How much does it cost to cross a street in Bandar Sunway?

A  One Academy student was trying to cross Jalan PJS 11/28 to her class during a heavy thunderstorm about a week ago, and she had to fork out RM12.00 to make it to her class on time. No, she wasn't fleeced by some notorious taxi driver. She had no choice  but to pay RM12.00 for a parapluie to take her across!

I'm sure it must have occurred to those who live, work, or study there that the developer should provide a few covered walkways to connect the blocks of shops. Just think: You're standing at KFC overlooking Persiaran Lagoon and you can see the person you're supposed to have an appointment with standing on the opposite side of the road - both of you separated by a massive downpour!

Maybe I should go into the business of selling parapluies at this time of the year! BTW, parapluie is French for the humble umbrella the student bought.  

Quel dommage! Sorry, I've been sneezing French; it must have been the monsoon!  

Au revoir et a bientot!

Warning : Don't Drink Grammar at Old Town White Coffee !

Gentle Readers

Never mind the grammar error in the use of reported speech in this "Yum Cha" ad that appeared in The Star of Monday 12 November 2012. Go savour the robust flavour of freshly-brewed coffee at Old Town White Coffee kopitiam.

Is this is an instance of the copywriter exercising his creative licence to break grammar rules for effect and impact? The man in the ad should have said: "The doctor said I wasn't sick enough to be on medical leave." Perhaps the copywriter's use of the present tense is deliberate as it reflects a common mistake in Malaysian English. The practice of employees taking MCs - medical chits- is a common complaint of Malaysian employers. I suppose the combination of Malaysian English and the MC culture has the effect of helping (Malaysian) readers identify with the ad campaign?

Waiter, give me a cuppa!

 Of Avian Flu, Alvin Tan , Vivian Lee and our changing standards...

Brace yourself. A new strain of bird flu is hitting Malaysia: Alvin + Vivian = H5N1 Avian. It was recently reported that Avian flu jumps from birds to seals and could potentially threaten humans and animals. I wonder if the couple had been smoochiing seals of late.

It's indeed astonishing how fast our standards change with the advent of the Internet. A female friend and I were discussing the brouhaha over the Alvin Tan and Vivian Lee bare-it-all scandal on the Internet. She said that if the young couple had been featured on the centre page of Playboy mag, it wouldn't have been so bad instead of them posting their sumptuous erotica on their blog for the whole world to see. I know this lady friend wouldn't have said this even a year ago. It's like Alvin and Vivian have raised the benchmark. I'm sure, it wasn't long ago that it would have been quite shocking for a woman from Malaysia to be featured in Playboy. Now that we have Alvin and Vivian, the bar has been raised several notches. Perhaps, in another ten years, when another couple do something even more daring or outrageous than what the two have done, who knows we might just react: "If they had done what Alvin and Vivian did in 2012, it wouldn't have been so bad."

You don't really have to go all the way to Bali or burn your pocket paying for pricey "package" trips to Pulau Redang to find good beaches. Recently, I drove up to a beach in Cherating, Pahang - somewhere close to the famed Club Med resort. As my wife and children aren't sun lovers, I left them in the hotel. Except, for an elderly Caucasian couple, I had the beach all to myself. Not that I needed the whole beach. But think of the bliss, the peace, and the sheer joy of simply doing nothing!

This NOKIA Lumia banner ad is seen stretching above the road outside Kuala Lumpur Megamall's North Court. In my opinion, this ad copy has made clever use of the idiom "run in the family", which is more commonly used to refer to people. As an example, when you say this to a Miss Malaysia contestant that "beauty runs in her family", you're not only saying that she's beautiful but also that it's a common trait in her family. As the banner ad is about Nokia's Lumia, it has the effect of tellingly suggesting to anyone who sees it that Lumia is a work of beauty and that "beauty" is a common trait in the Nokia family.

 God's Coffee

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said:

"If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups... And then you began eyeing each other's cups.

Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of Life we live.

Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us."

God brews the coffee, not the cups.......... Enjoy your coffee!

"The happiest people don't have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything."

(I chanced upon this lovely anecdote on Facebook)

  A few quotes from renowned educationist, John Dewey.

"Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living".

"Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy".

 "Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another".

"Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination".
 

"Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes".

"Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis".