Speaking the Euro Way

I received this through my email and find it interesting and entertaining. Whoever composed this must have taken a long strenuous time perfecting it.

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as 'Euro-English'.

In the first year, 's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard 'c' will be dropped in favour of 'k'. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome 'ph' will be replaced with 'f'. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent 'e' in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v'.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.

Ich verstehe das nicht. Deutsch? Nein, es ist nicht.

Faulty hypodermic needles

The Chinese is plagued with endless problems. The latest scare was a faulty hypodermic needle snapped in an infant’s vein.

Whenever Dr Jenny inserted her hypodermic needle into my vein, I would pray it will not snap. I will try to relax my elbow and let its sharp pointed tip penetrated my skin to withdraw blood from my vein. I would not add fear into my mind so I redirected my face as she pulled the plunger and blood was collected inside the cylinder tube.

I am now familiar with the tiny prick as Dr Jenny boasted her medical needles are very sharp and small. If it snapped, the tiny fragment will follow the flow of blood to my heart and that is it. I do not want to think what will happen. Dr Jenny uses disposable syringes and needles and these steady my fear for HIV infection.

I will be going for my blood test soon to check on my cholesterol and sugar level. My blood platelet count is slightly higher than others and she said that if biten by an aedes mosquito I have a better chance of survival but she forgot to inform me that I can die of thrombosis.

Rhino Water

It goes by the name “Three Legs Cooling Water”. It has been a very popular drink for over 60 years according to its manufacturer. My mum used to give it to me when I have sore throat. We called it rhino water.

As required under Malaysian health law, it is classified under traditional medicine and is safe to drink. It is recommended for a number of ailments which is listed as follows:

* Relieves heat stroke
* Relieves constipation caused by body heat
* Good bye to pimples and acne caused by body heat
* Forget mouth ulcers caused due to body heat
* No more headaches due to body heat
* Relieves burning sensation caused due to body heat
* Ideal for body heat caused by pungent/spicy food

It claims it has no side-effects. It does not contain salt, sugar, fat, preservative and chemicals. Its active ingredient is gypsum fibrosum extract or hydrated calcium sulphate or simply Shi Gao (gypsum).

Gypsum is commonly known as plaster of paris. It is a very useful mineral and comes in crystal forms or in the form of sand. If you have a quarry of gypsum, you will grow rich. The construction companies will kow tow to you because gypsum is a component in the building industry for wall partition and ceiling roofing and concrete setting. It is used to coagulate soya bean curd, as blackboard chalk, to cast broken legs and hands, in the preparation of shampoos, foot creams, binding tennis court clay and as fertilizers.

We have often been told, Shi Gao powder is bad for our kidney and should not be taken regularly. This is a wonder drink which works wonders. Then why is it dangerous for our health. Now I am very confused.

Kiwanis Funfair

Since the day Elaine told me about the Kiwanis Funfair I was excited. I couldn’t wait for the day to arrive. We would share a table to peddle our food. She, her bread and me, my Nigella Mineral Coffee.

The Kiwanis Down Syndrome Foundation Centre held a fund raising funfair on Sunday, October 19 to collect funds towards their centre’s maintainance costs.

It was a combination of food and entertainment affair. I never expected such a good turnout. Parents brought their children for the fun, games and food.

There was the music stall that did not only blast out a selection of songs from Alley Cats to hip hops but also provide the dance music to a group of volunteered line-dancers and bamboo stick hoppers. Throwing a slipper at some soft drink cans was fun although the token will win you only a can of sprite. The wheel of fortune gave out a complimentary gift even though you didn’t strike well. A clown distributing balloons of various designs to keep the kids grinning with happiness. At the entrance of the community hall was a recycled magazines and book stall. If you browsed through you could get a good bargain. Follow the trend, paint your arms and faces even if it is not a permanent tattoo.

Fruits, fried mee and rice, sandwiches, cupcakes, curry puffs, chapatti, laksa, curry mee, the list was long. An enthusiastic family displayed their skill in making angku. The candy floss man was there. This time around there was no smell of kerosene to deter us from buying. His machine was powered by electricity. Toys, clothes, titbits and household items sourced from factories. Please do not ask me which factories, the participants have ways to source for products. A small nursery to delight green thumbs. Fishing for prizes from a kid’s play pool.

We need not be afraid we could not handle our stall. 2 trainee doctors from University Kebangsaan and a lady whose husband is attached to Nestle came to render their help. Leong contributed 10 boxes of pickled vegetables. While Jovina advertised and peddled our contributions, Elaine and I were practically pushed aside and reduced to bench-watch.

Everything was fun that day. I managed to sell all my coffee (90 cups) before 12 noon. We left at 12.30 pm because Elaine wanted to go home to make some bread to fulfill her orders.

London’s calling

Air Asia put up its advertisement for its first air travel to London at RM499.00. Their carrier Airbus A340 will fly non-stop from KLIA to London commencing March 11, 2009. Not to Heathrow but to the ‘biggest low cost carrier airport” Stansted Airport.

The booking period started yesterday to Nov 30, 2008. Travel period from March 11 to October 24, 2009.

Their ad has conditions attached to it. Seats are limited and may not be available on all seats, all flights, public holidays, school breaks and weekends. Seats exclude airport taxes and admin fees. Flights to London commences on 11 March 2009 and are subject to regulatory approval. Other terms and conditions apply.

They also include a travel package “5 days 4 nights return flight plus hotel stay for as low as RM1,699.00 per pax”. This sounds very interesting. I can travel at my own pace, visit places I like and maybe drop by York to visit Jae han and Bristol to say hi to Irene. Food? I heard their servings are in big portions. Breakfast free from hotel, buy one time and keep the other half for dinner time! As I will be traveling on a low budget, that will leave me with limited funds for shopping and entrance fees at tourist spots. The exchange rate is equivalent to RM7.00 for ₤1.00.

Oh, if I am not interested in their package deal, then the RM499.00 is only one way, how to come back? No ticket money to comeback. Guess I have to stay in London and work for my air ticket home. Afterall, I can stay for six months! Good idea.

Enhancing our looks with permanent make-up

Everybody wants to be beautiful. Being beautiful can open up many doors paving the way for many opportunities. Opportunities come success and wealth.

Over the years we are always finding ways to make ourselves more beautiful. We started with applying cosmetics on our faces, progressing to surgeries on our faces and bodies, advancing to tattooing on eyebrows and lips and now developing to permanent makeup.

“The effect of permanent makeup lasts two to five years. The most popular kind of permanent makeup these days is “contour makeup,” which was developed by the German company Longtime Liner and uses special equipment and ultra-fine pigment particles that are inserted evenly in the exterior layer of the skin to create distinctive facial features. It takes only half an hour to apply permanent makeup to each facial part and causes no swelling.”

The above paragraph is extracted from KBS Global. Further to their reporting, the most popular are to create permanent eyebrows, eye linings (with two tones) and lip linings (with more than 20 tones to choose from). It caters to working individuals, suitable for people who go for frequent exercises or swimming and young men who are amateurish in their makeup skills.

Actually, permanent make-up is tattooing. They similarly involved needles, poke, poke, poke your skin, adds colors and you are beautiful. Permanent make-up is performed by machine or without machine. The color implanted on the dermis is executed by pointillism, ovuvoid, lining and shading techniques. (according to one practitioner).

In 1979 Pati Pavlik, a traditional tattoo artist started cosmetic tattooing. Described as “Mother of Permanent Cosmetic”, she founded the National Cosmetic Tattooing Association in 1989. Its popularity and acceptance grew and The Society of Permanent Cosmetic Professionals was founded by Susan Church and Susan Preston in 1990 and later the American Academy of Micropigmentation was founded in 1995 and the first permanent cosmetic trade magazine Cosmetech was published in 2001.

Whatever name they come by, they are the same. Tattooing is more towards gangsterism, dermal pigmentation is more scientific and professional but permanent make-up is more acceptable to the general public.

There is the pain and blood involved. Then are the color pigments used harmful to us? And lastly is the fear of infected needles. I do not want to contact AIDS. Some of these practitioners do not change the needles!

Rachael has encouraged me to go for eyebrow embroidery. It is not tattooing, she said. More natural than tattooing and you can erase the colors if you do not like it. Should I believe her?

Oh yeah, Cleopatra is believed to rely on permanent cosmetic to sparkle her countenance.

Yoga Ban

What is yoga? The Indians started it, some Buddhist and Taoist monks practice it. It is simply a form of body exercise. Twisting your legs, hands and body here and there until it is hard to disentangle them. You can sleep upside down and towards the later stage when you begin to embrace mediation, you can fly like David Copperfield. No joke, yogis when they reach a high level of consciousness can experience astral travel and body lightness.

The National Fatwa Council prohibits Muslims from practicing it. Their reasons are “yoga had been practiced by the Hindu community for thousands of years and incorporated physical movements, religious elements together with chants and worshipping, with the aim of being one with God”.

Some of our leaders rejected the ban as long as it does not deviate Muslims from their religion. Muslims from Singapore and Egypt are prohibited from practicing yoga but the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) is not against it.

If a yoga practitioner chants “God help me, God protect me” as she does a difficult posture, I do not think it “is a step towards erosion of one’s faith in the religion”.

Somali Pirates

I read about pirates from the Mill & Boons and Harlequin romance paper packs. Sons of English lords and Ottoman sultans, they were the outcasts of society. Undeniably handsome, dangerously irresistible and as the story unfolded, they possessed golden hearts like Robin Hood. They usually ravished the heroines and ended up seducing them and lived happily ever after. So sentimental, so touching, just stories, woven by romantic writers to steer us from reality.

Still equally exciting are the pirates from the movies “Pirates of the Caribbean ” and not forgetting the comical & hateful pirates from “Hook”. When I leave all these fantasies behind and drifted back to the real world, I now have the Somalis pirates to fill my mind. What a bad dream to wake up from.

Their faces shining charcoal-dark. You can’t figure out their features near or far. They look all alike. They are no rakish individuals with flowing cloaks and flashy swords. In their mercenary uniforms with those evil machine guns, they are threatening.

Coming from a world with no meals menu, a glass of milk is probably a luxury. Fasting is a daily ritual and killing for survival is their daily agenda.

My paperpacks pirates would be delighted with every cargo they seized. They enjoyed them, they used them and they sold them. But not these Somalis. They have a difficult time finding a buyer for the goods they hijacked. So they only captured ships that carried commodities they can exploit like weapons, oil & humans. These they further apply to extort money from the victims’ home-country.

Did the Bible tell us that suicide killers and pirates are part of our end-time tormentors? Who’s next?

Chinese Calligraphy

Nobody can beat me when it comes to Chinese calligraphy. I got excellent marks for it! First I outlined the character I wanted to write. Then paint over it.

And Mrs Ho, my Chinese teacher never realized it. She gave me A+ for every homework I passed up. I did not think it was not cheating, it was just I never knew the correct way to write. Until one day, we were required to write in class. She came and stood besides me. She corrected me and till today Chinese calligraphy is no fun anymore. I still prefer my old method.

Some of my classmates had different style of their own. They placed a fresh page over the samples and traced them. No wonder they finished their homework so fast and I had to spend hours outlining and painting mine to perfection.

This is how Banana Chinese learned their Mandarin. No wonder the Chinese educated people called us “1/2 bucket of water”. But I am not insulted by what they called me. For I am bless with two worlds and I understand life better this way.

The Big Boss

The big boss from Bremen visited us quarterly. As usual he never stays long, only in the morning. After lunch he would leave for the airport to other branches in the Asia Pacific region.

Herr Pieter Khulman is many heads above me. He is huge, probably thrice my size. He has piercing eyes and a chubby, jovial face. He reminds me of Shrek. Maybe due to his size, he walks slowly, swaying from side to side like a pendulum. Observing him, one would think he is afraid the ground he trod on is paved with delicate flowers and he is trying to avoid stepping on them.

We are not encouraged to carry a conversation with him for he does not stop long for us to do so. A normal greeting, “Good Morning”, a nod or a smile is sufficient enough. Managers do not have the chance to conduct a one to one meeting with him. Communications are often held in the presence of our GM.

With no interactions with the staff, he does not know exactly what happens in the office. So why does he bothers to visit us? Anyway he does not have the chance to speak to any of the managers for they were told to ‘disappear’ whenever he visits.

Change we need

The world welcomes President Barrack Obama. The first black President of the United States. God bless him, guide him and protect him as he serves his term in office.

Personally I prefer him to a Republican like McCain. Republicans are more stringent and aggressive in their approach to political policies and their reactions to people's sensitivities are bordered on racial supremacy.

We will expect a more peace-loving American government after today.