A new year, of hope, of a new beginning. A hymn that says it all...

http://www.our-sma-angels.com/emmabear/ps_hymn_of_promise.htms
This beautiful hymn is one of my favourites.

Hymn of Promise

In the bulb there is a flower;
In the seed, an apple tree;
In cocoons, a hidden promise:
Butterflies will soon be free!

In the cold and snow of winter,
There's a sping that waits to be,
Unrevealed until its season,
Something God alone can see.

There's a song in every silence,
Seeking word and melody;
There's a dawn in every darkness,
bringing hope to you and me.

From the past will come the future;
What it holds, a mystery,
Unrevealed until its season,
Something God alone can see.

In our end is our begining;
In our time, infinity.
In our doubt, there is believing;
In our life, eternity.

In our death, a resurrection;
At the last, a victory
Unrevealed until its season,
Something God alone can see.

(Composer: Natalie Sleeth, 1986; Publisher: Hope Pub. Co.)

Sallying into 2011

Just three words: Happy New Year!

From an in-your-face T-shirt to in-your-face North Korean antics

I want to devote this posting to the possibility of North Korea "going nuclear", as a report in today's Straits Times suggested (30 Dec, page A12, "N. Korea able to make a nuclear bomb a year").

But, first, I want to put up three "What I spotted" snippets.

The first is this guy's in-your-face T-shirt, spotted in West Mall today. It said, "I am your father". He was not a big fella, and maybe some big guy will whack him up. This expression, translated into Hokkien, is THE ultimate insult.

Secondly, I will want to highlight in a future posting some advertisements which either cleverly (and successfully) pun on the English language or abuse it. I have an example today of the latter. This big half-page ad by the developer of the new Junction 10 mall-cum-residential complex has this tag line: "380,000 Captive Residents and 380 SOHO apartments". The copywriter, trying to be clever, thought if one can talk about, say, a charismatic speaker's "captive audience", "captive residents" can work too (suggesting that the mall has a target reach of 380,000 residents of the area). Nope, such a phrase can have only its literal meaning, which makes this a silly ad.     

Thirdly, in a sports item in today's ST (page B11), there is this sentence: "There were worries that the [Malaysia-Indonesia match, played in Jakarta] would be marred by fan violence, but it went off incident-free as the Malaysian fans held their nerves in front of some 85,000 fanatical home supporters, including Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono."         

I am quite sure Mr Yudhoyono, aware that press cameras were near him, watched the match with suitable decorum! Writers should always watch out for such slip-ups. ST's own goal.     

Okay, my take on the current North Korean crisis? My commentary below (using my own original headline) was published in The Straits Times earlier this year but I would say it is still valid:
   
If North Korea rocks, should we miss a nuclear beat?

Location, location, location is the mantra of real estate agents, and of astute analysts who understand the role of geopolitics in so-called regional crises like the one occurring now in the Korean peninsula.

Nixon-era American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in a commentary which drew on geopolitics and domestic politics, has argued that the Unites States and the other major powers cannot have their cake and eat it.

There is a price to pay in terms of proliferation if North Korea is accepted as a “de facto” nuclear power. On the other hand, defanging Pyongyang by diplomatic means is still a mission impossible, if only because key players like the US and China continue to have their own agendas.

I would like to add another element: rocket science, and how it impinges on the paradox of nuclear power for warfighting purposes.

Let me put it this way. Imagine that the discovery of nuclear energy ushers in its peaceful use. Many energy-related problems will have been solved, or mitigated. But mankind has no peaceful track record, you will say. Post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an attempt was indeed made to claw back the militarization of nuclear power and to set up an agency to oversee its peaceful use.

But, alas, the nuclear genie will not go back into the bottle.

The Cold War superpowers, albeit after some false starts, understood how nuclear deterrence at their strategic level worked, and came to realize that nuclear war across the spectrum – from its limited battlefield use to its escalation to “nuking” each other’s major cities – was unwinnable.

The US tolerated allies’ Britain and France’s nuclear emergence because they were allies! Britain wedded its nuclear doctrine to America’s, and France… well, the French people felt immensely proud that they were an independent nuclear power, even if in their hearts they knew its first use by Paris would mean the end of history for France.

What I loosely call “rocket science” has driven nuclear proliferation since. Simply put, the technical knowhow to weaponise nuclear power and to fashion the means to deliver it is unstoppable, short of political intervention.

China, Israel, India and Pakistan all became nuclear powers by means fair and foul.

For them, geopolitics and domestic politics were driving factors. And, as Dr Kissinger recently noted, so is the case with North Korea (and Iran, for that matter). So will be the case with regard to future “proliferants”.

What makes the North Korean bid to become a nuclear power state a subject of such intense pressure are the several ramifications.

First, if it goes nuclear whether de facto (implicitly accepted by the US and other major powers) or de jure (openly accepted), the other non-nuclear regional states – South Korea and Japan – will likely go nuclear too. Rocket science will enable that.

Secondly, as Dr Kissinger correctly noted, China will be surrounded by nuclear weapon states (Russia too of course), in a region which I shall refer to as a neighbourhood  in which “my friend today may be my enemy, and my friend’s enemy can become my friend".

All this will make Northeast Asia an unstable real estate. 

Thirdly, it seems improbable right now but a time may come when the US will simply say “a plague on all your houses” and simply walk away from this sizzling nuke-infested region.

Dr Kissinger suggests a concert of powers come about to stop Pyongyang from going nuclear, yet does not suggest that military action may be necessary.

But a concert of powers does not have a good record in history, and it will not work now, when rocket science is no longer an exclusive club’s preserve.

Having said all that, there is a glimmer of hope, not one to feel smug about though. It rests on that ancient Chinese saying: Be careful what you wish for.

A Northeast Asia, in which each regional state is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons from dumb bombs to smart warheads, and deliverable by aircraft, missiles and submarines, will find them unusable for war purposes.

Nuclear war is unwinnable. That’s the paradox, and hopefully the world’s only mantra as it awaits North Korea’s next missile test or nuclear explosion.

Why so like that?

As the year ends, people start to compile lists. One website, the Texas-based Global Language Monitor, tracks new words that have entered the English language. Among its offerings this year are:

wikileaks (derived from the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks)... "information that is leaked into the public sphere from anonymous sources".

refudiate... this malapropism, from the mouth of Sarah Palin, is presumably a conflation of "refute" and "repudiate".

vuvuzela... that South African plastic horn with its ear-piercing sound that made its world debut at soccer's 2010 World Cup.

snowmageddon, snowpocalypse... no need to explain these. Just see the pictures of airports in the newspapers.

twenty-eleven... apparently, this is the preferred way to say 2011, not "two thousand eleven". Abuthen.

But, okay, now that we know these words came into vogue, so what? I'd much rather compile a list of words that we actually use daily, like "abuthen" above (for the Singlish phrase "ah, but then" or "it's so obvious, man!".

Some other Singlish terms I find useful are "chope", "can/can?", "cannot/why cannot?", "got or not?/got/don't have" "how?", "why so like that?" and "die, die, must...".

There is one (non-Singlish) expression I used to dislike: "It's complicated." But now I think it has its uses. Why? It's complicated.

Another meaningful compilation is "the most irritating words or phrases", because people who become aware that these words do irritate others, should stop their sloppy habit! Among the many such meaningless manglings are:

at the end of the day
going/moving forward
at this moment in time
with all due respect
to tell you the truth
absolutely
whatever (said dismissively, usually with accompanying body language like roll of the eyes, hand gesture, etc)
like
you know (the double whammy would be "like, you know...")
actually
basically
literally
ironically

and the one that takes the cake:
needless to say!

How to conduct an open appraisal report

This very funny one below was emailed to me by a university classmate...

The HR manager received the following appraisal report one day:

Bob Smith, my assistant programmer, can always be found

hard at work at his desk. He works independently, without

wasting company time talking to colleagues. Bob never

thinks twice about assisting fellow employees, and always

finishes given assignments on time. Often he takes extended

measures to complete his work, sometimes skipping coffee

breaks. Bob stands out as an individual who has absolutely no

vanity in spite of his high accomplishments and profound

knowledge in his field. I firmly believe that Bob can be

classed as an asset employee, the type which cannot be

dispensed with. Consequently, I duly recommend that Bob be

promoted at once to executive management. His current position will be

made redundant as soon as possible.

[NOW READ BELOW...]
====================================================================

Later that day, the same HR manager received the following addendum:

Addendum:
That idiot was standing over my shoulder while I wrote the report
sent to you earlier today. Kindly re-read only the odd numbered lines.

An ERP joke, and more...

There is a lot of amusing or interesting locally and regionally-centric stuff out there and I have tried to include thematic ones in my postings. And although I took a little dig at some political leaders yesterday, I believe (I hope) no "OB" markers were crossed.

But there are those which I will be uncomfortable putting into print. These could be political, say, jokes about leaders that are in poor taste, or those that are risque to the point of being obscene. There's this very old one about the Malay prostitute and her ang moh customer but all I will let on here is that the Malay words "duit" (money) and "sakit" (painful) are integral to it.

Okay, what's here should be acceptable:

What do you call a father cow and a mother cow?
Cow peh cow boo (yes, you have to undertstand Hokkien for this).

What do you call a housing agent?
A rumah-monger ("rumah" is "house" in Malay).

A few here on car trivia...
What is Malaysia's most luxurious super-car?
The Lembu-ghini ("lembu" means "bull or cow").

Then there is this marque (brand) that unfortunately rhymes with "potong" (Malay for "to cut" or "to break up"). Likewise, there is this model (since superseded) that some wags articulate as "three into three". And there's this old one too...

Which is the car that any self-respecting Hokkien will never buy?
The Bluebird (I think this model too has been superseded. You have to say it in Hokkien to get the dig at it).

And did you know there is an MM (Malayan Motors) and an SM Motors?

Okay, political...
RAHMAN... an uncanny list -- in order too! -- of all the Malaysian prime ministers to date: Tengku Abdul Rahman, Tun Abdul Razak, Datuk Hussein Onn, Tun Mahathir Mohamad, Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi, and incumbent Tun Najib Razak.

NAIR... er, I'll pass on this one, but many Singaporeans will know about it.

PAP... unabashed wags (PAP smearers?) call it "Pay and Pay"
WP... "Why pay?"
SDP... "So Don't Pay!"
RP (Reform Party, new kid on the block)... "Refund please?"

ERP
http://www.livebetterlookbetter.com/blog/en/2008/06/25/erp-joke/

Semen factory
You will come across examples in Indonesia (with 237.5 million people, it is the world's fourth most populous country. But seriously, "semen" means "cement" in Bahasa Indonesia).

From the shadows of my memory, I recall that the former Youngberg Hospital (located near Bidadari cemetery, it no longer exists) once had on its staff a Dr Coffin and a nurse Grave.

Last of all, I am told a Singapore Labour Minister (pre-PAP) upon assuming his post, asked to see a well-known hospital's Labour ward! I was told it was true, but still I have to be somewhat sceptical on this one.

[Footnote: Kandang Kerbau Hospital (now KK Women's and Children's Hospital) in the 1950s had the "distinction" of being mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records... for producing the most number of babies. And what is Singapore's birth rate now?]

Political humour

This year is almost ended, and pundits expect the general election to be held in 2011, even as early as within the first quarter.

There will be serious and lighter moments during the hustings. This posting is dedicated to anecdotes, all made up of course, about political personalities here as well as overseas.

Back when John Major was Prime Minister of Britain and George HW Bush was President of the United States, the latter visited Britain. He was impressed with the orderly succession process in British party politics.

So, he asked Mr Major what was the procedure that got him selected as PM.

"Easy, old chap," Mr Major replied. "I was asked this riddle: 'He is my father's son but he is not my brother. Who is he?'. The answer, of course, is "me".

Impressed, Mr Bush went back to Washington. He wondered if Vice-President Dan Quayle was smart enough to succeed him. So, he asked him to solve the riddle.

Mr Quayle huddled with his advisers. All were equally puzzled. But one perked up and said: "The smartest man in America is Henry Kissinger. Ask him!"

So, Mr Quayle spoke to Dr Kissinger. Amused, Dr Kissinger chortled and said: "The answer is 'me'."

Mr Quayle reached President Bush on the phone and smugly declared: "I have the answer. It's Henry Kissinger!"

Mr Bush was disappointed. As he put down the phone, he said to himself: "Why didn't he get it? It's John Major!"

This next one is still an American-centric anecdote. President Bill Clinton is preparing to vacate the White House so that his successor, George W. Bush, can move in.

Bill was called away to an urgent meeting on the day of the familiarisation tour so Hilary alone took George and Laura to the various rooms.

That night, George told Laura he could not wait to be the White House's occupant. "Remember, when I asked to use the bathroom and Hilary pointed in a certain direction? Well, I walked on and opened the door to what I thought was a rather small bathroom. But it had a classy golden urinal!"

That same night, as Bill was about to fall asleep in bed, Hilary told him, "Keep calm, but this morning George peed into your beloved saxophone."

Back when Anwar Ibrahim was Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad took a holiday and made Anwar the Acting PM.

The next day, Anwar turned up at the office wearing a T-shirt advertising the brand "Boss" (for Hugo Boss). He wore T-shirts like this throughout his acting premiership.

When  Dr Mahathir returned, his aide told him about it. Dr Mahathir mulled over the matter and the next day, he turned up in a T-shirt emblazoned with the word: "Bossini".

Back when Mr Lee Kuan Yew was mulling over who would succeed him as Prime Minister, a minister plucked up his courage and knocked on the PM's door.

After he had posed The Question,  PM Lee -- slightly irritated -- said softly in Hokkien: "Tan. Tan."

Whereupon the minister rushed off to proclaim to his colleagues: "It's Tony Tan".

Another minister decided to verify this. He knocked on PM Lee's door and also asked The Question. This time, though, the PM -- really irritated by now -- shouted in English: "Go! Go!"

Whereupon the other minister went back and proclaimed: "No, it's Goh Chok
Tong, lah!"

["Tan. Tan" in Hokkien means "Wait. Wait". For the Mahathir joke, "Bossini" is a play on words, since "sini" means "here" in Malay. So, "Bossini" can be loosely taken to mean "I'm THE boss here".]

Last set... a series of awards.

To the Prime Minister, for culinary creativity. Someday, someone will come up with "Mee siam ai hum" (mee siam with cockles).]

To Mr Wong Kan Seng, for his wordsmith skills. Thanks to him (after Mas Selamat Kastari escaped and was suspected to have crossed the Johor Strait), a new term -- "improvised flotation device" entered the English language.

Finally, to Mr Lim Swee Say, for linguistic creativity. Thanks to him, we learned that being "good" is not good enough. We have to be "better, betterer, best".