Singrish 3, and some unique Singaporean signage...

 This is a slightly unconventional Singrish post--not all of these are grammatically incorrect, so much as they are strange or incongruous to the American eye. So let's start with something pretty familiar, shall we? The Korean-import notebook is a reliable start.

The small print says "Would you like some flavors that make your mouth come alive/something to set your mouth on fire". Kind of poetic, actually.

I don't even remember what this is! A money pouch or something, I think. Same for the sample below, "Handsome Min Splash". Love it!

 

Classic Chinese-style: "doesn't-really-matter-what-this-shirt-says-English-words-are-cool-right?" 

 

Actually, I think we might have these in the States too. Yes, I figured out that it's supposed to be Bump-its, but doesn't it just look like Bum Pits at first glance?

This just struck me as weird. Maybe no one else will see it, but doesn't it look like the DragonQuest cutout and the Marriage Central one are somehow related? It looks like the scheming dragon is saying, "Yes, dear, say I do to a happy marriage. And then I will kill you and roast you over a spit. Or maybe throw this orb at you, or whatever it is dragons do in this game. Mwahahaha!"

This next one is PRICELESS. I held up people coming out of the restroom behind me to take this photo because it is SO. WEIRD. The top of the word is cut off, but if you can't tell it says "Gentlemen". I.e. this is the sign on the entrance to the men's bathroom. I hope I'm not the only one who thinks this looks like a woman. Kind of like Pink, actually, if the hair weren't black.  I mean, he has full red lips, black-lines eyes, and the standard lesbian/Bieber haircut. I think those boob-shadows are supposed to be pec shadows, but come on people!

And finally, a quote, with a fitting reminder that this post is all in good fun, and that I love and welcome the variations that English takes on.

English is a language composed almost wholly of other languages--only 1% of words in daily use today are descended from the Old English of 1000 years ago. The abundance of Scandinavian, German, Latin, French, and Greek vocabulary and grammar that the language has absorbed is astonishing. That flexibility is one of the things that makes it a fitting global language in today's world. I find it humorous that this quote was on display in support of the government's Speak Good English campaign, which tells Singaporeans that their personalized version of English is not a legitimate variety, but "bad" English rife with mistakes. However, this quote is saying the exact opposite of what whoever put it up their thinks it means. They think it means "The English language doesn't belong to you, so don't mess it up." What it's really saying is "The English language belongs to itself, to the minds of every person who uses it and shapes it." (That's how the author meant it too--he's an esteemed poet and playwright from the Caribbean.) Please, when reading these posts, don't think "Oh, those Singaporeans/Chinese/etc. can't speak English! How quaint." I definitely don't mean it that way, as a linguist or as someone living abroad in a global world. Instead, I hope that when you read this you enjoy a laugh at something that strikes your eye as strange, consider the near-poetry or the resourcefulness that is shown, and appreciate how we live in a global world where languages is nobody's special property, but the property of the imagination.

Assorted August through October... :/

Hello my dearest friends! So, there was a good span of time this fall that I didn't write any posts. And then recently I discovered some photo gems from the time period that it would be a shame not to post. Therefore, this is a hodgepodge of interesting stuff I've fallen into. I'll keep the text to a minimun and let the pictures to the talking :)

Random guys dressed up as storm troopers downtown. There we 5 or 6 of them, and they were just kid of milling around and taking pictures with people if they asked. And this was like late August, so it was nowhere near Halloween AND super hot.

Some of you might remember my lantern festival/mid-auturm festival post from last year. (I know I should embed the link, but I'm not very tech-savvy and actually don't know how to do it, so here it is just copied and pasted: http://cmcastelli.blogspot.com/2009/10/mid-autumn-festival-thanksgiving-of.html)

So this year, it's kind of the same. They did have a big display downtown on the river that was nice--they had all the zodiac animals, and this is me in front of my sign, the rabbit.

They also had these really pretty larger "lanterns", which represented traditional works of Chinese literature.

 They also had a lantern festival on-campus, and they gave out free lanterns! I took the pink one ;)

 I went with my friend Hiram, who is in my department at school. They had a little tea ceremony booth, so this is him drinking a teeeeny cup of tea. Sorry for the awkward lighting...:/

We also met some friends--her name is Joanna. Unfortunately I can't remember her husband's name, oops! They helped us try to answer the questions on a quiz about the festival. But they were pretty hard! And we actually got most of them wrong, mostly because we weren't really paying attention and just wanted to get some little prize you got when you completed it. But then since we didn't get all the questions right, they didn't give us the prizes! So kiasu...haha.

Another thing I did was take a day trip to Malaysia on one of our holidays and randomly decide to get my ears double peirced! hahaha. Unfortunately, the whole reason I had never gotten double peircings before was that I have very sensistive ears, and even my regular piercings give me trouble and I seldom wear earrings in them. But I'd started wearing these cute smiley face studs and they hadn't been bothering me, so I was overconfident. After 6 weeks I tried to switch out the earrings, and they got all swollen and gross, and so I had to let them close up. But in this picture I didn't know that any of that would happen, and I'm all adrenaline and anticipation ;)

I've been spending the occasional weekend at my friend's condo taking care of her bunny when she goes on vacation. While I'm there I always cook a couple of meals, because I don't really have the luxury of a kitchen all to myself in my own place. So one weekend I decided to make pizza, but although the condo does have a "kitchen", it doesn't have an over. So I made it in a pan, oven free! I was pretty proud of my resourcefulness. And I made the dough and the sauce from scratch! Doesn't it look delicious?

Ooh another fun thing! In late July, David Choi came to Singapore! He's a very popular musicain who I follow on Singapore. He signed my CD and took a picture with me. He was really good, and my friends Jocelyn and Shermeen and Yi En accompanied me, so it was a really fun night.

I also went to a rug auction at a fancy hotel. If you are eve in Singapore on a Sunday afternoon and you think to yourself "I'd like to find some wealthy expats! I wonder where they would be?" Then you should try to find your local rug auction ;) But it was really fun. I fell in love with this rug, and it was actually "relatively inexpensive". As in, maybe $500 at the least. I still look at the picture sometime and wish I had it :(

Kathryn had a birthday in September. She loves rugs (hence why I was at a rug auction in the first place!) so I got her two Oriental Rug mousepads ;) I bought them at THE MOST AWESOME SITE EVER, http://www.vat19.com/ . Seriously, if you ever need to buy me a birthday or Christmas present, you should look there first. So, since I was already paying for shipping, I decided to get myself a little present:

GUMMI BEAR ON A STICK! It was delicious.

Oktoberfest

 Hi friends! This post actually doesn't have anything to do with Germany or drinking beer. It just means that this is a summary of the weekend October 23-24 (and a bit of the following week) and I didn't have a better name. Last weekend was CRAZY! And this week wasn't much less busy. Let's start with the photographic evidence, shall we? The first stop was a Durga Puja festival. This is the biggest festivals for Bengalis in the Northeaster part of India, and so my good friends Shreya and Indrajeet invited me along to see the celebration put on by the Bengali Association of Singapore.

 Durga Puja celebrates the 5 days out of every year that Durga, the mother goddess, gets to leave her in-laws home (I don't think Shiva the Destroyer's family sound like they would be very nice!) and hang out with her parents. Every year she journeys in a different fashion, and this year it's in a boat. Hence the boat set-up.

 Me and Vasugi and Shreya. Oh how I wish I had purchased my Indian-style garb in time! Darnit.

 Priests sitting and burning stuff to the goddess up on the boat. There was also a big prayer session right before we ate--kind of a breaking of the fast type of thing. You're not supposed to eat until after it's over, around noon or 1 o'clock, and then you're supposed to only eat vegetarian food.

So my journey there was VERY eventful. First, I stepped off of a ledge kind of funny on my way there, and my shoe broke. But I was already late and 10 minutes walk away from home and didn't really have time to go back and change shoes--so I improvised. 

 Lucky I had a spare ponytail holder with me! And in a semi-corresponding color, too!

 I know, not the classiest thing. But it was surprisingly functional. Although I'm still kind of sad, because I really liked those shoes and I wore them a lot.

I also lost my keychain and card holder on the way there. Thankfully I realized pretty soon and went to the front desk and had them call the other station and they found it and kept it for me! That's twice in one week that you saved my butt, Singapore. I will do my VERY BEST to make sure it doesn't happen again anytime soon. I must have something on my mind making me extra distracted or something.

The next day I went to church with Hannah (Xiao-Zhen) in the morning and we at lunch at Fish and Co--we had fish and chips because we're both addicted to french fries--and then we went to a conference on migrant workers' rights. Hannah's a social worker, so she was actually interested in coming with me, not being dragged along! We talked about a summary of the migrant rights situation that is going to be sent to the 2010 UN Human Rights Review. We looked at the summary and then broke into groups and gave our opinions. A lot of the workers themselves were there and that was really cool. 

 Then later that night I went to a dance show with my friends Hiram and Yao Na. The first part was Japanese dance. It was slightly boring, but this lady had an AWESOME bow on her back.

 And they asked for volunteers to go up at the end and learn part of the dance, so Yao Na and I did it. There's me in the green shirt and Yao Na on my left, your right.

 Then there was the Cambodian dance section, which was way cooler. When I was describing it to my mom, she said "That sounds like that scene from the King and I..." I only vaguely remember that scene, but I do remember monkey dancers, and monkeys definitely figured prominently in this dance. And it would make sense that it would be a similar dance, because Siam is the old name for Thailand, which is right next to Cambodia and has a LOT of cultural similarities. So they didn't make that dance up, they got it quite right! Nice to know. Yay for Rodgers and Hammerstein.

 They also had some adorable little kinds in it, and the kids were SO GOOD! Look how tiny they are! Especially considering that those grown-ups are REALLY small. Like, barely adult size. Southeast Asians are not known for their height...

 Afterwards, there was a line dancing demonstration by the Line Dancing Association of Singapore! Basically a bunch of Singaporean women dressed in cowgirl outfits, line dancing to modern country music--liek atechno version of "Country Roads". Didn't know that existed? It does. But then there was an audience participation part and we did it and they taught us 30 counts of Hello Dolly! Boy was that an experience! My musical theatre training did not fail me, I picked up the steps right quick. :) Here's some of the line dancing (and two adorable little girls semi-following along)

I must have overexerted myself that weekend, because this is literally what my hair looked like when I woke up the next morning:

Ahhhhh!

So that's all the pictures I have for you. But I did continue to have a week chock-full of awesomeness. Wednesday was my first Salsa dance class (I get to start in Beginnger 2 since I have some background), and Thursday was my first POTTERY CLASS! It was awesome. While I struggle to look graceful or sensuous when dancing, I seem to be somewhat of a natural at the wheel, or so the instructors say. Maybe they tell that to all their students, haha ;) But it was an emotionally difficult week, so that was much-needed pick-me-up. I really liked it and I was happy with my progress and I can't wait for my next lesson! Hopefully I'll learn to be less messy along the way, because I had clay ALL OVER ME when I left last time!

On Friday night I went to Kathryn and Chris's house and helped with some delicious Quiche Lorraine. We also began hand grinding cloves for a spice cake because we couldn't found ground cloves at the grocery store, only whole ones! It was a nice, relaxing evening. Saturday I slept until 2 and proceeded to get sick throughout the rest of the day. Today I'm still sick, but I went to church with John and Hannah and ate fries again!--among other things--for lunch.

I have lots of good material for a Singrish post, so keep your eyes peeled this week. I think it's actually going to be an "interesting things you would only see in Singapore" post, as opposed to just Singrish. You'll see what I mean when it goes up.

Sorry for my long absence. But then again, I'm sure all you faithful readers are used to it by now :) Love!

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo...

Hello friends! So, if you couldn't tell from the album, the highlight of this post is my recent trip to the Singapore Zoo. But first, a few fun things for you.

 Just in case there's a house in your way and you really need to get rid of it. (In reality it's a moving van, obviously. The Chinese says "Move House", which should probably be translated as something like "Movers".)

In case the word "visible" didn't clue you into the fact that you can see it, they added the "You Can See" just in case. It's kind of redundantly repeating things over again and again... (By the way, this is an advertisement for fruit juice WITH COLLAGEN BITS. Supposedly it's good for your skin. I accidentally bought it once and it's gross, IMHO.)

Okay, so ZOO PICTURES! I went with my friend Pearline and her sister Theng Hoon and her boyfriend Bryan.

Sooooooo cute! I wuv otters. They were making little yipping sounds because it was almost their feeding time.

Baby orangutan! Interestingly enough, "orang utan" is actually a Malay phrase (Singapore is right next to Malaysia) that means "jungle people". They use the word "orang" (people) to refer to tribes or family groups.

Rhino conference.

 Obligatory face cutout zoo pictures!

Bryan is very tall, but he's got nothing on a polar bear. (The world largest land carnivore!)

Me in front of the really nice elephant enclosure. They also had these little adorable elephant statues around everywhere:

There were more but I don't want to bore you :)

So yes, that was the Zoo. I had a great time! I'd been meaning to go for awhile and just never got around to it. It was a bit sad though, because the last time I went to the zoo was with Dan and my nephew Chris, so it really made me miss both of them.

I actually went to the zoo last weekend. This past weekend we had a holiday on Monday, Singapore's National Day. So a friend of mine went out of town, but she has a pet rabbit and she needed someone to take care of her while she was gone, so she hired me! I probably would have done it for free, because I got to spend the whole long weekend in a beautiful 1.5 bedroom condominium really near downtown with a gym and a pool, and I had it all to myself. It's about 5 steps up from where I live ;) I really did mean to take pictures of the place and the pool and the bunny!!!! But I forgot. Suffice it to say that the place is clean and spacious, the pool is beautiful, and the bunny is gray and suuuuuper cute!

I had a friend, Dianne, stay over with me Friday night and hang out Saturday. Sunday I went to the big Anglican cathedral downtown for church, then went grocery shopping, and then spent most of the day reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--it's awesome and I need to read the other two now. I also made homemade pizza for dinner. I do have pictures of the pizza because I was really proud of it--I cooked it without an oven! Talk about pan pizza. But I don't have them with me right now so I'll post them later if I remember...

Monday I used the gym AND the pool (I got sunburned again, despite my best efforts) and then spent the afternoon/evening with my friend Jocelyn who just got back from Korea. We were able to see the National Day fireworks from the condo (27th floor) so that was pretty sweet. Needless to say, it was with a heavy heart that I returned to work and my own place on Tuesday!

Summer in Singapore

Hello! Soooo...lots has been going on since my last update! Here are some pictures to give you an idea.

First off, here are the pictures of the event I talked about in my last post, the Sex and the City 2 movie awesomeness :)

Yes, that's a martini glass full of free-flow M&Ms :)

Not a very clear picture, but you get the idea. Super classy!

Before I go further, I should mention that the biggest thing I did in this last month or so was my TRIP TO KOREA! If you haven't heard about it, ask me about it because it was great! Some of the highlights were the biggest department store in the world, a stunning seaside temple, a HUGE live seafood market, a Korean-style spa/sauna.public bath, karaoke, and LOTS of AWESOME food.

I'm not going to post a lot of pictures or info on it here, because I've already spent a million hours organizing, uploading, tagging, and captioning my photos on Facebook!  So go there for more details:

Seoul Album:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2443893&id=9620356&l=3edeae0441

 

Busan Album:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2443889&id=9620356&l=e3d4af19e4
Another fun thing was my friend Cheney's birthday party. She was turning 21 and her boyfriend organized this huge surprise party for her. She starting crying when she walked in! Happy tears, of course. And he had this super-fancy cupcake cake made up.

They're so cute.

The other fun thing I went to was a Fourth of July party (actually on the Third of July!) thrown by the American Association of Singapore. It was raining the whole day, and the party was outside, although they had a lot of huge tents set up. Everybody was crowded under the tents and things were muddy and foggy, but it was still fun. It stopped raining in time for FIREWORKS! Which is really why I went haha.

That was the biggest hot dog I'd even seen. I'd already eaten a third of it at that point! Definitely can't compare to a Chicago dog, but it was edible. Mmmm tastes like America!

Finally, a little Engrish for your viewing pleasure ;)