Anecdotes concerning misused English

1. I am at present exposing students to forming acceptable English words in the form of nouns, adverbs, adjectives and verbs. When I asked my Form 5 students, "What is the verb for the word ‘danger’?", one of them promptly replied ‘dange’.

2. When I asked the Upper Primary students what an apron was, a Year 4 student said, “Mother cooked the thing to wear.”

3. When referring to a photo, I asked a student about the children in the photo. "When was this photo taken? Was it taken when they were sick or after they had got better?" She promptly replied, ‘When they were sicking.”

4. My students are quite confused as to why a hen can lay an egg but a mother does not lay a baby.

5. Masterskills is a college of Nursing and Health in Malaysia. If pronounced wrongly, it somehow would not be a college I would recommend to anyone who wants to take up nursing. My student pronounced it as ‘Master Kills’.

6. This incident was told to me by my friend whose son recently sat for the SPM exam. He was supposed to write a letter to the local City Council. He confidently wrote his salutation, “Dear Mr and Mrs Council’.

The Fate of a Mango Tree

When I shifted into this single storey terrace house ten years ago, I assumed that the mango tree in front of my house was shared by me and the neighbour on my right because the tree stood in front of both our houses.

Over the years, the tree had borne abundant fruits which were plucked and enjoyed by most of the neighbours in the vicinity. Even passersby stopped to relish the taste of this fruit. Once even a teenaged passerby stopped her car in front of my gate and asked permission to have a few mangoes. Most neighbours were not so courteous. They carried their own sticks to pluck the mangoes whenever they wanted to eat it raw or make a pickle.

I, on the other hand, would wait for the fruits to grow big and ripen on the tree and then fall off on their own. This was when the flesh of the fruit would be juicy and sweet. As expected, I seldom had a chance to eat these ‘juicy golden nuggets’ as I termed them, as most of the fruits would have been plucked when they were still young and sour.

Annually, during the hot season, the tree would shed its leaves. I would sometimes sweep the leaves but my neighbour two doors away on the right took it upon himself to sweep the leaves regularly. Maybe he did so because he often parked his car under the shade of this tree. Maybe he did so because he had been staying in the area even before I shifted here and that is what he had been doing all along. In fact, he also took it upon himself to prune the tree when the leaves and branches were getting too massive.

The mango tree was actually planted by the mother of my immediate neighbour on the left. About sixteen years ago when the old lady shifted into the house next door, she had bought two different species of young mango plants. One plant which would eventually bear big eight-inch long mangoes she planted in front of her house. The other was this tree which bore ‘golden nuggets’. Her son cut their mango tree after she passed away about two years ago because he was fed up with people stealing the fruits.

Today the other tree which was planted outside my house met with the same fate. My immediate right neighbour whom I have never seen sweeping the leaves or plucking the fruit, decided that the tree should be felled. So he ordered his worker to cut the twigs, the branches and the trunk of the tree.

My one regret is that I did not take a photograph of the tree in its heyday, when it was full of leaves, when it was flowering and when it was laden with fruits! 

The Ironies of Life & Living - L

L had always wanted to be called Dr L, to be on par with his wife who was a medical practitioner. After more than 14 years of slogging for the title of Doctor of Philosophy, he finally achieved it when he was in his mid 50's. However, it did not give him the pleasure he thought it would. He was only an expert in the area of his specialization. He did not have a steady job. He could not adapt to the confines of the work system. His family was estranged from him. He did not have a place he could call home. Ultimately, he was none the wiser although he could now sign off as Dr L. 

The Ironies of Life & Living - K

K’s story is the commonest in the annals of life and living. K thought that she was happily married with a family of four kids. They had their ups and downs as all families do but she managed to keep her family united and her husband happy. Unfortunately, her husband was not of the same mind. He had a mistress on the side of whom K knew nothing of until her husband fell sick and had to be hospitalized. Apparently, the affair had been going on for years. It was not that K had not had her share of admirers during this time. There were colleagues and badminton partners who had expressed interest in her but she had dismissed them for the sake of her husband and family. Now she felt betrayed by the one man she had given it all up for!

The Ironies of Life & Living - J

J   was in a mixed marriage, being a Chinese Malaysian married to an Indian Malaysian. She and her husband brought up three offspring and were employed by the government. When they retired from their government jobs, they decided to travel around the world in the safety of guided tour groups which had a tour leader. Once when a tour group had to make up the numbers and an Indian lady had no partner, J called up her Indian sister-in-law to enquire if she was interested in being the Indian lady’s room-mate. She concurred that since both were Indians they would get along splendidly. How could she assume that when she herself was in a mixed marriage!

Crime & Us

Crime is becoming so rampant these days. It used to be that we used to get to know about criminal activities only in the media. Today, we hear of the nearby convenience store being robbed, someone in our field of work being shot in the street, a friend having her bag snatched and a neighbour’s house being broken into. 

It used to be that we only heard about these criminal activities once in a blue moon. Today, we can hear at least two different situations of criminal activities happening on the same day. What is happening to the situation in Malaysia?

What do we do in this kind of situation? Just wait for something to happen to us? Isn’t there something concrete that the common layman can do to fight crime?

Some Nights in Malaysia

There is a stillness in the night,

a welcoming calm towards the wee hours of the morning light.

The deafening silence prevails as the world rests in slumber…..

Until is heard the murmuring, the buzzing.

The droning builds into a crescendo…..

Then is heard sputtering, revving, rumbling,

Engines battling one against the other.

Circling around the neighbourhood

Speeding up and down the main roads and by-roads.

Babies asleep awaken. 

Adults resting arise.

Some elderly quiver thinking the end is near

The deafening silence turns to thunderous chaos.

A cacophony of sounds from the different machines!

Why are these Mat Rempit given the freedom to destroy the peacefulness of the night in Malaysia? 

An insult to English language teachers!

         The Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia recently announced that Malaysia needs five years and 60,000 teachers to be trained before English can be made a subject for a compulsory pass at SPM level. What an insult to the present batch of English language teachers in both primary and secondary schools! Have they not been putting their shoulder to the grind in their efforts to get their students to have good language communication skills? Isn’t the government confident enough in their skills even though it has spent thousands of ringgit to get them all to become degree holders? It looks like the government has no confidence in the qualifications that these teachers have obtained from the local universities to make the college-trained teachers graduates. The Deputy Education Minister says that 5000 teachers have already been trained and another 9000 are being trained. Is the Ministry trying to say that all this while they had not equipped the schools under their care with the right personnel for teaching English? Did the teachers now teaching History have to undergo the same rigourous training since History is now a compulsory subject at SPM level?

The Ironies of Life and Living - I

I thought to himself, ‘It is not a privilege to be born into a rich family after all. Granted, the rich do not need to worry about where their next meal was coming from. But, at the same time, because they had never experienced hard times, they normally did not appreciate what they had … until it was gone.’ This was true with I, who having had the privilege of living in comfortable surroundings all his life, driving expensive cars and even going on luxurious holidays, now found himself in a situation where he did not know where his next meal was coming from. His friends had deserted him. He only had the clothes on his back and a bed to lie on. He was in hospital for medical treatment and did not even know who was going to pay his medical bills. He felt like ending it all!

The Ironies of Life and Living - G & H

G was always surrounded by friends and family. He entertained them with his easy-going ways. There was always laughter and enough food for anyone around. One could say that he led a luxurious life with wine, women and song. However, he never forgot his parents and his immediate family members. H, on the other hand, was frugal. He had a low-paying job but he managed to give a proper education to his five children who eventually obtained decent jobs. Years passed. G had become friendless because his resources had run out. He was now alone in a nursing home dependent on the generosity of welfare organizations for his dialysis treatment. H’s daughter had to undergo chemotherapy in her fight against leukemia. She, however, had the financial resources because earlier on she had invested in the property market.

The Ironies of Life and Living - F

F decided to get a small little tattoo on her hand while on holiday in India years ago. It was barely an inch long and it was done at the base of her thumb. When she returned to her homeland, she was shocked that her relatives, especially her aunt, were up in arms about the little tattoo. She felt that it would not have seemed so bad even if she had committed a murder. She was told by her aunt that she had violated God’s gift and that getting a tattoo was the devil’s work. She glanced at her tattoo. It was a small little cross, a reminder that Christ had died for us. Was this the devil’s work? Today, she happened to come across her aunt’s son’s profile on Facebook and asked to be added to his list of friends. He had opened a tattoo shop. His own body, arms and legs had tattoos of different designs on them. This goes to show that ‘what goes around, comes around’.

Viva to the years ahead.