If memory serves me right, former Philippine president Joseph Estrada came up with this quip:
Q: What do you call the backside of a cafeteria?
A: Bacteria.
Okay, groan, groan. But next is a gem of a quote from Mick McCarthy, manager of English soccer club Wolverhampton Wanderers:
"Opinions are like backsides. We've all got them but it is not always wise to air them in public."
He was explaining why he had refused to respond to tweets by a rival club's captain taunting him over his club's 0-3 defeat to that rival club.
Not so clever is this ST headline today:
But it gives me an excuse to recall this old joke (clearly Malaysian in origin), from the time years back when the Anwar case first made the news...
Indonesia has its Indomie
Singapore has its Maggi Mee
Malaysia has its Sodomy.
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The last two items here are unrelated to the stuff above. They are about what I shall call the "vision thing".
First, it seemed that someone had dropped one-half of his or her spectacle lenses in one particular (unnamed) office. One wonders if that person is walking around unperturbed on the basis that "half the vision is better than none"! Anyway, the person who picked up the lens posted a jocular message on the office system, asking the owner to come and get it, wearing the said spectacles as proof of ownership.
The message, sent office-wide, had this rather cute snapshot too:
The second item in this segment is this print ad which currently appears in local newspapers:
At first glance, there seems to be nothing grammatically wrong here. But something is not quite right in phrasing it this way. Carried to its logical yet absurd conclusion, this "myopic" ad allows two people to walk into the eye surgery clinic in question and say, "Okay, do one eye for each of us for the stated price!".
The ambiguity is removed if the ad plainly states: "for both eyes". It's the vision thing, and this example shows that English can be a slippery language.
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