Pardon my French...

Had a really bad cough these past two days, especially at night. Could not sleep and resorted in desperation to counting sheep. But I must have bought into the low-budget option where a finite number of the sheep went past me in a loop pattern.

 Eventually, the poor fellas fell asleep one by one -- in front of me -- and I was still wide awake at 3am!

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So, just one short posting, triggered by what I had observed in yesterday's "Million Dollar Drop" quiz show.

I was appalled by the lack of knowledge of things Singaporeana shown by the contestants so far. This question below, for instance, seemed a no-brainer to me...

One of these men was not a foreign minister of Singapore:

Tony Tan
Wong Kan Seng
S. Dhanabalan
S. Jayakumar

The two contestants in question seemed well-spoken and very possibly university educated. But they blew it! The correct answer is so obvious I shall not insult you. But by their putting all their eggs in one basket, the wrong one, it made me recall a joke I saw in the philosophy book I was reading. Here it is.

Goldfinger is taking an ocean cruise. The first night he is seated for dinner with a Frenchman who raises his glass to Goldfinger and says "Bon appetit!"

Goldfinger raises his glass and replies, "Goldfinger!"

This goes on, meal after meal, for almost the entire cruise, until finally the table waiter could not stand it any longer and explains to Goldfinger that "Bon appetit" is French for "Enjoy your meal".

Goldfinger is embarrassed and can't wait to redeem himself. At the next meal, before the Frenchman can say anything, Goldfinger raises his glass and says "Bon appetit!"

At which the Frenchman responds, "Goldfinger!"

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So, what gives? Many years back, someone had given this joke a Singaporean spin, with the "sua ku" (Hokkien for mountain tortoise, to mean a village bumpkin) American being replaced with the name of the Singapore foreign minister at the time. Which one from the list from that quiz show question above? Put it this way, the man's manner of speaking gave the impression -- true or not -- that he was not an urbane chap. Maybe that was the reasoning too behind the two contestants' unfortunate choice.