Hitting all the right notes, except when it's "coins only"!

Olympics: Singapore women paddlers win nation’s second medal

http://news.xin.msn.com/en/singapore/olympics-singapore-women-paddlers-win-nation%e2%80%99s-second-medal

High Fives and congrats to the trio of Feng Tianwei, Wang Yuegu and Li Jiawei! Your fellow Singaporeans are so proud of you. I watched the 3-0 slug-out for the team bronze... it was really nail-biting.

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Two London Olympic snippets...

Bolt to run rings round Man U's rivals?
Man U's Rio Ferdinand thinks it's a great idea to get the world's fastest man (100m to date), Usain Bolt, to join the English Premier League soccer team. Here's Bolt's good-humoured reply: "After the Olympics we work on that...LOL..thanks man."

http://news.xin.msn.com/en/weird/man-utds-rio-keen-for-bolt-in-team

It's true, we Olympians wee-wee in the pool, says Phelp

http://news.xin.msn.com/en/weird/phelps-admits-to-peeing-in-the-pool

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NDP 2012 Theme Song: "Love At First Light"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANTvzs6Hzpc

It's a nice, saccharin-sweet song but I don't think it's National Day Parade (NDP) material or one we will sing along to in future Aug 9's. I'm not panning it but the lyrics just do not tug at the heartstrings.

"I Still Love You"

Meanwhile, a group of young Singaporeans have come up with their own song titled "I Still Love You" to mark National Day 2012. I like it for its catchy tune and good-natured parody of everyday Singaporeana, but it's also not evergreen material.

Here's insing.com's story, which includes the song's video clip. My favourite character from the video is the prata man!...

http://news.insing.com/tabloid/i-still-love-you-singapore/id-555b3f00

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Penny Wise, Pound Foolish Singaporeans?

KA related this incident to me in a text message:

"I was approached by a National University of Singapore Student Union (NUSSU) flag seller this morning [for Rag and Flag Day]. I took out a $2 bill to put into the tin but the flag seller asked if I had coins instead. When asked why, she said the fund-raisers will weigh the tins!" [In the end, they lost $1.50 in donations from KA.]

So this is how one of the nation's esteemed ivory towers raise charity money! What if the person approached was prepared to drop in a $5 bill or a $10 bill? Sorry, no good!... coins only, please? Yet another example of "Just follow hor/Just follow lor"?

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Clerihew note: Thanks, Anon, for your contribution. Nice!

Ode to the clerihew

Thanks to the kiddies' page in The Sunday Times (29 July), I discovered the clerihew:

So, here are three quickie attempts by me:

The blogger Onthesannyside
He thought he had a funny side
He thinks he's a writer
In truth, he's a fright-ter

All the news that is fit to print
'Cos we never run out of ink
Only trees die
And none will cry

Ah Pek sat under the durian tree
Hoping to get one fruit for free
It did, it spiked
That's how he died

Sorry, this last one's a bit grim, but I was thinking about yesterday's blog entry. Anyway, the point is that clerihews are easy to compose -- and fun!

Durian eater discovered Law of Gravity but an apple eater lived to tell about it...

I have a hunch. I don't even dare to call it a hypothesis. The first person to discover the Law of Gravity was an unknown Ah Pek or Ahmad or Arimuthu somewhere in Southeast Asia, possibly in Singapore. Thing was, he did not live to tell us about it, unlike that other fella, Isaac Newton, who was also sitting below a tree. Our unknown friend, unfortunately, had sat below a durian tree.

Here's the basis of my conjecture...
 

There did not seem to be any durians on these trees here, in this park I came across while looking for houses with bamboo chicks.

But this picture below, found on the Net, clearly shows a durian tree with several of the spiky fruit still intact...

Cowpehcowbooland footnote: More of those cows I blogged about are popping up -- in several other locations in Singapore! And, yes, they still look happy even if they are all still "under surveillance". Even one that had fallen flat on its side.

Wild imaginings over, oo la la, bamboo chicks!

I decided to send out this teaser text message to some people: Bamboo chicks... what can you say?

Here are most of the replies:

This one trick question, right?
No clue.
I really don't know, haha.
Huh? Is it some sex thing?
Nickname for very skinny girls [this one was clueless; just bullshitting].
Skinny chio boo (Hokkien slang for pretty girls) [another bullshitter].
Oriental floozies?
Sorry, does not ring a belle with me.
Babelicious types from behind the Bamboo Curtain [hey man, Cold War's over!].
Making a wild guess... do they refer to prostitutes?
No idea what bamboo chicken is? Some sort of reptile? [I said chick, not chicken!].
Sorry, don't know.  :-(
Hmm, no idea. Bamboo worms I know.

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Those were the clueless ones. These four knew what bamboo chicks are/were...

* Bamboo chicks: blinds made of bamboo.

* When chicks were chic; I remembered they were put up in front of shophouses... they had bright green or blue lacquer paint to waterproof them and deflect sunlight.

* Gone the way of the dodo... My recollection is that it is the earlier version of our Venetian blinds or awnings to keep out the sun.. It consisted of thin strips of bamboo threaded into an elongated 'mat' which is rolled up and suspended above a window or above the five-foot way. A pulley system is used to roll up or release the chicks to a certain height to keep out the sun or light as required.

* Famously used to adorn black and white bungalows of colonial masters.

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So, what started me on this walk down memory lane? Indeed, as a toddler, I did grow up in one of those colonial-type black and white bungalows in Pulau Bukom -- complete with bamboo chicks -- after Shell made my dad one of its early Asian executives.

The memory trigger was these ads...

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So, no, bamboo chicks are not chio boo aka pretty women, or prostitutes (although they are admittedly of the shady ilk).

But, yes, from the ads above, this traditional blast from the past is not a vanishing tradecraft. Bamboo chicks are "alive and well"! So, I went a-looking around my area. Here's Exhibit A (contemporary bamboo chicks)...

And here's Exhibit B (traditional type)...

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I had now to figure out the curve-ball thrown at me: Bamboo worms. I had no idea what are these!

As they say, a picture tells a thousand words:

Not squeamish? To find out more, here's a link:

http://insectsarefood.com/faq.html

(Scroll down to the section, "What is a bamboo worm").

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Finally, this is a really old, old, song, House of Bamboo...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Moiv9UBlND8

Poor man! All because he saved his wife first...

There's this Chinese man, out fishing with his wife and his mum. Both women can't swim to save their lives.

The man's wife, the silly woman, leans over too precariously and the boat flips. The man saves his wife first. As she clings onto the overturned boat, he pushes it to the river bank. He then goes back to try and save his mum, who has by then disappeared under water.

Luckily, he still has the strength to go back to look for her, and luckily his mum is still alive (barely, it seems). Here's the headline in ST's story...

The story can be read from this online Chinese site:

http://www.whatsonningbo.com/news-9773-chinese-man-saves-wife-first-over-mum-in-boating-accident-sparks-debate.html

The story above has the elements of a classic situational, or moral, dilemma. Here's a somewhat cheeky link -- with examples -- on this topic:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/saburns/pg0450.htm

Many role-playing computer games too feature such situational/moral dilemmas. Here's one gamer's musings...

http://www.rpgmusings.com/2011/03/moral-dilemma-seeds/

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Moral Dilemma Test

Finally, take this moral dilemma test, below. Remember, you must answer spontaneously!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTq2ylujpS0

From feeling good to feeling (like a) prude...

That feel-good afterglow is still there... so what if we're bottom-of-the-rung 36th (and tied with 11 other countries)...


Source: ST, 2 Aug, 2012, page B20

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Q: If someone fails a dope test, that makes him or her smart, right?

Which brings me to this strange headline, depending on whether you see "cheats" as a verb or as a noun...

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The expression "pros and cons" must be taken as a unity. You can't split it up, as the headline writer for this TODAY article (2 Aug) did...

When you do that, you risk people thinking that "cons" is shorthand for confidence tricksters or convicts, and "pros" is shorthand for prostitutes!

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Lost in translation...

This ST story (2 Aug) is about how an English-language TV documentary on the history of Singapore had at least 10 translation gaffes when it was dubbed in Mandarin for Channel 8. There were, for instance, errors in the names of Deputy PM Teo Chee Hean and the late Mr S. Rajaratnam (a certain opposition leader, who has since died too, had part of his name almost similar to the late PAP stalwart's, so I had to devise a method as a young sub-editor to not misspell the two names).

But the most hilarious part of this story above has to do with some background information it gave on the pitfalls of language translations, ergo:

"This is not the first time gaffes in translations have been made. Ten years ago, the Singapore Tourism Board referred to the Hungry Ghost Festival as the Hungarian Ghost Festival, in a brochure in Chinese."

Hmmm, maybe "Romanian" would have been a better choice if there has to be a gaffe. After all, that's where Dracula came from, and all the movies about this Netherworld fella show him to be always hungry -- for blood, anyway.

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Finally, in Singapore, we're getting so desperate it's now not about Maybe, Baby. It's about guys doing National Night "duty" with their wives on National Day, ie, after all those fireworks have fizzled out, start your own fireworks in your own bedroom, says this (really corny, risque even) "bad rap" ad by Menthos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jxU89x78ac

You gotta listen carefully to the really silly lyrics. Here's a commentary that panned the ad:

http://newnation.sg/2012/08/mentos-the-freshmaker-wants-sporeans-to-copulate/

Happiness is...

...An Olympic medal (individual) for Singapore after 52 years!

You've done Singapore proud ahead of National Day, Feng Tianwei. Congrats! (And the Little Red Dot is now in the London Olympics medals table.)

http://news.xin.msn.com/en/singapore/olympics-singapore-win-their-first-medal

http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Sports/Story/A1Story20120801-362822.html

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...A bunch of happy cows!

Apparently, that's what a British study is seeking to do. After all, don't happy cows produce more milk?

Cows' happiness is target of UK study

Scientists in Britain have launched the first study of how dairy cows interact with each other, in the hope of finding ways of making them happier and more productive.

Here's the rest of this story:

http://news.xin.msn.com/en/weird/cows-happiness-is-target-of-uk-study

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Meanwhile, Singapore has its happy cows too...

I spotted them while driving past a grassy area I shall call Cowpehcowbooland. They were all dressed as "professionals" (there's a lawyer cow, a medical worker cow, etc) and they all looked happy:

 

 And then I saw this sign among the cows...

 Oh, oh. So, were they happy cows after all? Thus ends my moo-ving story.