PRIMEDAY. It's also a GREATDAY, aka to the Internet-savvies here, a Gr8Day. It's also a GOoday.
No, not a Bluesundane Day; or Mayday, or Careday, or Shareday.
Just a lifting, prime-ministerial PRIMEDAY.
For new-comers, Primeday is Defined as that EIGGHTDAY on spiritedestination.:):):):););););)
So Today's Post will see NO MONDAY’S BLUES, Desi asssures you.
We have enough of September 11 and SEVEN7 recollections to last us one ‘hole year.
There may be some Indecentstuff here, that's not nrmal of Desi, so blame it on too much Teh-Si last nite, or Balame it on the Seremabn Maze!!
Starting this week, spiritedestination will implement an EIGHT-DAY WEEK.
We obseve the conventional Monday, Tuesday, Wednurseday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sundae; but on OUR I-LAND the Good Lord has bless’d us with ONE MORE DAY, yeah, the Beatles’ creatively styled EIGHT DAYS A WEEK, I luv u…, remember?
So what’s in a name?
Desiderata thinks it’s a flaming lot! Some may say it’s li’l, yes, of no importance, or not much consequence. Let’s see, a legion of the second category among the Chianmen (here I include Myself, hence it is not used in any derogatrory manner, why should I want to de-mean myself, unless I have gone bonkers .. or isit bangers?)
From here onwards, if you’re over the Age of Non-Dissent, please stop reading, because Desi has some salty language flowing:
WHY DO YOU THINK SOME FOLKS LAND UP BEING CALLED?
• Teow Ah Kow …(close to F… that which goes moo, moo:)
• Seet Ah Choo …(close to Eat that which goes oink, oink:)
• Yeap Ham Sap … (close to Salt the itchy hands that roam down the lad’s thigh:)
* Lan Chow Kar...(close to a swear word, Dirty Smelly Bastard!)
• Chin Lan Keow … (here get some Hakka lang to translate for you, I plead IgnorantMooMoo on this one), but the narrative that follows may give some hint.
"*Malaysia’s news agency BERNAMA was quite a leader among ASEAN bros&sis. So when Vietname joined the august organization called the Association of South-East Asian Nations, it sought (not seeked, I.Cowws!) then already advanced Malaysia’s help to set up its own news org.
Everything was smooth and sailing – “Swimmingly Well” as Desi would describe it – so the Wise Men gathered at the boardroom to decide on a NAME for the proud infant, the Vietnamese news agency.
Like I.Cowws working their brains OT yesterday at Desi's Place, tho I felt a wee bit short=changed after the continuous stream of HariDas’ tehtarik till YAN came up with that stunner -- whoops, the LUXURY OF BLOGGONG DIGRESSION! – the two ASEAN teams downed a lot of tehtarik and mao-the, some sort of brain-raising tea in Vietnam, I ‘ear!.
Finally, the chef-de-mission of the Ho®sts smartly said, waking up from their reverie, or stupour:
“We will combine the Best of both worlds.
We will use the commonest – not communist, in case some of you are hard of hearing --like mixing Crime for prime, Hood for good, and Greed for Gr8…--names from our two countries.
"The name that comes to mind from Vietnam is DIEU ...as a lot of our famous families are proud of THAT SIR-NAME.”He cited a few political names. but Desi has censored them, out of modesty, not their part, many already are deceased, on Desi's part, for I'm kicking&akive! The Vietnam head sat down on his butt, feeling so proud of having over-done himself.
The humble Malaysian counterpart rose slowly, graciously, bowed several times, buying T-I-M-E, not the mabagzine, you IC…., the minutes, seconds …as he wracked/wrecked his mostly unworked brain. Ah, the light bulb lit up JIT! (Howsy, tell my mates here wat’s JIT, nits indeed.)
“We are damn bloody proud of our national news agency …BERNAMA. ‘Ber’ means possession’, ‘NAMA’, you kNOw-lah, means ‘NAME’.”
So now you know why we have an internationally renowned agency called: Dieu-nama…
Lols, Desi is blushing now, turning pinkish, red Indian red, finally LOBSTER RED!
As the gr8 Bard said:
“**
What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.- William Shakespeare
But for Lone Michigan artist, Bearclaw Jack, any other name just wouldn't do.
**”
Basing on my weak memory recall, somefullish1 said:
Woman, thy name is Vanity!
Moral of the story so far:
Parents ... besides remembering on what Dau your Child is born, please SELECT a GOoD NAME for the Child to have a GOoD satrt in this Clallengin Life, that he may aspire to fulfill the inherent character of his/her name; maybe, perhaps, MYAhaps, that child could gow into the Prime Minister post-2020? then he/she can appoint Desi as Menteri Bernama, mayhaps?
TomGf who are mail OR even fe=mail, you may not agree with the earlier citation. Ne'er mind, quoting VOLTAIRE yet again:
"I may disgaree with what you say, but I will defend, to the death, your right to say it."
That's what democratic discourse or intercourse is all about. Now -- Sab, Sweets, kyels -- you can FLAME ME on the frontpage! If they are flammingly Gooder, I'll promote from Comments to Frontpage, as I do today with Xchanges with C S'X winner, Yan, that Catsville woman.
Me.I think I L'VE up to my name. I'm Kind and a Humble bee.
Born. Many readers say: on Thursday -- has far to go.
GO WHERE: spiritedestination, where else in deed!:)
"****CHALLENGE S'X REVIEW****"
Yan said...
Prime day?
Crime day?
6:43 AM (americano time-Msian time 9.43PM)
desiderata said...
Yan: I hear you loud&clear.
BUTT where is the RAT-iuonale? Mousey one also can, like I did when Xplaining C4, remember.
The month of September,
Readers are supposed to Remember...
Well, Primeday ...very positive
Mispronounced Crimeday ...very negative,
But pray, my Friday's Child?, the Rationale please, before 12midnite?
7:28 AM (msian time 9.28PM)
desiderata said...
ALL CHALLENGEES!!!!!!!!
Eight Xcalmation marks, strewn throughout;
Yes, it points to Eight Days a Week>Beatles link
Now someone has got the PM's and the C4Winner's links, but quick, the RATIONALE!
Others may hitch a ride to Xplain2!
I'm bringing forawrd the DEADLINE to 11PM, so it's 30minutes to go, cos we more or less have a WINNER, but she's steall trying to catch a RAT in Catsville; can fellow CHALLENGEES help her to act like KUCHING gals&boys, catch that Fat RAT, or is it a soaring&lifting one, or mis-pronounced, a messy&deadly one?
L'VE!
10.33PM, just 27mins to go!
Desi's taking a BREAK! Ain't it Great??
Ain't it Gooder???
7:34 AM
desiderata said...
""CLUES:
(1) Somewhere buried in that post “FRIDAY'S CHILD IS LOVING AND GIVING...” are a sprinkle of clues.
(2) This ditty also provides some leads:
The Beatles could be a mover, I suppose
Pak Lah could be a Friday’s Child, like Primrose
If it’s not Monday, Tuesday, Wednurseday
Thursday, Friday or Saturday
It can Never be a Sundae
So Pak Lah, like Desi, could be born
That Special Day
Appropriate for a PM
It's a .....day!
So think outside the box
Desi’s riddle is born of a fox.
(3) That NAME Desi’s decided is a soaring one, lifting Malaysians’ spirit towards Towering status, come what may;
But slightly mis-pronounced, can be disastrous, dangerous even, for then anarchy and violence could rule the day.""
RESULTS & EDESI’S RATIONALE!
At 11.01PM, Sunday; deadline forwarded, suffers SleepDeprivation!
(A) Yes, we have a WINNER – YAN, from Catsville – with Primeday!
(B) The misPronounced is Crimeday!!
(1)YAN was also the First Valiant Challengee, also got on track with Baby Step of linking BEATLES with their song “EIGHT DAYS A WEEK”.
This means an unconventional day, a creative day, a day BORN of the Imagination … and the Beatles also had a song called Imagine…remember that 1?
Further, "mover" often suggests "Prime" mover, yes? No?
YAN’s answer fulfilled most of the Clues&Hints Desiderata provided, the portions reproduced at the top.
Appropriate for a PM – PM is PRIME Minister, remember2?
(3) With reference to
soaring&lifting, this ACCORDS with Prime … which means to lift up, take to greater heights .. to Towering perhaps.
If slightly mis-pronounced, PRIME can sound like CRIME, which would be indeed be disastrous, danegrous, YES3?
So it’s Primeday, which wins for YAN that copy of Sherlock Holmes stotries by Arthur Conan Doyle(my fav detective), HELPS I.COWWS to thonk CRITICALLY and LOGICALLY, desiderata.faculyies to solve riddles and crimes!
8:01 AM
desiderata said...
TWO fallback answers, which did not have to be used as a basis to decide the winner -- are:
(2) Greatday OR Gr8day
Mispronounced: Greeday! Greedday!!
(3) GOoDay OR Gooday
Mispronounced: Hooday!
GOoDNite, it's exactly 11.07pm;
Desi's heading, in Sweets words, for Zzzzzland, not NewZ....!
8:07 AM
desiderata said...
I.Cows and Over-aged Dissenters are ALLOWED, encouraged to be ALOUD, to flame the judge for his disgraceful decisions,and for mGf IMRAN who is still pondering over the CLUES, thinking the deadline is just another 50minutes away; Slly mate, FLAME DESI!
Minta Maaf ia!, IM:)
CURTAINS CERTAINLY DOWN @ 11.11PM, NEVER on SUNDAE!!!!!!!!
PS: Eight Xclamation marks for 8, isn't that Gr8????????-day!
8:11 AM (equivalent to 11.11PM, Sundae!)
sweetspirit said...
i think Desi
should be given a challenge by us hehe. cheers
1:46 PM
myEsteemedReaders: See(4) how YAN PLAYED SHERLOCK HOLMES, a desrving winner in deed!
Yan said...
Hi, Desi, thanks for picking me as the winner.
I would have given up - but the clue "that" mover in the last minute gave me the "prime" mover.
So, prime minister
primrose, the winner
came to the mind.
Then, I went to sleep.. right after sending in the answer. Did not know have to give rational leh..
Thnaks for allowing my mind to work yesterday.
Yan
(First Primeday Morning o'lady!)
desiderata said...
CONGRATS 8X to YAN!
Desi in the rush to BRING THE CURTAINS DOWN last nite -- he was truly weary and tired (not of Mito-C's type of tried of being tired=ness!) -- that He did not extend his CONGRATULATIONS to the S'X-y Winner from Catsville.
Monday, September 12, 2005
happy birthday LEN!
"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."-- Henry David Thoreau
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to SomeOne Special
Remember those days so carefree
Now you're all grownup at Uni
Remember your Roots, & the Man to be
Ponder what's a real education
It's not all just the degree
It's your GOoD-led Destination
Seeking Truth, Being free
Of bondage to Evil, and all the Satans-be
That's truly the definition
To be refined by Thee, and Only Thee.
L'VE
DaD
9.11AM September 11, 2005
Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh so mellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain so yellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a young and a callow fellow
Try to remember and if you remember
Then follow--follow, oh-oh
PS: Dearest Len, while we all celebrate this special day, also remember:
It's also a DayOfSignificance in history four years ago
Remember the Victims of War, human's inhumanity to fellow humans beyond our ken
In such heart-breaking events, our prayers for today and the morrow
That we have peAce in the land,among LovedOnes, fRiends,and family of men.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to SomeOne Special
Remember those days so carefree
Now you're all grownup at Uni
Remember your Roots, & the Man to be
Ponder what's a real education
It's not all just the degree
It's your GOoD-led Destination
Seeking Truth, Being free
Of bondage to Evil, and all the Satans-be
That's truly the definition
To be refined by Thee, and Only Thee.
L'VE
DaD
9.11AM September 11, 2005
Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh so mellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain so yellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a young and a callow fellow
Try to remember and if you remember
Then follow--follow, oh-oh
PS: Dearest Len, while we all celebrate this special day, also remember:
It's also a DayOfSignificance in history four years ago
Remember the Victims of War, human's inhumanity to fellow humans beyond our ken
In such heart-breaking events, our prayers for today and the morrow
That we have peAce in the land,among LovedOnes, fRiends,and family of men.
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