Wow! It’s been a really long time since I last blogged. Facebook is killing my blog. It’s just so much easier to update my Facebook status, plus since Facebook is not exactly public, I can write about stuff I can’t blog about here. However, I still find blogging more appropriate for lenghthier bitching sessions.
In today’s Star Metro Central on page M8 in the Sights & Sounds column (also found online), Xandria Ooi’s first sentence in her article entitled “Looking back to the past: It’s the imperfections that make things appealing” was: “Almost every one [sic] I know, has a Blackberry, an iPod or a flat-screen TV set.”
I know lots of people who don’t have either of those things. Some people are just overpriviledged and don’t mix around with lesser mortals like us. Tak malu ke?
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Monday, 9 March 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
slumdog miracle
It’s a miracle! No, not Slumdog Millionaire’s achievements at the Oscars but rather how fluency in English is achieved by rolling off a train! It would have been a great movie for me if not for the miraculous language switch.
I like how Mukul Kesavan put it in his article “Lost in Translation: Slumdog Millionaire uses Hindi as authenticating décor” for The Telegraph, Calcutta:
“The transition from child actors who in real life are slum children to young actors who are, just as clearly, middle-class anglophones is so abrupt and inexplicable that it subverts the ‘realism’ of the brilliantly shot squalor in which their lives play out.”
Read the entire article here.
I like how Mukul Kesavan put it in his article “Lost in Translation: Slumdog Millionaire uses Hindi as authenticating décor” for The Telegraph, Calcutta:
“The transition from child actors who in real life are slum children to young actors who are, just as clearly, middle-class anglophones is so abrupt and inexplicable that it subverts the ‘realism’ of the brilliantly shot squalor in which their lives play out.”
Read the entire article here.
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