The Whateverlah Blog

Went to mall and saw these gems.

First off, at IKEA’s everything-and-thekitchen-sink section — make sure you read the entire thing:

Next, at Carrefour:

If you think I don’t have at least two jokes about “underware” and “packing” you don’t know me

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Late Friday night / early Saturday I was driving a lonely stretch of the highway from Subang when the radio came on with a PSA for the upcoming Merdeka celebrations. The voice was explaining the significance of our flag, the Jalur Gemilang. Much to my absolute horror he kept saying shit like “Did you know the fourteen red and white stripes in our flag resemble…” and “The star and crescent resemble…”

Dear Copy Writer at Radio Station That I Cannot Remember Its Name:

resemble – v. have a similar appearance to or features in common with.

So… I do not think the stripes on our flag have a similar appearance to any of our 14 states nor does Islam looks particularly crescent-shaped today.. but a croissant does.

I think you were looking to use this word:

represent – v. 1 be entitled or appointed to act and speak for. 2 be an elected member of a legislature for. 3 constitute; amount to. 4 be a specimen or example of; typify. 5 (be represented) be present to a particular degree. 6 portray in a particular way. 7 depict in a work of art. 8 signify, symbolize, or embody.

I wish I could find an audio file of this PSA to traumatise you all with, but no joy so far. I’ll try to remember what station it was on next time. If only my phone can record sound…

In the meantime, let’s all pretend our English is very the good one.

ADDENDUM:

My brother and I had a very short conversation earlier this evening about his 3G internet access, and the Malay term for “broadband” was brought up. He rightly pointed out that “jalur lebar” is a terrible translation. Did someone in Dewan Bahasa not bother looking up the different meanings for “band”? Do they need to be shown how to use a dictionary ah?

How to have advancement in science and maths when the language it will be taught in is not properly equipped to convey the most accurate meanings for technical and scientific terms?

It was past midnight, closer to one in the morning, when the brother and I were driving home from another food mcguyverism adventure to McDonalds (another post for another day).

As we sat at a light I stared at a giant billboard across the street.

“Bungalow,” I said outloud as I read the plain advertisement for real estate. “Bungalow…” I repeated the word to myself over and over again. “You know,” I turned to the brother, “that doesn’t sound like a very English word.”

“It’s definitely not American. It’s British what.”

“That’s what I mean,” I said. “It’s British but the origins sound colonial.”

“They got no bungalows in UK meh?”

“I’m just saying that I don’t remember the word being used in like.. Sherlock Holmes.” Or in any Jane Austen stories that I remember. “I mean, it’s colonial.. you say the word and you picture an English bungalow in some tropical place no?”

“Yea..” the bro said non-committedly.

“Bungalow… bung-guh-loh… sounds Indian, right? Like, Bangla?” I tried to posit.

“Go home and look it up in Wikipedia lah.”

“I will. I will. Just trying to figure it out on my own first mah.” Thinking about how often I use the word I said, “You never hear it in US though hor?”

“Got lah. Very rare but I’ve heard it used,” the brother said.

“Where? In the south?”

“Got lah…”

“Mmm.. I never.”

“Technically, most American houses are bungalows what,” he pointed out.

“Ehh. I never saw it that way. But you’re right.” (dammit, +1 for him in the ‘always right unofficial contest’)

When we got home I was too lazy to mess with the computer. This morning I remembered so I wiki’ed the term bungalow:

A bungalow is a type of single-story house that originated in India. The word derives from the Hindi ba?gl? (or perhaps the Gujarati variant ba?glo), meaning “Bengali”, used elliptically for a “house in the Bengal style”. Such houses were traditionally small, only one story, thatched and had a wide veranda.

Okay. I’m satisfied now.

The point of this story is that my little puzzle would have been solved very instantly and easily if I own an iPhone. But then I wouldn’t have had half the fun working it out and having conversations like that with the brother. I like my little Nokia 1110.

I don’t usually go crazy english-nazi during everyday conversations but some things just drive me… crazy.

Examples:

- when people pronounce ‘client’ as a one-syllable word, sounding like ‘klein’. WTF, you manglish flers.

- when people pronounce ‘flour’ as a two-syllable word, sounding like ‘flower’. WTF, you yanks.

- when people add the extra syllable to ‘jewellery’. WTF WTF WTF.

- when people can’t tell the difference between ‘democracy’ and ‘majority’

Okay, so that last one is a poor understanding of social political theories rather than bad english. Whateverlah. It’s all very annoying.

[Photo by Joshua H. @ flickr]

Taken at the Vermont Marriage Equality Rally. I really love the sign but I can’t help the intense urge to grab a sharpie and color in a comma after LOVE.

Maybe he meant that Jesus also wanted us to love the beyotches in our lives.

Also, did it seem like the “ES!” in “BITCHES!” was an afterthought?

Who do they hire as copywriters? You only need to run this sentence through Microsoft Word and it’ll tell you that something ain’t right.

The “Best (and Only – ed.) Mexican Restaurant in PD!” has an unusual offering:

Maybe the guy in charge of captions didn’t get his morning coffee in…

At a hotel in Waterloo, IA:

In preparation for landing, I’ve had a lot of correspondence from home recently. And the one trend I’ve noticed is the flagrantly abusive misuse (superlatives much?) of the word “revert”. As in:

XYZ company says: “Thank you for your email.
We will be reverting to you on your enquiry / booking as soon as possible.”

Even my mother is like, “Pls revert” in her email messages to me.

So I’m like, wtf. And I go looking on MerriamWebster.

Main Entry: re·vert
1 : to come or go back (as to a former condition, period, or subject)
2 : to return to the proprietor or his or her heirs at the end of a reversion
3 : to return to an ancestral type

And its synonym? Regress.

No smart-ass observations on how this might be a Freudian-slip type remark on the state of the country in general. Please. FFS. Make it stop already! I want a reply. A response. But certainly not a reversion.

Maybe I’ll put that in my email signature.

Here’s a meta-picture of something you’d never think of nomming:

The brother saw this at a Carrefour. I’m thinking it’s the one in MidValley.

This is from awhile back; I’m playing catch up with blog reading so sorry lah.

A look at the Horror of Malaysian Education System from Lim Kit Siang’s blog, via Education In Malaysia, re: an advertorial (which shouldn’t be a real word and I hate portmanteaus anyways) to ‘honor’ a recipient of an honorary PhD from Tun Hussein Onn University.

It’s an insult to call that Manglish. It’s far beyond my linguistic skills and my mediocre constitution to try and figure that mess out. So bloody embarrassing. Also, do the NST not have an editor or something to check these things before they go to press?

Oh, and you know what – I bet the advertorial *cringe* would sound better written in lolspeak.

I’ve been busy. Very busy. Here’s a pic to either amuse you or make you facepalm. Taken in Selayang from my last visit home.

In case you weren’t one hundred percent sure, the English reads “Every puff take damage your body”.

Yeah.

haf nu haus says: (10:14:35 PM)
“Politicians not immune to the law, too”

abort, retry, fail? says: (10:14:48 PM)
errr apa?

haf nu haus says: (10:14:55 PM)
typical malaysian headline
and a pet peeve

abort, retry, fail? says: (10:15:14 PM)
isn’t that like grammatically incorrect in 453038633887 ways

haf nu haus says: (10:15:19 PM)
it’s EITHER

haf nu haus says: (10:15:23 PM)
not too, dolts

I think the fella who writes headlines for The Star thinks he’s funny when he came up with this one:

“Number of obese growing bigger, says Liow”

p.s. – I hate The Star’s redesigned look with the embedded-ad-linkin-whateveryouwannacallit shit. It’s distracting…. and irksome. Fire your web sales and marketing people.