I learnt a practical English lesson.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Because we are all good, clean and elitist Singaporeans, we speak English with pristine and immaculate grammar.
No wait.
The words 'Singaporeans', 'English' and 'grammar' just sound funny in the same sentence eh?
Moving on. (Before I break any laws, that is.)
Like many other kids in Singapore, I was incarcerated in a government-funded Primary School.
I was placed in a cell with about 39 other kids, and we all learnt fun stuff like how plants make their own food. And how vulnerable we humans are since we only make things like poo, which only the Japs would eat.
Credits to my school though, because I learnt a great deal about nifty things like algebra. I mean, seriously. Everytime I run into real-life problems, I could always count on algebraic formulas to save the proverbial day.
But I am not going to detail my mathematical adventures here. (For more of that stuff, you can head on to UtarEmpire. He's a Math major who hates humanity and loves flowers. Go figure.)
One tiny problem I have with the education system here is that while it teaches us practical things like algebra, it also puts an unhealthily heavy emphasis on impractical things like useless phrases.
Honestly, the things I learnt in English class would astound you:
'Momo monster drank hot tea!'
'His raincoat is blue.'
'Ali, Peter and Gopal have a pile of three apples each. How many apples would Peter have if he took two apples from each pile?'
Okay, fine, the last one was from Maths. But hey, you got the point.
You see, the fact is, nobody says 'Momo monster drank hot tea!' in real life. (Maybe Schizo Cow would, but that's another story.)
And that's where the problem lies.
Fortunately for me, Auntie Hell from my office gave me an English lesson yesterday, and boy, was it good!
We always talk about power stares or power suits, but we forget about the power speech. (I don't know, power sentences? Power phrases? Power lines? Gee, I really like them brackets.)
And Auntie Hell sure gave me one hell of a lesson in that.
She said over MSN last night:
'You be in office tomorrow.'
Now as we can all see, it is an instruction instead of a question, simply because it ends in a period and not a question mark. Naturally, as a guy, I had to have the last word, so I said:
'Yea.'
And I thought there was no way she could beat that. I mean, what can you say to 'Yea'?!
But I was wrong. So. Very. Wrong.
She merely uttered (and I knew she uttered even though it was on MSN, because she typed in small caps. Damn these brackets are cool.):
'good.'
There. I couldn't top that. Honestly, I had nothing to say to that. I thought of 'better', but she would probably beat my ass with 'best'. (Hey that rhymes!)
And it was effective, because I did go to work today.
(Oh and by the way, Peter would have six apples. Damn those sneaky white bastards!)
(I had to add these brackets in, because eight is my favourite number.)
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