Do we respect our language?

Do we respect our language? In this case, I mean Bahasa. It kills me to see all the horribly distorted words on the MASAF forum...not that MASAF is to blame (it's almost all the users). A single word is spelt in so many ways...so are no rules respected any more? The weird thing is that it seems like I'm the only one who cares...

Look here, the French have this "phonetic spelling" as well, but there are people who are against it...isn't there anyone who's against this in Malaysia?

I'm not saying that we should spell everything correctly at all times...it's just that there has to be a limit! Even I distort words sometimes...but it's only when the real spelling simply cannot convey the way it's said! I really don't get how people can stand this horrible disfiguration of our bahasa kebangsaan...if you want to be patriotic, one of the places to start is respecting the national language!

How good are you at rhyming? ;)

Find the synonymous word for each word in the following
pair. For each pair, the words you find should rhyme with
each other, the first word being an adjective and the
second a noun. Some of these are easy, others are more
challenging. Good luck!

For example: angry father = mad dad

sneaky insect
humorous rabbit
happy boy
muscular tune
close fright

I got them all! :D
Answers are below.











Answers:

sneaky insect= sly fly
humorous rabbit= funny bunny
happy boy= glad lad
muscular tune= strong song
close fright= near fear

The fisherman

A little something that I found on the MASAF website:

An investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The investment banker complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The fisherman replied, "Only a little while."

The investment banker then asked, "Why didn't you stay out longer and catch more fish?"

The fisherman said, "With this I have more than enough to support my family's needs."

The investment banker then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

The fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening and spend time with my family, I have a full and busy life."

The investment banker scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat: With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to a big town and eventually to the the city where you will run your ever-expanding enterprise."

The fisherman asked, "But, how long will this all take?"

To which the investment banker replied, "15 to 20 years."

"But what then?" asked the fisherman.

The investment banker laughed and said that's the best part. "When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."

"Millions?...Then what?"

The investment banker said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings and spend time with your family."

Why do the French have iced tea that isn't iced?

I have yet to come across real iced tea in France. I mean tea with ice in it. The French take their tea (and coffee) hot all the time, with the exception of when it's bottled tea. I mean this:
So-called iced tea...

Anyway, I tried to find a photo of a glass of Malaysian-style iced tea, but couldn't find any nice ones... I stumbled across this though: a site to learn Malay!

Dried meat :P

Wow, ba gua made it into Wikipedia!

The weird thing is, I got to that page from this one about beef jerky...and the photo seems to be ba gua! And from the ba gua page we can get to the meat floss page...it's kinda interesting to note that the ba gua article exists only in English and the meat floss one in 2 other languages (Chinese and Japanese (hehe, thanks to Chen Min for the info, seeing the words on the sidebar I didn't know that it was Japanese...should have just clicked on it) ) The beef jerky article isn't that "popular" either...it exists only in 3 other languages, but they're German, Dutch and Japanese...that's more diverse!

Why am I late? Because of you!

I just don't get why people can't be punctual. I used to try arriving 5 minutes early, at anything, just so as not to be late. But when you arrive 5 minutes early (preparing to wait 5 mins) and everyone else arrives 10 minutes late, you have to wait 15 mins, and that's long!

Take yesterday. We were supposed to meet up to discuss our project. And one person arrived more than half an hour late. Okay, he had something to do before that, he had just arrived home half an hour after he was supposed to meet us, and he came right away. But, why couldn't he have told us that he couldn't be there in time? Let's say he thought he could have arrived in time, that his previous engagement was supposed to have ended earlier. But, again, when he saw that he couldn't arrive in time, he should have told us! He could have told us before we left to go there, so that we could have waited till he got back, and then (when he got back) he could have called us to let us know that we could meet up for the discussion. But instead of that, he simply let us meet up at the agreed time, and wait for him for more than half an hour. Don't you think we would have better stuff to do in that half-hour?!

For several years now I don't try arriving early, I just arrive in time (for non-official things) And lately, sometimes I even try to arrive a little later because no one seems to arrive on time (like for table-tennis, I try to arrive 5 mins late) And for now, let's just say this: the next time I have something to do with that guy who arrived half an hour late, I'm not gonna worry about arriving on time. If he doesn't care, why should I?

Nice quote

"Red meat is NOT bad for you. Now blue-green meat, THAT'S bad for you!" -Tommy Smothers

Oh so true... :P

Find the name!

Here's another riddle for you:

Using real names to make common words/phrases, name the
offspring: (the first one is given)

1. Mr and Mrs Voyant - Clare (as in Clairvoyant)
2. Mr and Mrs Tress
3. Mr and Mrs Nasium
4. Mr and Mrs Tate
5. Mr and Mrs Anthemum
6. Mr and Mrs Mander
7. Mr and Mrs Mite
8. Mr and Mrs Time








Answers:

2. Matt
3. Jim
4. Dick
5. Chris
6. Sally
7. Dinah
8. Justin

Keeping food frozen

Here's a tip I got:

If you have a refrigerator or freezer that isn't frost
free and you need to defrost, pack your frozen food
tightly in a box that's been lined with newspaper and
put a thick layer of newspaper over it. It will stay
frozen solid for several hours.

Hmm...I should try this... But then, I'll have to find a suitable box first :P

Is it really meaningful?

Yesterday there was a One Day Blog Silence to honour the victims at Virginia Tech.

Now I'm sure you're checking whether I posted anything yesterday :P No, I didn't. But it was more coincidence than design.

When I first found out about this, I was ready to support the cause, and join all the bloggers who were going to refrain from posting on the 30th of April. I'm not sure about Malaysia, but in France we seem to have this sort of thing pretty often... I remember that when I was in Angoulême we had a minute of silence for the victims of the bombings in Madrid (and our teacher told us that two years earlier they had the same thing for September 11) Then not that long ago there was something about switching off all our lights (electricity in general) for a few minutes (5 or 10? I've forgotten...) for some environmental cause (which I've forgotten as well...) I was going to do it, but it turned out that I wasn't home at that time, so all my electrical stuff were switched off anyway.

So you see...for me it's simple; as long as it's not too outrageous I'll gladly join in to support the cause. But this blog silence thing got me thinking. It's not hard to do...you see, I managed it without even trying! Which is exactly my point.

One minute's silence is, I suppose, meaningful. How often do you have a minute's silence? Real silence? I don't have it often...in my room I will usually have music on, even if I myself am silent (who am I supposed to talk to? :P) So if I want to observe a minute's silence I have to make an effort for it... The same thing goes for electricity.

Now about blog silence. My blog isn't that active...sometimes it's silent for days! (and once, for a whole month...when I was doing my practical) So there isn't really a point in having one day's silence. It wouldn't be much different from other days!

Don't get me wrong though...I'm not saying that the One Day Blog Silence isn't meaningful. But I'm saying that it's only meaningful for active bloggers...those who post every day, or almost every day. Those who actually have to refrain from posting. (I'm not sure how many bloggers that would include, though...)

I'm open to criticism about this point of view of things...I'm not really sure how I feel about it yet...things might change!

For those who read everything carefully, you might be asking yourself this: Why did I say that it was more coincidence than design? Why didn't I say that it was pure coincidence? Because it wasn't. I thought of posting something yesterday...then I got lazy and decided to leave it, thinking "hey, it's the blog silence day anyway..."