dibawah pokok demokrasi

Saya amat suka dengan idea menamakan Pokok Demokrasi secara rasmi dan menanam lima anak pokok yang diberi nama Amanah, Adil, Telus, Kebajikan dan Wibawa. Saya berasa amat bangga dengan tindakan simbolik ini oleh rakan-rakan sepejuagan saya. Walaubagaimanapun, saya berasa amat sakit hati membaca teks yang tertara pada plak di bawah pokok itu, dengan penggunaan Bahasa Melayu yang kekok berserta dengan kesilapan tatabahasa.

Saya bukannya pakar Bahasa Melayu, bahkan saya mengaku bahawa saya tidak begitu fasih dengan bahasa kebangsaan kita. So I guess I’m no better, so aptly reflected in this sentence where I have to switch back to English once the discussion starts getting complicated. Perhaps it’s a symptom of how the national education system has failed me. All my years in school when I was using Malay on a daily basis, I never really needed to think or reason. I’m guessing most of my analytical skills were honed outside of school where the operating language was English in my case; which brings to mind, other than Bahasa Inggeris, all subjects in school were taught in Malay and yet my command of the language is still pretty pathetic, so I’m guessing that any improvement in English proficiency by teaching kids Science and Mathematics in English would be minimal at the cost of losing terms like janjang, pengamiran and persenyawaan ganda dua.

Getting back to Pokok Demokrasi, I guess it’s just a publicity stunt and I can’t expect too much from it.

ruin somebody's life

perKENAkan orang, originally uploaded by dckf_$êr@pH!nX.

How apt!

paha

It just occurred to me recently that the Malay word paha is not pronounced in the standard way KL Malay deviates from bahasa baku. Usually only the last syllable is “modified”, but the case of paha, both syllables are “modified”, i.e. it is pronounced “per-her” not “pah-her”.

merdeka! merdeka! merdeka!

Selamat Hari Merdeka everyone! Sorry terlambat….

bijan mmm mmm

Had dinner in Bijan last night. The food was excellent, the price not so. Definitely the best Malay food I’ve had in a nice restaurant and the best Malay food in KL. The rusuk panggang at RM55++ was heavenly; it was almost like pork!

anjing pegi, babi mali

My favourite SMS greeting of the season:

Anjing pegi, babi mali,
Sueh pegi, ong mali,
Untong-untong manyak kali,
Hali-hali suka hati,
Kena ekor, kena loteli,
Gongxi gongxi lu sama famili!

into the tiger’s mouth i go

From the Malay saying, "terlepas dari mulut buaya, masuk ke mulut harimau", literally, "escaped from the crocodile’s mouth, into the tiger’s mouth", not quite the same as "out of the frying pan, into the fire", but similar….

So what’s this pepatah got to do with anything…? Well, I finally got a starting date with the new job in Singapore: 12 March. So I guess I’ll be moving to Singapore after all.

Hence, I begin my blogging life, as a soon-to-be migrant worker….