SINGLISH VS ENGISH

Received the email below from an ex-colleague...gosh...what a culture we had developed in the 39 years of independence...uniquely Singapore indeed.. Happy Birthday Singapore! :P

SINGLISH VS ENGISH

-Use Singlish, it's so much economical n effective - Compare n See

When Going Shopping

-Britains: I'm sorry sir but we don seem 2 haf the sweater u want in ur size, but if u gif me a moment, i can call the other outlets 4 u.

-S'poreans: No Stock!

When returning a call

-Britains: Hello, this is Mr Bean. Did anyone page me a few moments ago?

-S'poreans: Hello, who page?

When someone is in the way

Britains: Excuse me, i'd like 2 get by. Would u please make way?

S'poreans: Lai, siam! or Siam hor! or Skius!(excuse)

When someone offers to pay

Britains: Hey, put ur wallet away, this drink's on me.

S'poreans: no need lah!

When asking for permission

Britains: Excuse me, but do u think it would be possible 4 me 2 enter through this door?

S'poreans: (While pointing at the door) Can pass or not?

When asking to be excused

Britains: If u would excuse me 4 a moment, i have 2 go 2 the gents/ladies. Carry on without me, it would onli take a moment

S'poreans: Go toilet! Buay tahan ahh... ...

When doubting someone

Britains: I don't recall u giving me the money.

S'poreans: Got meh?

When disagreeing on a topic of discussion

British: Err. Tom, i have 2 stop u there. I understand where u r coming from but i really have 2 disagree wif wat u said about the policy

S'poreans: Talk cock lah u!

When asking someone to lower thei voice...

Britains: Excuse me, but could u lower ur voice, i'm trying 2 concentrate over here.

S'poreans: Eh, Tiam leh!

When asking someone if he or she knows you

Britains: Excuse me, but i noticed u staring at me 4 some time. Do i noe u?

S'poreans: See wat see?! Buay Song ah!

Retrospection

Song Spinning Now: Julee Cruise - Falling

Its been a while since my last post. During this short period of time, I've got into a change of work environment again, for the 4th time since my arm recovered in April. However, these are just jobs to bring in some cash while I continue to hunt for a suitable marketing related career. I feel like a restless soul, always on the move yet always ended up in shitty contract jobs that made me even more miserable. That's just the kind of person I am, even if it's a contract temp job, I still will not hestitate to make a quick exit if it's some slave driver job that requires you to work 12 hrs a day or if it's something so boring that you feel like you are not learning or achieving anything but just to clock in the hours to earn the pathetic $6/hr.

Anyway, I certainly haven't lose hope in getting a suitable marketing related job despite several attempts and failures. I believe I can get one and its just a matter of time; I mean its really easy to be despaired but I just think of it as the employer's loss for not hiring me, hahaha..pardon me..yeah..too bad..they can't benefit from my powers! :P

Well time passes really fast, before you know its already the month of August, this means we are getting to the end of the year soon! Looking back on the months that passed, this year had been an extremely restless and trying period for me. Career wise, it's absolutely not taking off and I'm still struggling on this part. My physical being is the area that is most affected by this freak little accident that left me with a much weaker left arm now, although my health in general is not too bad.

I guess the only area in my life that is flourishing is my social life. I have met many new people and made a lot of new friends this year. The best thing that is that I manage to find my primary school friends after 12 years of lost contact, as well as many secondary school classmates via friendster and I've also managed to meet up with some JC friends and even ex-colleagues! Its like suddenly I'm having a lot of old and new friends entering in my life right now. They are practically from all over - old schools, past work places, friends of friends, other places etc. Well the feeling of making friends every where you go is just incredible, it makes you an even more sociable and cheerful person!

There's another 5 months to go before 2004 ends and 5 months' time can still bring in more new things, new friends, unexpected events or experiences. I'm excited to see where life will lead me to by year end, so let's hope I'll have more good things coming up!

Below is an article on something that I've learned this year and I'm now constantly applying it in my life.

I wish to dedicate this piece of article to a friend who had gone through some emotional struggle with himself lately. Hope you will continue to improve yourself and that you'll only get stronger and determined every time you face a disappointment, rejection or failure. Believe in yourself pal, you are definitely not a loser!

Believe in Yourself

By Harold Bloomfield, M.D.

Believe In Yourself You have the power to create a better life for yourself. But only if you believe in yourself and try. As Eleanor Roosevelt recognized, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." So get started on making your dreams come true.

Ask For Advice And Help Thinking about making a major life change? Ask your friends for help and advice. You may get very conservative advice from some people: "Don't take risks," "Don't rock the boat," "A boring job is better than no job at all." But you're also likely to get encouragement and help. People will respond to your courage. Doors will open. Try it. You'll be surprised at how helpful people will be when you ask.

Making Failure Your Friend

By Dr John C Maxwell

Failure is either your friend or your enemy and you shoose which it is. If you play a dirge every time you fail, then failure will remain your enemy. But if you determine to learn from your failures, you actually benefit from them and that makes failure your friend. To turn your losses into profits, ask the following questions every time you face adversity:

1. WHAT CAUSED THE FAILURE?You won't learn all you can unless you're willing to find out what went wrong in the first place. Were you in a no-win situation? Is there a certain point when things broke down? Can you pinpoint one central mistake?

2. WHAT SUCCESSES ARE CONTAINED IN THE FAILURE?No matter what kind of adversity you experience, there is always a potential jewel of success contained in it. Sometimes it may be difficult to find. But you can discover it if you're willing to look for it.

3. WHAT CAN I LEARN FROM WHAT HAPPENED?The key is to always maintain a teachable attitude and embrace the idea that Lord Byron once conveyed: "Adversity is the first path to truth."

4. WHO CAN HELP ME WITH THIS ISSUE?Generally speaking, there are two kinds of learning, experience, which is gained from your own mistakes, and wisdom, which is learned from the mistakes of others.

5. WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?In Everyone's A Coach, Don Shulan and Ken Blanchard state, "Learning is defined as a change in behavior. You haven't learned a thing until you can take action and use it." Make new commitment to learn something from every mistake or adverse experience in your life.

The lessons are there for the learning. But failure won't reach out and teach you. You must be willing to make failure your friend and seizing the opportunity to learn.

A second career

Song Spinning now: Julee Cruise - Falling

After watching the Current Affairs programme "Get Real" on Channel News Asia, I received a harsh reality, a profound confirmation that the future is absolutely insecure and unpredictable. To wait or hope for a rebound economy or go back to the good old days seem very distant; it might not even happen. All the forecasts and news on economic improvement are just news, there's hardly any significant changes down to the microscopic level.

In this episode, presenter Diana Ser brought the audience to the pride of two retrenched, over 40 year old white collar professionals who still couldn't find a job after 3 years despite lowering their salary expectation to just $20k to $24k a year.

These days making a living in Singapore is just going to get harder and harder as jobs are getting scarce and there's intense competition among tons of candidates for one position. As employees and job seekers face the increasing trend of contract positions replacing permanent ones, lower salaries, flexi wages, longer worker hours, cost cutting measures, foreign competition, fewer benefits, piling work load, chronic work stresses and etc. , job security is abscure and job satisfaction is rare.

Taking the analogy extracted from Robert Kiyosaki, this situation reminds me of a treadmill that is going faster and one has to keep catching up or run even faster to get ahead of others. The treadmill will continue to increase its speed, leaving no room for breathers. People who ran out of breath will naturally stop to catch some breath and when they decide to resume their run, they will be way behind those "machines" in front, who doesn't stop to take a rest. Even if you have all the stamina to go on and on,

It can be a dread to maintain this kind of working life just to get by or continue to live on this planet. Suddenly civilisation and globalisation create so much chaos people are going back to pre-civilisation, retreating into their rustic or rural havens for the purpose of finding peace and tranquility to keep up with sanity.

Every now and then you heard about people getting retrenched and it doesn't just happen to the older employees, but to younger ones as well. I came across those in their 20s who were retrenched due to company downsizing and surprisingly they were from MNCs. This proved that both local and international firms are equally vunerable.

Living with confidence!

I'm reading 2 books " Being Happy" and "Follow Your Heart" by Andrew Matthews.

I have to say that these are absolutely great books! The way he wrote the books are in a light-hearted, humorous & everyday manner that we can all relate to. If you are finding the way to living life to the fullest, you HAVE TO read these books!! Yup..action is not all....we've got to start from our mind first when its comes to living to the fullest.

Just want to share with you some of the stuff from what I've gained in these books..

Quote:
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Change is difficult. The action of a poor self image is always to perpetuate itself. As we start on the road to self improvement, the tendency is to keep replaying the old patterns of blame, guilt & self denigration. Here are some suggestions for things that you can do to boost the way you feel about yourself:

1. Accept compliments - always say thank you or words to that effect.

2.Give compliments - one of the easiest ways to feel good about ourselves is to recognise the beauty in others.

3. Always speak well of yourself - If you have nothing good to say about yourself, keep your mouth shut!

4. Praise yourself - when you do something right, give yourself a pat on the back. Acknowledge your value.

5. Separate your behaviour from yourself - realise that behaviour is not connected to your self-worth. If you do something silly, like smash into another person's car, it doesn't make you a bad person. You simply make a mistake. (Love the sinner, hate the sin).

6. Treat your body well - It is the only one you have got. Everything we do affects everything else. Exercise & norish it well.

7. Let people know how you expect to be treated - in particular, set an example by the way you treat yourself and them. Nobody should accept abuse from anybody!

8. Get around good people.

9. Work at having pleasure without guilt > Use Affirmations (Eg. I deserve to pamper myself.)

10. Read books which give you ideas and inspiration (I personally find that this really helps!! Constant reading and learning changes me for the better..this is the first step to living the life you want..everything starts from your mind..once your mindset is changed..you will forever be changed for the better and you'll find ways to go towards your ideal life!)

11. Always picture in your mind how you want to be, not how you are. You will then necessarily gravitate toward your dominant thoughts.

Points to ponder:

Disasters aren't so disastrous if we tackle them a piece at a time. Also, the sooner we recognise that we stand to gain from the experience, the easier it is to deal with. You see..failures are actually good for us coz it makes us stronger from the experience..if we don'r fail..we don't learn from our mistakes..if you fail 99 times..you'll learn 99 ways how not to fail and you succeed on the 100th attempt!

The unique thing about being human is that we get to experience so much more. We can create something out of nothing. Pigs don't write music. Dogs don't build companies. Shellfish don't go to movies. The package deal in being human involves problems, and it also means we get to love, to laugh, to cry, to try, to get up and to fall down and get up again.
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So remember..everyone of us get 24 hrs a day..and we all have limited time on earth..it's how you choose to utilize your time to make your life more meaningful..instead of spending your time and energy on these negative thoughts..why not turn them around to propel you in life and live it to the fullest?

Music Box

Song spinning now: Mariah Carey - Music Box

This song is the inspiration behind my virtual name "Musixvox". What comes to your mind when you come across the word 'Music Box'? To me, it represents feminineness, elegance, poise and beauty.

I think the good old music box, especially those with dancing ballerinas, is on the brink of extinction now. I still remembered when I was a child, watching the little ballerina dancing to a crystal-clear classical tune in that Victorian-styled box always fancinates me, it feels just like watching a little performance.

History of the Music Box

Antoine Favre, a watchmaker from Geneva, first incorporated a gadget in watches, perfume bottles, pendants in 1796. This gadget, a “music comb”, if you will. The music comb is a comb shaped device that is made from steel then hardened and tempered to produce a number of 'springy' teeth varying in length. Pins set into a revolving cylinder pluck the teeth. As each tooth is plucked it produces a musical note. The note produced by each tooth is determined by, the length of that particular tooth. Each tooth, a different note. The pins in the cylinder are arranged in such a way that a melody arises from the comb as the cylinder turns.


I have to say this person is extremely talented to think of a way to bring live music to homes without the need of performers. In fact, the ancestor of radio is not the gramaphone, it's the music box!

Well..sad to say that the ballerina music box that added color to my childhood had already been thrown out. I think its because I lost the ballerina after I played with it :P , so my mum thought its quite meaningless to keep this useless junk and hence decided to get rid of it.

If only this thing is still with me now, it will be a valuable antique 20 years down the road..so the moral of the story is...don't throw your junk away!