the recent infamous NST advertorial wasn’t much of an eye-opener. it is unfortunate but i’ve seen it elsewhere. as an example, i have recently edited a wiki entry on my old alma mater. it still is not as perfect as i’d like to see it, but hopefully all the tenses are correct now. i remembered that the only time at boarding school i could engage a conversation in english was with only two of my malay class mates, and even then i get the odd stare. things were different when i was in primary school, when, regardless of race, we were all bi-lingual in our day to day conversation. it’s a pity that spoken english is regarded by some as a symbol of arrogance. i do take it that many non-english speaking nations are proud of their mother tongue, and rightly so, too, but when an academical institution of repute from these countries were to use english, it’d be flawless. have you been to todai‘s website? i’m going for a course organised by the académie internationale de pathologie in paris and their correspondence to me was grammatically immaculate.

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then again, it’ll be boring if all and sundry speaks fluent english as i’ll miss anecdotes like these:

“is this beef?” –an enquiry heard at a leather goods store in the united states

i masa pegi geneva hari tu my wife wanted me to get a chandelyer.”
“i see, how much was the chandelier?” (trying to correct the said datuk politely)
“well, the chandelyer was quite expensive…” (obviously oblivious to the attempt in correcting his pronunciation)

jimbo gave me the heads up on this a few years ago which takes the cake. funnily enough, a few days later, my dad told me about it as well. the best thing was, i got to see it yesterday on sky travel 2. it was a programme called planet food hosted by merrilees parker who, in this episode i saw, went to KL.

merrilees: so what inspires you to make such dishes?
chef (with a beaming smile): because, i is malay.

yes, i was on the floor clutching my chest looking for a GTN spray.

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this is one of the first outdoor shots with the TZ5. go here for a few more.