Engrish: Singapore Edition

Soooo, some of you might remember that when I was in China I had an album comprised of "interesting" examples of the English language. In Singapore, English is the language that most people speak, and for many young people it is their native language. Singaporean schools and universities are taught in English, signs and menus are in English, government addresses are given (mostly) in English. However, a combination of British influence and English being the second tongue of many, plus all of the imports from surrounding countries who do not "speak good English", have resulted in  some interesting "engrish" in Singapore. Below, for your enjoyment, I present some of my interesting findings.

FIRST SET: Correct but slightly odd uses of English.



Oh, crockery. By crockery they mean plastic bowls and chopsticks.

It's just hard for me to believe that this company isn't a joke. "Intrafish: First in seafood news." It sounds like something Dave Barry would make up.

 

Possibly a common British spelling? Note: the tiny "By Order" in the lower right-hand corner totally makes this shot. Of course it's "by order" or somebody, there's a frickin' sign! I think it's a scare tactic :)

I think perhaps there's a tradition (British, maybe?) of pronouncing the "=" as "equal to" as opposed to "equal" or "equals". Still, a bit jarring for me to see at a university.

SECOND SET: So close, yet so far away.

This is a picture of my new notebook, imported from China. Kind of poetic, actually.

 

Just one word/phrase can make a big difference. That "box of" is pretty crucial.  As for "the Million", I pointed it out to my friend who I was with at the time, but she was from China so she didn't really get it...

This just sounds wrong. Is it just me?

I love European dinning.

LAST SET: Total fail.

I don't really have anything to say about this one. Even without the grammatical errors, the overall message is still inane.

You should have seen how excited I was when I found this. "During the grandma time". Best intro ever. And the rest is pretty humorous too.

Just so you know, all of these goofy notebooks are from a Korean import store. Hence "Life is compared to a voyage", which no one in Singapore would ever say. But, they might find it on a notebook and think that it's something that American people say, instead of just something goofy.

CLASSIC! For some reason I can't get it to stay rotated when I upload it, but you get the idea. (Note: This might have been a limited issue, because another stack of cards like this one had substituted the "r" for "l" in the correct place.)

Possibly my favorite of the whole set. So adorable, incorrect, pointless, and yet adorable all at the same time. WHY put it on the cover of a notebook? I don't know.

American Food :)

PANCAKES!

I found pancake mix at the small grocery store downstairs and immediately had a craving for pancakes. they also had maple syrup, so two weekends ago I made a big American breakfast for Dan and myself. Of course, the only size box of mix they had was huge, so I made pancakes a couple more times during the next week. Only problem: I had forgotten the maple syrup at Dan's house. I decided to experiment with some other toppings, some that I bought specially and some that I had already.

Specially bought: powdered sugar, butter. Already had: cheddar cheese, cream cheese, mangosteen fruit. (Those are those little white things in the bottom right-hand corner.)












Mmm...completed pancakes! One with cheese and butter, one with mangosteen and powedered sugar, one with cream cheese and butter and powdered sugar, and one plain butter and powdered sugar. They were all good! The mangosteen one was surprisingly so. (I couldn't find strawberries--mangosteen tastes kind of like a citrusy banana...) Cream cheese was also great! I'm surprised I've never heard of that before...and the cheese one wasn't bad either.



Some orange juice to wash it all down, courtesy of Mrs. Ling who bought them in bulk on sale and then couldn't drink them all before they expired. All moms are the same :)




In other news, Dan had a craving for ribs this past weekend, so he looked online and found a place called Jerry's which serves American food. We got fried mushrooms and ribs and french fries, all of which were wonderful but which I forgot to take pictures of. But then we also got dessert and coffee, both of which were AWESOME, and which I remembered to take pictures of. For dessert we had the melting chocolate cake with ice cream AND the pecan pie a la mode. MMMmmm!

Mid-Autumn Festival: The Thanksgiving of the Orient

Last Friday was Mid-Autumn Festival! （中秋节, which literally means "mid autumn festival", in that order.) This is a traditional Chinese holiday where you have a family reunion and a big meal, based on a legend that everybody has their own version of--just like Thanksgiving!

You also eat mooncakes, which are pastries approximately the size of a large hockey puck, filled with pretty much anything you could imagine.

I like the nut, yam, and egg, but I detest the meat-filled ones. Around mid-Autumn Festival mooncakes are everywhere in China, and in Singapore (which, just to reiterate, is NOT PART OF CHINA) they are also quite common this time of year. Traditionally, you would then sit around outside at night with your extended family, admiring the moon and writing poetry about it. That doesn't go on anymore.

However, being that although the majority of the people living in Singapore are of Chinese descent, it is NOT China (think America--majority of people are of European descent, but it's definitely not Europe!), they don't do everything quite the same. They've actually combined another Chinese holiday, the Lantern Festival (元宵节，which does not translate to lantern festival in any way, shape or form). However, the Lantern Festival is 15 days after Chinese New Year (which is like Christmas and has a lot of traditions and vacation time and such), so I guess they wanted to spread some of the cool stuff to one of the holidays that was kind of boring.

So here's the Lantern Festival. Basically you carry paper lanterns around. You can also hang them up and just hand out or have a picnic with your friends and family like these people are doing. So on Saturday afternoon Dan was at my house and I was like, "So, today is Mid-Autumn Festival. What do people do? Should be go out to dinner or something?" And he was like, "Well, they walk around the park carrying paper lanterns." And I was like "LET'S DO IT!" So we did.

Dan got a Doremon one. He's a famous Japanese manga character.

I opted for a more "traditional" choice, although the word traditional really is a stretch--we bought these lanterns for a dollar each and stuck 10 cent wax candles in them.

We went to the part near Dan's house and it was packed with people and lanterns. Dan took this beautiful picture out over the lake--look at all the lights! It was nighttime and all he had was my point and shoot, and cranking the ISO up makes everything very blurry, but he got a great shot. (All of mine were awful, so this is the last scenery shot you're going to get.) It was very beautiful though, with all the lights and the pond. The temperature was nice too...

I couldn't resist making Dan take a picture of me on a "traditional" Chinese bridge with a "traditional" Chinese lantern. Quality's not so good though.

Another thing people do is make candle designs. They bring several boxes of candles and camp out at a large rock or a park bench or whatever, and then they arrange the candles upright by sticking them to the surface using the melted wax of another candle. Then they light them all and it looks awesome!

A very creative and beautiful variant of the rock/park bench candles design! (These are the monkey bars of the playground in case you can't tell.)

I don't know how far back the tradition of burning up your lanterns at the end of the night goes--according to Dan, at least as far back as "When I was a kid we always burned up the lanterns after we were done with them"--but I'm glad it is a tradition. This is a pyromaniac's dream holiday! Look, the flame is BLUE!

So all in all, I highly recommend Mid-Autumn/Lantern Festival. I was in China a couple years ago for this same holiday, and I have to say that the Singaporeans do it better. Props!

Odds and Ends...

First of all, some administrative stuff.

When you write posts you can stop in the middle, save them, and then finish them another day. I had assumed that the date on the entry would be the date that you actually finish and post it; however, like so many things I assume about the internet, that was wrong. SO, I started an entry back near the end of August that I never finished and then just ran across and figured, "Oh, those pictures are kind of interesting." So I threw in some text and published it, and then I COULDN'T FIND IT. Turns out it's listed under August 25. So in case you missed it, there's a new post in the August section in the left-hand sidebar.

Also, for the technological newbies: sometimes when I load pictures I use the smallest setting in order to save space. But however big or small the pictures are, you can always simply click on them to see the full-size version. So don't despair if you were desperately trying to locate Dan in those postage-stamp sized pics--no need for Where's Waldo here.

Now onto the fun stuff! Just a couple of interesting things I've run across/created in the last couple of weeks.

Starfruit of David

Dan's military-issue dental floss. Most of his army-issue stuff is ugly green, heavy-duty, and practical (like most such stuff I'm assuming), but for some reason they have the most adorable packet of dental floss I've ever seen. Come on, "Teeth of the SAF" (Singapore Armed Forces) with the little different-colored berets on the little cartoon teeth? Priceless.

Okay, so while I was at work I came across and watched a short lecture by a guy who is a professional puzzle-make on fora.tv, which is an awesome website for all sorts of interesting and education talks about pretty much anything. (And this is when I wasn't slacking off. What a great job.) Anyway, he's apparently an ambigram specialist--ambigrams are designs that read the same whether right-side up or upside-down. They were a major plot point in the Dan Brown novel Angels and Demons, which lead readers to believe that these things were incredibly complex and difficult to design, hence finding all sorts of clues written in this way was somehow important to the mystery. (I forget the details...) Anyway, seeing this guy who designed these things made me think, "Huh. Could I make one?" So I tried my hand at it, starting with the obvious word choice. After about 20 minutes, here's what I got:

Can you tell what it says? I think it's relatively clear, but of course I did it, so I'm not exactly an impartial judge.

I'll give you a clue: it's kind of a "meta-ambigram".

I'll give you another clue: I've already written the word three times in this entry...

I know you can't turn your computer screen upside down, and of course you don't want to just take my word for it that it works, so here are two pictures of the ambigram turned sideways in the two different directions. You can just tilt your head either side to read it each way!


So yeah. Definitely not the most elegant thing ever, and not super clear to read, but not bad for a first attempt of 20 minutes if I do say so myself. And definitely not as mystical or complex as Dan Brown would have you believe.

I encourage you to try it yourself! It's pretty fun. If you'd like me to try your name or any specific word for you, let me know! I might not end up doing it, but I might, so you've got nothing to lose, right?...

:)

Greek Costumes from Bali Lane on Arab Street in Singapore. Oh, and also the coolest building ever.

Talk about multicultural!

So we were doing a project at work where we needed to record a set of skits set in Ancient Greece. The costumes were from shop called Masquerade, which is on a street called Bali Lane, which happens to be In the Arab Street region of downtown Singapore. Which is awesome. My boss was out of town for a few days and asked me to pick up the costumes. I followed his directions and ended up in...

THE COOLEST PLACE EVER!

Seriously, this is like my childhood costume box had been secretly multiplying exponentially all this years and then developed intelligence and took over someone's grandma's attic. SO great! They had fancy dresses with corsets, Chinese clothes, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Greek, your standard Halloween fare (bride, hippie, french maid, pirate, Disney characters etc.), piles and piles of hats, belts, boot covers, boas, everything! I don't know if they really liked that I was taking pictures, but they didn't say anything. Score! Totally going back. After all, Halloween is coming up...

Here is one of the streets in the area. The big pink facade is the costume shop (big surprise).

The restaurant where I ate lunch--see the awesome, sunlit, charming alleyway beyond it? It looked more awesome in person, I promise. I wish I had mad photography skillz. Anywho, I didn't take any pictures when I actually walked through said sunlit, charming alleyway because all of the shopkeepers were standing in front of their shops looking like they would either scowl at me or laugh at me for taking pictures. :( I wish I had mad secret-photography skillz. Oh well!

No secret photography needed to take a picture of my own lunch. That, my friends, is the best tomato bisque soup I have ever had. (And yes, I've had La Madeleine. It's close, but this was really superb.) And the requisite lime juice, which is my most commonly drunk drink in Singapore, in a tie with iced milk tea. (Not counting of course the classic favorite, lukewarm water from a bottle that I carry around in my purse. FREE! And healthy. However, the drink came included in the set lunch, so I couldn't really pass that up.)

And here is a visual record of the costumes in use, as we record the scenes to be used in the Academic Knowledge and Inquiry website that I'm working on. (These particular scenes aren't uploaded yet, but if you'd like to get a general idea of what we're working on, visit: http://wiki.nus.edu.sg/display/aki/5.2.+Round+vs.+Flat+Earth )

Look at their feet! Those goofy gladiator sandals that are in style finally came in useful! (About half of the girls brought their own sandals to complete their Grecian look.)

Kind of a sidenote: When I was downtown on Arab Street, I got to get a good look at what I think is clearly the most beautiful building in Singapore, which is right next door.

The pictures don't do it justice, but this is a secret courtyard located basically in the front yard of the building, but you can't see from the outside because of a moat-like circumference of MORE BUILDING, albeit only 1-2 stories high.

BAM! Doesn't it look like it belongs in Gotham City?

Picture taken from the front courtyard. Isn't that beautiful? (The two pictures immediately above can be looked at as a kind of vertical diptych to get a better view idea; although they don't match up perfectly it's pretty close.) I have more pictures of some of the surrounding building, other angles, etc., but you're probably bored, and my skills as a photographer don't really capture the complete awesomeness of it.

So yes, fun stuff downtown and at work. Fun fact: these things occurred between September 15 and September 24, so I'm almost almost caught up! YAY!

Dan's Graduation

So, for those of you keeping track, Dan graduated from basic training about a month ago. (09/09/09!)Here are some pictures of the proceedings!

Here is the field of sorts. There were six companies graduating that day. Dan was in Yankee company. See, there are 26 companies and they each start with a different letter of the alphabet. So there's Cougar, Hawk, etc., but when they get to the end of the alphabet they get a bit desperate to try to think up something cool. For instance, two of the other companies graduating with him were Quebec and Zulu. Hmmm...also, during the first week, one of Dan's commanders told them that a Yankee was a cowboy. He was like "I don't think so", but he kept his mouth shut. I think that's Military 101.

The ceremony was all of your standard boring stuff, but at least it wasn't too long. Near the end, all of the parents get to go out and put hats on their respective soldier--I guess it's supposed to be a symbol of something, although I wasn't sure what. It sure was crazy down there though...
Dan looking soldier-y.

Mr. Ling putting Dan's hat on.

Dan and his mommy. (No, I don't have a picture with him on my camera unfortunately, but there are some on Dan's parents camera. If/when I get hold of one I'll add it up here.)

I can't remember exactly what they're pledging here, but they look all serious and stuff, so I'm sure it was kind of important.

With some of his friends, relieved to be done! 10 days of vacation for everybody!

Dan on the ferry ride home, looking sweaty but happy.

We were actually in a super hurry to get home, because we had tickets to a Bossa Nova concert downtown that night. We had bought them a couple of weeks ago when we still thought that the graduation ceremony was going to be in the morning. However, we found out about a week beforehand that it was actually at 4:00 in the afternoon (and the concert started at 7:30). Oh, and did I mention that the camp and graduation is on a island off of the coast of Singapore? So the ceremony ended around 5:15, we got on the ferry about 5:30, then got shuttled to the car, then drove home, so by the time we got home it was 6:45. Then Dan had to shower because he was gross and we were back in the car by 7:05ish, pulled into the parking lot around 7:30 and ended up only missing the first song! Phew. Then afterward we ate Korean food, yum!

Update on what Dan's doing now: they wanted to send him to OCS to become an officer. This is the highest you can get during your regular 2 years and you get paid the most and get the most respect an such, but you also have terribly difficult training for 9 months. Yes, 9 months additional to the 3 months of basic training. Including going overseas, being generally tortured by your commanders, killing a chicken, skinning a rabbit, getting thrown into pools in the middle of the night, and only getting one day off per weekend for the entire 9 months. So he decided he didn't want to do that and would rather just be a sergeant instead. However, they were planning on making him and officer, so they called him 3 or 4 times and finally made him to talk to the Colonel (this is a major dude in Singapore) just to say "Sirryessir, I don't want to be an officer, sir." It was kind of a major deal, but now he's in his third week of sergeant training, and everything seems to be going well.