what a car is called and what it means cross culturally

singapore is a multi racial and multi cultural state. people speaks different languages and dialects, in particular the chinese. and words can mean different things when spoken in different language or dialect. what a car is called often becomes the brunt of the jokes. sometimes it is more than a joke. nissan cefiro is known in cantonese as si fei loh, or damn fat bloke. nissan bluebird, in hokien is lan cheow chia. not very pleasant when translated. what the heck. it means penis car. suzuki is never favoured by the gamblers when in the gambling den, casino or in the turf club. it means lose everything in hokien. no businessmen or people involved in the stockmarket would want to drive a suzuki. maybe that is the main reason why the car is not selling well among the chinese. i think it also affects nissan bluebird. what car are you driving? oh, lan cheow chia! the malaysian proton saga became potong sala, a reference to a wrongful circumcision, cutting the wrong thing. not too bad actually. better than the nipple red joke that was linked to the car. now volkswagen has joined the circus. it has a new car called touran. too lan in hokien is prick the prick or meaning fed up. so it is a too lan chia or fed up car. manufacturers of cars better take note of what the names of their cars meant to the locals in different countries.

usa searching for a candidate to succeed annan

the usa is searching worldwide for a replacement for kofi annan, the secretary general of the united nations, says us ambassador john bolton. let me figure out for a while. the united nations must be a state of the united states of america. so the usa is going to appoint someone to that post. cannot be. i clearly remember that the un is world body and does not belong to the usa. how come the rest of the countries have no role to play in the search for a secretary general. or is the secretary general an appointee of the usa? may i nominate two of our renowned politicians for considerations. both well qualified and with experience and great credentials as prime ministers.

US cannot win against china: tokyo governor

this is the title of an article from washington covering the visit of shintaro ishihara to the usa. the article is reposted in the straits time on 5 nov. the reasoning of ishihara is that usa will lose to china because beijing 'holds no value at all for human life.' what a crap coming from a japanese nationalist/militarist who insisted on visiting the yasukuni shrine to hero worshipped war criminals. and it gets the temperature boiling after watching elizabeth choy on channel newsasia recounting her harrowing experience while being tortured by the barbaric japanese during their occupation of singapore. strip the japanese of their well tailored suits and all the trappings of wealth and respectability, you will find a vicious animal beneath. since the communist chinese came to power in 1949, it has never started a war with any nation except when provoked. compares this with the number of countries that the japanese invaded during the second world war and the atrocities and cruelties they inflicted on the people of the invaded countries. did they value the lives of the invaded nations? also compares how many countries the americans have invaded or started a war since the end of the second world war. the vietnamese just protested to washington a few days ago not to whitewash the gulf of tonkin incident, that it was the us navy that created that incident to launch a massive military campaign in vietnam. and now the invasion of iraq under a false premise of wmd. and next will be saudi arabia, under the pretext of protecting the royal family from an internal rebellion. next on the line for invasion could be syria, iran and north korea. very likely syria and iran will be invaded first under some false accusations. and the usa is famed to be the policeman of the world, the most peace loving nation. the most dangerous development is the sinister alliance between this evil empire and japan, the wolf in sheepskin. the world is going to be very dangerous with abe and aso and ishihara backing up the modern day samurai in the name of koizumi. the rise of japanese militarism is on the card and all the players are in place. and in washington there is a cowboy that behaves like hitler and surrounded himself with a gang of mafia chieftains. the protest in argentina is a sign of how the rest of the world is seeing through the american hypocrisy.

chok tong's take on the role of media

while ho kwonping's position was confusing, chok tong's is perplexing. his opening shot is that to hell with western opinion on press freedom here. and, press freedom does not guarantee good govt. or in an indirect way, we don't need press freedom to govern well. many western liberals or advocates of press freedom or freedom of expression will definitely frown on these remarks. can't blame the outgoing us ambassador lavine for his comments on this issue. then again chok tong made all the remarks that are deemed proper and correct in the same breath. things like the press must not be a mouth piece of the govt and parrot whatever the govt said or it would lose its credibility. and that he did not favour a subservient press...an unthinking press is not good for singapore. he added that the media is free to put across a range of worthy different viewpoints to encourage constructive social and political discourse. ho kwonping better take note of this last point and not churn out a press that has no opinion of its own and no view to express except to borrow other people's view to make a point. so what did choktong really said? maybe with regard to press freedom, if there is a choice, lesser freedom is acceptable as long as the country is governed well. and the press should play a constructive role to engage the people in issues that concerned the nation. otherwise, we will continue to have an apathetic people and press for a long time to come. now comes the tricky part. how could the media navigate through this maze, to be constructive, relevant and credible and without stepping on the govt's toe? or to tow the line without being seen to be so, and not to lose its credibility in the eyes of the people. in fact warren fernandez has described in his article this morning (5 nov) that the bbc was able to play a constructive role during the bombings in london because the readers believed in its objectivity. do our readers believe in what is reported in the straits times with respect to govt policies and positions? comments from the kopitiams is very negative. that it is a very biased paper that does not have an independent view. with ho kwonping's confirmation of its role as a passive paper, it is very difficult for the media to change the perception of its readers or the people. then should it be bothered? or should it adopt the position that press freedom is not important as long as the govt is governing well?

malaysia, 60,000 female malay graduates unemployed

the 60,000 female malay graduates registering for employment is a govt policy that has gone seriously wrong. and the number could possibly be more. what is more pertinent is that despite the reporter claiming that the graduates possessed irrelevant degrees, which at first impression were either religious studies or some cultural or artistic subjects, but not true. these were graduates with degrees in business studies or information technologies. very marketable degrees. their problem is the inability to converse in the english language at a reasonable level. this is only the tip of an enormous problem of a govt policy that emphasises on political objectives at the expense of economic considerations. the malaysian govt finds it acceptable to level down, to dispense away with real talented people with technical abilities and think that by awarding as many bumiputras with a piece of paper and all problems will be solved. what they could not comprehend is that in a world that is increasingly knowledge based, you really need technical expertise to be relevant and competitive. the latest time higher education supplement (THES) is a rude awakening of sort. the premier university, the university of melaya, has its ranking dropped from 89 to 169. and compares this with nus and ntu at 22 and 48 place respectively, it is quite stunning and embarrassing. the malaysian govt will need to do some serious soul searching and take some decisive and painful actions to rectify a generation of errorneous affirmative actions. in terms of mistakes in educational policies, it will take a generation or more to feel the damage and it will take more than a generation to catch up for the lost time.