Monday, October 03, 2011

中文教育劣於英文教育?


我於數年前居於檳城之時、時常與老一輩的居民聊天。一旦談着他們不熟悉之題目、他們便回應說: 『(閩南語)汝人是讀紅毛册兮 lu-lang si thak ang-mO cheq eh。』(你們是受過西方(即:英文)教育的。)、意味中文教育劣於西方(即:英文)教育、而不受西方(英文)教育者則『缺乏常識』。

我很希望此思想是限於老一輩而已、否則會對我國 (馬來西亞) 華校的未來有大影響。何故?因爲、若我們不將此思維定勢改變、則我國的中文獨立中學始終會被視爲『劣勢』。雖然我國今代的華裔家長會將孩子進華小受中文教育(爲保持語言及文化的起見)、但一到中學、大多數的華小生會離開中文教育而進國民型中學、一切捨棄中文、連課外母語補習班也不上。長期的結果是、我國華校生的中文平均水準便僅到小學六年級爲止。

注:本人非華校生、中文不佳、若上述有任何字彙文法錯誤、敬求讀者見諒。

Friday, September 16, 2011

What happened to the fine art of Euphemism?

A: Would you like to attend <some event that is guaranteed to be so boring, you would want to cut your wrists just to pit yourself out of misery>?

B: I think I am washing my hair.

A: Wahhh... you wash hair take so long time one, meh?

Okay... somebody here seriously needs some lessons in euphemisms and sarcasm. The above example may not really have happened. But believe me, I have heard of / read about very similar episodes in real life.

These are what I call “potong steam” (Malay: Lit. cut off the steam, or kill-joy) responses to really cheeky one-liners that were meant to be funny – not taken literally or seriously. And I’ve read quite a few such singularly obtuse responses on Facebook recently. It just takes all the fun out of dry wit. I really feel like wringing the buggers’ throats and saying, “Which part of the joke don’t you get?” Come to think of it, if you have to even ask the question, then the exercise of explaining it is futile in itself. Perhaps it’s a language thing, no two ways about it.

Neil Humphreys even devoted one chapter of his book “Notes from an Even Smaller Island” to this. I couldn’t agree more. These sad sods need to stop taking things so literally, and get a life.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Facebook Etiquette 101: Do you plankheads know what the “photo tag” function is really for??

I never really understood why some people habitually tag their Facebook friends’ ID's to clothes, flowers, furniture, restaurant menus, dogs and cats... just about anything other than the persons themselves. It’s no wonder then, when you browse their photos in their Facebook profile, 90% of the tagged pictures show nothing but inanimate objects (the remaining 10% being dogs and cats), making you wonder if the poor buggers are even human.

When I browse a friend’s tagged photo, I expect to see just that - my friend’s face. Not Fifi her neighbour’s chihuahua, a pair of Prada stilettos that does not even belong to her, or a club sandwich on the TGIF menu.

So much for the Facebook developers taking all that trouble to build-in the automatic facial recognition feature (yes, people - in case you have not figured it out even after reading this far, you are supposed to tag your friends’ faces) in the photo tagging function. They may as well have saved themselves the trouble, and designed it to recognise a horse’s arse.

Yes, I know what these blockheads are going to say, “Oh, I tagged those pair of shoes to their ID, because I wanted to mention about it to them.” To which I respond thus, “If you are a regular-enough Facebook user to know how to tag someone in a photo, surely you are also familiar with the [@person’s ID] function in the comments text-box (if not, please go and learn).” That will just as certainly ensure that they get notified of your “mentioning them” in their e-mail Inbox, and it takes just as little effort to execute. For Pete’s sake, please learn to use your tools properly, as they were intended for.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Love Thy Job, Not Thy Company

In one of my ‘mid-life crisis’ moods, I Googled the phrase “Do I need to be passionate about my company?” It was almost as if (God-like) Google read my mind, because the following link appeared at the top of the list of search results:


The article really hit the nail on the head. Across the five (5) companies that I have worked for in the past 13½ years, I have never once been passionate about the products and services they sell – be it light-emitting diodes, mobile phone cameras, cigarettes, conveyors, robots, petroleum or soft drinks. I don’t get all hyped-up about brands (unlike some of my colleagues, whom I personally deem to be neurotics). I just happened to enjoy doing the stuff I did at work, and I did my job well because I liked it – plain and simple. And once I stopped enjoying it, or when assholes at the workplace made the job no longer enjoyable, I just moved on. So, does that make me a bad employee?

Thankfully, a number of my friends agree with my viewpoint. It’s nice to know that I am not alone on this. Honestly, for a while, I thought I was the only disloyal bastard who – time and again – was “not with the team”, just because I happen not to go all ga-ga about the companies I work(ed) for, and their products and services. I work for a company because I enjoy the job that it offers, and not because I get a hard-on over its brands.

Quite frankly, I find those people who chime those sickening “Ooh, I love my brand so much” theatrics so fuggin’ fake – and especially so when the product in question is about as exciting as toilet paper (no offence intended towards toilet paper manufacturers). Let’s see them continue to wax lyrical when they switch companies or, better still, if they jump ship over to a competitor. I would be the first to ask them, “So, I take it you decided to file for divorce so that you can sleep with the enemy, huh?”

To my current and prospective employers: When you decide to hire me, please do so because you deem me as someone capable of doing a good job within your company, and not because you think I am someone who is madly in love with your company’s brand and products/services. The latter is not a prerequisite for the former. And between the two, I think you know which of the two is the more important trait you would want in an employee.

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Facebook Etiquette 101

Some people should learn to tell the difference between public wall posts and private messages. I do not need to know that Tweedledum is rendezvousing with Tweedledee at whatever-ungodly-hour and whatever-dodgy-joint, wearing whatever-gaudy-coloured-underwear.

Let’s keep those one-on-one conversations offline (yes, plank-heads – the catch-phrase “We'll take it offline” was invented with you in mind) where they belong, shall we? Or, if you must use Wall Posts, then at least learn to use the “Custom Privacy” settings to limit readership. Unless you’re feeling so unloved that you absolutely feel the need for the whole wide world to be privy to the details of your weekly diary and the contents of your wardrobe.

Call me a closed-minded grouch if you like. But in an increasingly-connected world, let’s not forget that there is a lot to be said for this precious, fast-diminishing, and nowadays taken-for-granted asset called privacy. Networking is not synonymous with baring all. The last thing you need is for some loose-tongued Facebook acquaintance (whom you probably detest anyway, but mindlessly acknowledged his/her “Friend Request” with that whimsical click of a mouse) meeting you at a black-tie social gathering and saying out-loud in front of your partner, “Hey, I read on your Facebook post that you’re sleeping with so-and-so.”

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Now, THIS is what I call "multi-culturalism", lah!

Was sharing a light-hearted conversation with two La Salle PJ ex-schoolmates via Facebook this morning, following the events of Bersih 2.0 rally in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

Now, one of my ex-schoolmates is an Indian, and the other is a Chinese. During the conversation, the Chinese chap would call the Indian chap ‘estate’, referring to the days when the first generation of Indian migrants to British Malaya worked in the rubber estates. In turn, the Indian chap would call the Chinese chap ‘lombong’ (mine), referring, in turn, to the days when many of the first generation of Chinese migrants worked in the tin mines of Perak’s Kinta Valley.

Firstly: These nicknames are not recent ones; they date back almost 20 years, to the time when we were all in high school back in the 1980’s/early-1990’s. Secondly, and this is the most important point: There were never any hard feelings, and the thought of the nicknames being offensive never crossed any of their minds. Back in our time, we could call each other ‘estate’, ‘lombong’, ‘ikan’, ‘sawah padi’, ‘dhut’,… whatever. And at the end of the day, we were all one jolly band of brothers kicking the same soccer ball together on that muddy LSPJ sad-excuse-for-a-football-field. Why? Because we recognised and embraced our diversity (note: not difference). As such, we were totally comfortable about laughing at and poking fun at each other without malice.

Even so-called ‘multi-cultural’ Australia cannot claim to be able to do that comfortably, as there is still the need to observe sensitivity and be politically-correct. In that sense, the Malaysia I knew back in my schooling days was culturally more mature than what Australia is today. We were already way past the stage of toeing the line, comfortable enough with our diversity to be able to cross those lines without fear of repercussions. The trivial nicknames aside, ultimately we still respected one another, and enjoyed our visits to friends’ homes for Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Chinese New Year and Deepavali.

Allow me to put this into further perspective. My ex-boss in Malaysia was an expatriate from England, also called Mark. One day, one of our mutual colleagues, a Scottish expatriate by the name of Bob, stepped into Mark's office while we were having a discussion, and said, “Mark, I need to speak to you.” Not sure which Mark he wanted to speak to, I light-heartedly asked him, “Which Mark – the Englishman or the Chink?” My boss commented, “Watch it, you’re being racist there.” I was incredulous. Excuse me, I just called myself a Chink – how does that make me racist? But the point is, he did not understand that in Malaysia, differences in cultural background are openly recognised and celebrated. Nor did he see the parallel between this and the equally-benign habit of the English poking fun at the Irish. And by the way, Bob the Scotsman grinned and replied without even batting an eyelid, “Actually, I’m looking for both of you.”

What has happened to all that in Malaysia today? Nowadays, silap panggil satu kali, itu parang pun kasi keluar, tahu...

Sunday, June 19, 2011

‘Multiculturalism’ – What it means to me

This one has been circulating around for a while now, but I decided to try and locate the source (this is probably not the original article, anyway):
http://andjohsemail.blogspot.com/2011/02/worst-nightmare.html

Firstly, let me state that I empathise with the reasons for the angst voiced in the article. I myself am a migrant in Australia. But unlike some of the migrant communities (no names mentioned), I do not attempt to assert my language and culture here. I do not seek out a whole army of my own kind to buy out an entire block of apartments and turn it into a mini-Asian suburb to the subtle exclusion of everyone else. I do not appreciate watching a scene where a bunch of Chinks babble on in Cantonese to the total exclusion of their non-Chinese Australian friends.

That is not the intent of my post today. Today, I want to write about what this big word ‘multiculturalism’ means to me, and the stimulus was from that article.

I recently had a conversation with an Australian friend here in Sydney, and he remarked that when he once visited Malaysia, he was incredulous when people there told him that “Malaysia is a multi-cultural country (read: ‘unlike Australia’).” He could not agree with that statement, because on the sheer basis of the number of cultures, languages and cuisines represented in Australia, Malaysia was nowhere close to comparing with the former, in terms of cultural diversity.

Now, if the sole metric for quantifying degree of multiculturalism in a country is the number of distinct cultures represented, then yes, I agree. But here, I humbly submit that it is not only an inadequate metric, it can be a misleading one.

A multicultural country comes about by the inflow of migrants, where the numbers represented by any given migrant culture are substantial enough to form a distinct and visible community (and here, I stress the word ‘significant’, because if the migrant numbers are too small, dilution and eventual total assimilation is inevitable, leading to the death of that migrant culture within a generation or two). But any migrant culture that is not part of the majority, will inevitably be eroded over successive generations by virtue of dilution and/or assimilation, unless there are practical mechanisms in place for their perpetuation and renewal.

True, Malaysia and Singapore may not have as many distinct migrant communities represented as Australia. But the trade-off is a lower degree of dilution. With each distinct community forming a larger percentage of the overall population, coupled with an environment where their cultures and languages are able to be lived and perpetuated in daily life, the renewal of those cultures is more certain.

Actually, I should reverse myself out of the above statement. In my experience, the Singaporeans in my generation are pretty shit at multiculturalism. While me and my Malaysian friends have grown up enjoying lemang and chicken rendang at Hari Raya open houses and rava ladoo milk candy during Deepavali, I have Singaporean Chinese contemporaries who have literally no inkling about what those festivities are.

Multiculturalism does not stop with each community safeguarding its own cultures; otherwise, we would end up with silo, fragmented and totally disunited communities – a perfect recipe for social meltdown. Multiculturalism also means encouraging the communities to embrace each other’s cultures. To those Australians in my generation who studied French or Italian as an elective subject in high school, I humbly ask: When was the last time you actually used your language schooling to exchange a couple of words in the elevator with a fellow Australian friend whom you know to be of French or Italian origin? Or is that stooping too low?

When I buy drinks from a ‘mamak’ stall, I try to place my order using what little Tamil I know (which, at the time of writing this article, is restricted to the numbers one to ten, the word ‘drink’, and ‘thank you’), but I can tell you that it is a gesture that the stall owners appreciate, because I try to connect with them. When I greet a Malay friend, I ‘salam’ them with both hands, and return the right hand to my heart the same way they do. I eat banana leaf rice with my hands the same way my Indian friends do. Conversely, it was a Malay classmate who taught me how to use a pair of chopsticks at the school canteen, and it was an Indian classmate who taught me a plethora of colourful Cantonese swear words.

Today, when I am in Australia, I live out my multicultural principles with a great degree of trepidation, lest I am drawn and quartered by the powers that be for going against the policies of assimilation, as the afore-mentioned article has clearly voiced. I speak proper English with all my colleagues. I have imbibed more beer in the past eight months than I have in the ten years prior. But here-and-there, I try to live out my principles of multiculturalism.

Two weeks ago, I discovered that Barat, my Indian colleague who sits opposite my desk speaks Tamil. Actually, I did not ‘discover’ it – I asked him directly what dialect group (of the 200-odd in India) he belonged to, as dialects always interest me. He was initially a bit taken aback with the question, but loosened up completely when I told him the reason I asked was because where I come from, the bulk of the Indian community speaks either Tamil or Malayalam – to which he quickly responded that he was also familiar with Malayalam, given its similarities with Tamil. Since then, whenever he and I worked together on a one-on-one basis, I would always conclude our collaboration with “Nandiri Vannakkam” (which means “Thank You”). And when we bump into each other on the way to the cafeteria for Friday evening drinks, and I ask him “Thani?” (“drink”), he would grin and say, “Yeah, why not…”

Carolyn, my boss, is of Dutch origin. I do not speak Dutch, and neither have I ever heard her use it. But before I departed on my 11-day Easter break, I quickly ran the words “Happy Easter” through Google Translate, and e-mailed her the corresponding Dutch greeting “Vrolijk Pasen”, to which she happily returned the same in Dutch to me. I doubt she ever uses Dutch anywhere outside the occasional Sydney Dutch Association gatherings. And before I departed for a week’s vacation last Friday, I stuck a notice on my office flat-screen monitor with the words “On Vacation” in ten languages. Yes, that was me making a statement.

Apart from doing my part to embrace the other party’s culture, there is another reason I do all of what I did above. How many generations more do you think my Indian colleague’s family will speak Tamil? I do not know if his children speak it at home, but even if they did, best case is one more generation (i.e. theirs). Last I checked, there are no schools in greater Sydney that teach Tamil as an HSC subject. And if I knew any Italian, I would try to go beyond just “Buongiorno” when I walk past Adrian’s desk every morning. In other words, I am humbly offering myself as one of a dwindling number of individuals in Sydney who can at least exchange two words with him in his mother tongue. Considering that I speak and write English 99.9% of my physical time at the office, I do not think that is too much to oblige, in a country that ‘embraces difference’.

An Australian friend of mine (whom I will refrain from identifying here, as he has been a good colleague, and I respect his right to voice his opinions) voiced his support for the afore-mentioned article, saying, “We need to keep Australia as Australia, not a satellite country for some other culture.” I can understand the spirit behind his statement. But here, I would ask: In that case, are you against Sydneys Chinatown on Dixon Street, the Vietnamese enclave in Hurstville, or the Italian Forum on Norton Street in the suburb of Leichhardt – the very same ‘satellite’ communities that have provided Sydney with the rich concentrations of their respective cultures and their renewal and perpetuation?

Do not get me wrong. I am not saying that migrants should not assimilate into the mainstream culture, and speak fluently the official language(s) of their country of adoption. When I am in Malaysia, I cringe when I see the younger generation unable to string a proper sentence in Malay, and I feel exactly the same way when long-staying migrants cannot speak proper English in Australia. If there are nine Chinese and one non-Chinese in a group, and the nine start going off in Chinese, I would be the first to tell them to switch to English, for the benefit of the one. I do not deliberately use a foreign language as a barrier. But what I am saying is, we must recognise the differences and, more importantly, the necessary trade-off’s between promoting assimilation and perpetuating multiculturalism. Like any running machinery, maintenance is required. And if you are not prepared to allow maintenance, then do not expect this multicultural machine to last very long.

If a country wants to claim to be ‘multicultural’, then it must recognise the balance between expecting the migrant communities to assimilate, and allowing for perpetuation and renewal of these cultures. Otherwise, it is about as superficial as eating Chinese takeaways on Friday nights and, on that basis, saying “See? I eat sweet-and-sour pork like Ricky Chan over there, so I embrace multiculturalism.” Well, let me tell you that in two generations’ time, without cultural renewal, that yellow-skinned beady-eyed chap who is selling you your chop-suey in a box may not even be able to tell you how to say ‘rice’ in his native Chinese.

Note:
The readers will, no doubt, notice the heavy reference to Asian cultures in general, and Chinese culture in particular. This is in no way meant to downplay the equal validity and significance of the points I have raised, in regards to any other migrant culture. The prominent use of Asian cultures as examples was only on the basis of the author’s relative familiarity with them, as is my bias towards the linguistic aspects of multiculturalism. And by the way, I still think Australia is a great place to live.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

NEWSFLASH: Right-angle isosceles triangles DO NOT EXIST!

For the mathematical buffs and geeks out there:

We know that √2 is an irrational number. But has anyone thought of the physical implication of this?

By Pythagoras' Theorem, it means that a right isosceles triangle with both sides of unit length x would have a hypotenuse of length √2x.
In a mathematical world, the three sides of the triangle would be continuum's. However, in the physical world, we know that the lines forming the three sides are really made up of discrete atoms.

Let us assume for simplicity that the lines are exactly one atom in thickness. This means that each of the two mutually-perpendicular sides would be made up of nx discrete number of atoms in a straight line. We shall also further assume that successive atoms are equidistant from one another.

It therefore follows that the hypotenuse would have to be formed by √2nx number of discrete atoms. But because √2 is an irrational number, √2nx discrete atoms is a physical impossibility.

Let us then assume that we attempt to achieve a discrete number of atoms on the hypotenuse, by splitting the atoms further into k equal parts, i.e. the number of atoms on the mutually-perpendicular side would be nx/k and that of the hypotenuse would be √2nx/k, where k is necessarily a positive integer. However, because √2 is already an irrational number, turning √2 into an integer would require an infinite number of moves of the decimal point to the right, i.e. k→∞ and the atoms are split so small, they become a continuum, which violates physical laws of atoms. Or, stated another way, only if the size of the triangle approaches infinity.

Therefore, a right isosceles triangle in the real world is a mathematical idealisation, but a physical impossibility. Neat, huh?