Recently in Ramblings & ruminations Category

 
If my dad were here, he might have placed that ad in front of me and said, "Hey, Miss Journalist! Tell me what is wrong with this ad!"

He used to do that all the time with random sentences in newspaper articles. He's sharp, is my dad. Can't pull the wool over his eyes, no sirree.

Do you see what I see? If I were to be kind, I'd say this company is trying to hedge its bets and cast its net as widely as possible to catch all possible candidates. However, if I were to be unkind, I'd say this company has no idea what it wants.

Is it looking for experienced people, or is it looking for fresh graduates? Your guess is as good as mine. I suppose this proves that they truly do need an editor, not least because "editing skill" should be in the plural!

 
At first I was insulted. Are you trying to say my blog is unintellectual? And not to be taken seriously?!?

On second thought, I decided to take it as a compliment. Writers are supposed to write clearly and simply, and my blog is so well-written that it appeals even to elementary schoolchildren! (See, everything depends on the spin. The spin is king. Long live the spin!)

 
LOLcats are starting to affect my grammar. Badly. OH NOES! I IZ SPEAK TEH LOLCAT!

If you don't know what a LOLcat is, allow me to acquaint you with them: pictures of cats, overlaid with pithy captions written in what one writer has called "kitty pidgin".

There's something very contagious about this kitty pidgin. Its tentacles have reached deep into my brain, and now I want to speak it. Deliberately flout all the rules of grammar. Not care whether my subjects and verbs are in agreement. Wilfully litter pages with misspelt words. Fly in the face of my normally perfectionist self.

 
Upon closer inspection, I think kitty pidgin might be fairly close to our Malaysian slang, which might explain why I so easily slip into it when I'm talking. Then again, it's not hard to conjugate wrong once you know how to conjugate right. It has been said that it is possible to get cat-speak wrong, which means you must actually know how to alter the words and where to omit others.

Apart from the fact that the cats are normally cute (and I'm not even a cat person!), the captions can be unbelievably apt. Not to mention clever. That's enough to keep me visiting icanhascheezburger.com daily to see what's new in LOLcat World. Even if mah English it iz corrupted!

(click image for larger version)

 
Five boxes of stuff landed at my house, but the ONE THING I'd told my mom I wanted -- the dictionaries -- got packed and sent to my brother's house.

"But I told you I wanted them for my studies!"

"I didn't know you meant right now."

"Of course right now -- I'm studying now, aren't I?"

"Well, it's already done. I've sent them to your brother's house."

"Arrrrggggh!"

 
Oh yeah? Hmm. Then why was Jeff Ooi taken in for questioning by the CID in 2005 for a comment left on his blog, not even something he himself had written? And why, in July, did the police detain Nathaniel Tan for three days, and question Raja Petra Kamaruddin for eight hours, both supposedly also relating to comments left on their respective blogs? And then even haul in Raja Petra's wife for questioning too?

BULLSHIT.

Never before has there been so much talk about keeping bloggers in line. Our dearly beloved Information Minister Datuk Seri Zainuddin Maidin has been quoted as saying that political bloggers "blatantly abuse the freedom of the Internet". Energy, Water and Communications Deputy Minister Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor has threatened to invoke the Sedition Act against bloggers publishing "negative viewpoints". 11 websites, including an undisclosed number of blogs, have been shut down by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission this year for "contravening rules and regulations concerning the publication of information on the Internet".

As a former journalist who worked in the mainstream media, I know there is no such thing as true freedom of speech in this country. When all the major newspapers are directly or indirectly controlled by various parties in the ruling coalition, the news is inevitably going to be somewhat biased.

Maybe this has not bothered us so much in previous years... but as the abuses of power are getting more blatant, what I see among the educated urban professionals is a distinct lack of trust in the crap that is getting churned out in newsprint every day. They turn to blogs for the "alternative" picture -- what many see as a truer picture.

Our so-kind Information Minister is about to help them with this, since he has just announced that Radio Televisyen Malaysia (the National Broadcasting Department) will be publishing selected content from Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang’s blog on their own website. “From today, you can expect to see whatever sensationalised, racist and chauvinistic comments in his blog because we will publish them on the RTM and our other agencies' websites,” he was reported as saying on Friday.

As some of my friends would say, this is called being unclear of the concept. But never mind, dear Datuk Seri, I'm sure Mr Lim Kit Siang will thank you for the extra publicity.

Mom is back at home, packing up stuff. All (or most) of the furniture is getting shipped to my bro's spiffy new place... yep, he's "inheriting" lots of stuff. Lucky fella ;)

Dad called me up.

"Do you want anything from the house? I gotta ask you because I have two children and I can't just let one of them take everything."

"I only want the two World Book dictionaries, Volume I & II."

"What about the encyclopaedias? We have two sets, World Book and Compton's."

"I like the World Book Encyclopaedia, but I don't have anywhere to put it!"

Later, talking to Mom:

"The dictionaries will help me in my linguistic studies, Mom."

"Don't you already have dictionaries?"

"Yeah, but these have way more entries! And notes on etymology!"

Have you ever tried to write something without being able to see what you were writing?

My computer flipped me the finger and flaunted the Blue Screen of Death in my face last week, but the flame of rebellion was instantly quenched by Jeyadev, who was gentle but stern and wouldn't let that recalcitrant machine get away with anything.

But last night it decided it had been toeing the line for long enough -- FOUR WHOLE DAYS! -- and began to thumb its nose at me again. I was on MSN Messenger and I could see the messages sent by my friend Jason, but when I tried to type a reply, the box remained a pure unsullied white, no trace of black lettering tripping out over it. The cursor moved, but it was as if I were writing with invisible ink.

I highlighted that portion of the text, copied it, and pasted it into Notepad... viola! The words appeared! So I knew I really was writing something. I did wonder, you know. Only a crazy person continues typing on a keyboard when the monitor displays nothing.

I chatted with Jason for awhile in this manner, with me typing replies that I couldn't see and trusting that my message was getting through. It's very different from trying to write in a dark room, because then you can't even see the paper in front of you. This was more surreal... like you've run out of ink but are still obstinately moving your pen over the paper. And there's no trace that you actually wrote anything. You can't refer to previous messages to see the history of what was said. Everything is in your head (hey, that rhymes!).

Luckily I could still see Jason's replies, so it wasn't all in my head. I think there's probably a story in here somewhere...

If anybody had told me I would write a 1,650-word paper to analyse five measly paragraphs of a newspaper article, I would've thought they were crazy. You've gotta remember that in newspaper reports, every paragraph consists of only one or two sentences. 1,650 words to explain, what, 10 sentences at the most?

Yeah, I did it. I have no idea how I did it, but I did it. Welcome to academia, baby.

Now I know why people accuse academicians of sitting in ivory towers. Hello? 1,650 words based on 10 sentences? I sat down and picked that unfortunate newspaper article apart until there was nothing left of it. I analysed it to within an inch of its life and read all kinds of things into it until I wasn't even sure myself whether I was hallucinating and making stuff up, or whether they were really there. Gives new meaning to the phrase "reading between the lines".

I've never had a problem meeting a word limit for an essay, but even I didn't realise the extent of my... err... "powers" until I wrote this paper. Back in high school, I didn't worry about meeting the word limit because I always wrote more than enough. Waaaaay more. In fact, I never even bothered to figure out how much more. I flagrantly disregarded the word limit because I just knew my essays were so much fun to read that the examiner wouldn't mind. It's called being young, naïve, and confident in your own abilities. Well, maybe over-confident.

Hmmm. I was about to say that I haven't written an essay ever since I graduated in 2000, when I realised that's not true coz I was a journalist for four years up to Oct 2005. Maybe that didn't register in my subconscious coz I always typed out my feature stories and news reports, compared to writing essays in longhand. Or maybe the excitement of pursuing what I thought was my "dream job" eclipsed the hard work involved and made the horror of assignments and exams stand out in stark relief. Or maybe it was coz my boss always gave me a free hand where article length was concerned, so I never needed to worry about exceeding or meeting a word limit.

I vividly remember being given my very first assignment and turning to my boss for guidance.

"When do you want it?"

"As soon as possible."

"How long do you want it?"

"Just give it whatever it's worth."

I was fresh out of law school, had no journalism training or experience, and was completely lost. So I did what I do best: I followed my instincts and wrote.

In the same way, I followed my instincts and wrote my linguistics assignment. And ended up with 1,650 words. Can you say "long-winded"?

At the moment there is no book I want as much as The Art of Punctuation by Noah Lukeman, and to my chagrin it is nowhere to be found in this cosmopolitan city, never mind the entire country. I only saw it once, but I happened to be going through one of my regular "No, you cannot afford another book right now" periods. Then Mr twwt2001 promised to gift it to me for my birthday, but more than a month has gone by and alas, he cannot find the book anywhere.

This is enough to make anyone bawl.

I know my friend the Icy Queen Goddess is horrified at the thought of anyone wanting to read a book on punctuation, of all things, but really, it all depends on how the book is written. Besides, I'm dorky enough to be fascinated by the names of the various symbols. Did you know, for example, that curly brackets -- { and } -- are called braces? And angle brackets -- ‹ and › -- are called chevrons? What do you mean, nobody else is curious about this kind of stuff?

Mind you, it's dangerous to dwell too much on punctuation and like matters. You might end up over-identifying with one of the punctuation marks. Because you see, I am the human personification of the dash. In me, it comes to life.
 

You are the dash.



There's no denying that you have a certain flair. You don't mind being around others, especially your little brother, the hyphen, but you rarely emerge except when needed. You respond well to those who know how to treat you, but have only contempt for those who don't -- you tend to embarass them every chance you get. Your only enemy is the colon -- he will sometimes try to move in on your turf.
Which Punctuation Mark Are You?

I believe in the power of words. That's part of the reason why I'm a writer; if I didn't think my words would make any difference, why write in the first place?

Words can either heal or destroy. When I was a teenager, I had this practice of giving out bookmarks to friends. I'd write a little message on the back of the bookmark, trying to come up with something that would give their day a little boost, bring a smile to their faces. I always wanted to use my words to build up, not tear down.

Unfortunately this is a habit I lost somewhere along the way. I've wanted to resurrect it but I keep on allowing myself to get distracted by other things (INTERNET!) and time runs away from me and before I know it, months have passed before the idea pops back into my head.

But I think it's perhaps very much needed. In our world, we hear criticisms more often than we hear praise -- from family, employers, supervisors, and maybe even friends. I treasure all my friendships but when I think about it, I realise that I don't tell my friends how much they mean to me. I just assume they know.

If even a husband cannot take for granted that his wife knows she is loved -- for wives often crave tender reassurance from their man's lips -- how much more should I not take for granted that my friends know they are loved?

Trust me, everyone needs the basic affirmation that they are special. That the world would be a duller place if not for them. That they have made a difference just by being themselves, just by being there. Just by being a friend. Because we all have moments where we doubt our self-worth, do we not? Moments when we wonder whether our absence would really matter. Moments when we wonder just why are we here and why are we still slogging and plodding along. For what?

And then someone smiles at you and gives you a hug and says something to you. Maybe the words weren't all that profound. Maybe they were even commonplace words. But they were sincere, and you remember them forever -- long after the other person has forgotten that he ever even said such a thing to you.

Timely words. Healing words. Life-giving words.

A careless word may kindle strife,
A cruel word may wreck a life;
A bitter word may hate instill,
A brutal word may strife and kill.

A gracious word may smooth the day,
A joyous word may light the way;
A timely word may lessen stress,
A loving word may heal and bless.
-- Unknown