The Whateverlah Blog

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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WEBINAR

Stupidest. Portmanteau. Ever.

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me: hey, i ask you a question
the expression “go fly kite”
i used to think it was a malaysian thing
but this one time.. i saw it on tv here
how ah?

bro: i dunno
i mean i know ppl here use it also lah

me: o really kah?
doesnt sound like an american kind of expression

bro: maybe its english
as in england english

me: i have to do some resarch. i was just surprised to hear it

bro: oic……brb….toilet

me:http://www.englishdaily626.com/idioms.php?010#Go%20fly%20a%20kite
it says, according to that source, that it’s a “chiefly north american idiom”
now i’m REALLY confused

….

Upon further googling, I found inconclusive evidence from the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms that “go fly a kite” is an american expression.

I think the “go fly kite” expression used by Malaysians, without the indefinite article, is more emphatic and thus more satisfying to use.

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Today in The Star got dis artickel that started out with:

The Klang Valley emptied yesterday as Malaysians travelling in more than a million vehicles left the conurbation to return to their hometowns for the Chinese New Year.

Okay. Let’s sit and reflect on that for a minute… because I don’t have a fucking clue what in the hell conurbation means. (I mean, I will after I post this and I look up the word. But really… do you use words like that in a news article? chyoh!)

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Found it while I was searching for something interesting to feature for our 50th independence day.

Search yielded an newsreel type video about Tunku’s work… sort of. And it’s not something you can find on youtube. Not yet anyways.

But what you *can* find on youtube is the obligatory Petronas ad:

Oh, I also stumbled onto a really neat newsreel - Malayan Patrol - about the Worchestershire Regiment during the communists period.

And lastly:

*sniffles*

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G wrote about the 100 words the editors of the American Heritage dictionaries would have us all know, in order to pronounce us worthy of the label of “probably (having) a good command of the English Language”.

I say a big loud PllllllBBBBBbbbbttttTTTT.

AAG writes a wonderful post about grammar and spelling in courtship communications.

If we can’t teach our high school graduates spelling and grammar (as evidenced by the painfully-widespread confusion of “your” with “you’re”), forget any “enervating, vehement, supercilious and fatuous lugubriousness” about the vocabulary of the general population. The real issue lies elsewhere.

Face it. If you display a persistent tendency of being unable to spell and punctuate, the IQ of your Internet persona as perceived by your readers is going to tank.

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So the editors of the American Heritage dictionaries have put up a list of 100 words every high school graduate should know. They say if you know these words then you probably have a good command of the language. That’s debatable because knowing the words don’t mean you can put them together nicely. But I digress.

I took it as a challenge to see which ones I knew and you can see my attempt below. Took me about 1 hour and 20 minutes to come up with the answers (minus 10 minutes for a phone call) and I haven’t checked it for accuracy. You should try it and see how many you can get before reading my answers.

If my attempt is any indication, good luck trying to get high school grads to know all the meaning of these words. Some of them I didn’t know till after I was an undergrad. And in the end, isnt that what dictionaries are for - so i don’t have to remember what they mean?

But read on for the words and how I defined them.

(more…)

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Was happily(?) reading the star and saw that we got another person heading to the North Pole besides the Mat Rempits. The article also provided a link to her blog. Naturally curious, I click click over to the site and to my horror(?) there in the front page for all the world to see, is a misappropriation(?) of the word ‘expeditor’:

Lord.

Perhaps she may be expediting something for Pos Malaysia. I dunno.

It ties in real nice with Patrick Teoh’s rant about some politico dumbo’s idea of sending local undergrads who are graduating with a low level of english competency on a 1-month language course.

Says he: What is 1 month going to do for those English language challenged flers? So they can say, “Can I hep shoe?” instead of “Apa? Tak tahu la.”

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Soooooo…… um, so many places to take this but I’m just going to say I’m glad I don’t go to school there.

Congratulations on winning the NIT Championships, West VIRGINA!!

See the AOL FanHouse entry for the closeup of the t-shirts logo. I guess even with the misspelled shirts, this won’t be an annus horribilis for the Virginas. (god, that is bad)
p.s. - where can I get one of them shirts?

UPDATE:

I answer my own question cause I’m such a dork. You can get a West Virgina championship t-shirt here. They only have sizes S and XXL and they cost $25 incl. shipping. The website claims these t shirts are “going fast”. But it is very likely that these ones have the corrected versions of the design.

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Has a member of the Bad Spellers, UNTIE group infiltrated Google Corp?

Or was the poor bastard so lovesick and had other things on his mind?

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How embarrassing - in an email to my future school I wrote to admissions to tell them to “expidiate” something instead of “expidite”. I think I may have just told them to do some online travel booking.

Graduate student, GREs and all.. geez…

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