I predict that for the rest of the day, you’re going to hear the catchy part of the “Moves Like Jagger” chorus running through your head – but this time, it’ll be cows mooing i.e. Moo-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-oo.

So it seems that McDonald’s outlets around Singapore have run out of curry sauce.

It is thus timely for me to explore the non-altruistic/capitalistic side of my nature and place on offer two (2) packets of original, authentic McDonald’s curry sauce (as shown in the above picture) which I have in my possession.

Let the bidding wars commence!

Elyot: (seriously) You mustn’t be serious, my dear one; it’s just what they want.

Amanda: Who’s they?

Elyot: All the futile moralists who try to make life unbearable. Laugh at them. Be flippant. Laugh at everything, all their sacred shibboleths. Flippancy brings out the acid in their damned sweetness and light.

Amanda: If I laugh at everything, I must laugh at us too.

Elyot: Certainly you must. We’re figures of fun all right.

– Noel Coward, Private Lives.

Also relevant:

…we have to…be able to laugh at ourselves – because if we can’t laugh at ourselves when you (sic) are standing on a pedestal (sic), somebody is going to knock you (sic) down.

– Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister’s National Day Rally Speech 2006.

There was a story which my father and mother used to tell people about me when I was a child. They had said to me one day, “Today we are going to take you to school.” At the end of the day they asked me, “Did you like school?” I said, “I loved it.” The next morning they got me up early. When I asked why they were doing that they said, “You have to go to school.” And I said, crying, “But I went to school yesterday.”

– V. S. Naipaul, Half a Life, p. 22 (my emphasis).

(Conversation conducted via SMS)

Lynn Lee @ 6.40pm: LOL – I’m sitting in Aunty Vera’s car and [redacted]. Aunty Vera says [redacted] is like “Shylock Holmes“. Hahaha! So cute lah, she.

Laremy Lee @ 9.11pm: New surrogate daughter now, are we? LOL. Was washing Le Poots just now; it is so hamsum now. How’s life post-Wikileaks?

Lynn Lee @ 9.19pm: It’s okay, lah, but I’m so tired – [redacted]. Instead I have to drink copious cups of Milo for comfort. Thanks, anyway, for everything. You’re a good porklet.

Laremy Lee @ 9.21pm: Eh, no worries. It’s, like, you’re Vincent Chase and I’m Eric Murphy and I’m just clearing the way so you can walk. Haha! *snort*

Lynn Lee @ 9.22pm: Haha! That’s such a good quote (along with Shylock Holmes, of course). You should put it on your FB.

Just following instructions… Although after this, I think she will never communicate with anyone ever again.

Or perhaps only if they sign some kind of non-disclosure agreement beforehand.

ADDENDUM: Just got scolded after she saw the post.

In my defence, at least I redacted important information.

*sulks*

rmb call me. i scare cannot hear alarm thankies

A translation is as follows:

Please remember to give me a call (at the presumably pre-specified time). I’m worried I might not be able to hear the alarm when it goes off. Thank you.

I don’t know who this person is as I don’t have her/his number in my phone book.

Nevertheless, I responded, saying:

Hi, just to let you know that you sent your wake-up call request to the wrong number.

This was uncharacteristically un-snarky of me; I wanted to add:

Just in case this has any bearing on whether or not you get any in the future. Cheers.

However, it did occur to me that the recipient might’ve been an ex-student – in which case, it would’ve been hard to explain my humour if I needed to do so – hence my decision to err on the side of caution.

Then again, it could’ve been Jun Liang – to which, coincidentally, it’s three years to the day!

Here’s my National Day Message to everyone:

Party like it’s 1965 million B.C., people!

Have a happy National Day and never forget things that have shaped the collective memory of our nation, such as:

• Operation Coldstore,
• Operation Spectrum, and
• The Graduate Mothers’ Scheme (no Wikipedia entry on it – why?),

among others.

Last but not least, if you’re spending National Day patriotically by sitting at home surfing the Net, please read The Book Review That Never Was.

I was on the subway on Friday when I saw the advertisement displayed above.

For readers without image support, the tagline is as follows:

Today’s engineers are solving tomorrow’s problems. Are you ready to be one of them?

I took a picture of it and uploaded it to Facebook and Twitpic with the caption “Bet all you B.Eng grads feel pretty proud of yourselves now, huh”, for I thought such a gloriously humorous error had to be shared with everyone.

Unfortunately, some people didn’t get it. What’s worse, some of the people who didn’t get it immediately thought I was mocking engineers.

Let’s look at the tagline of the ad once more:

Today’s engineers are solving tomorrow’s problems. Are you ready to be one of them?

Explanation:

• We know the ad producer’s intention was to ask “Are you ready to be one of [the engineers]?”.
• However, “problems” in the first sentence is also a plural noun.
• Because the word “them” could also refer to “problems”, it’s possible for the second sentence to be read as “Are you ready to be one of [the problems]?”.

In that case, the ad becomes somewhat humorous: is this educational institute actually recruiting people to train them to become problems for engineers to solve?

So I’d rate the copywriting as having failed on this count. However, in terms of advertising, there’s no discernible loss.

Based on the comments I received, only one person made it clear that he understood what I was referring to.

However, the ad isn’t targeting people like us i.e. arts/humanities graduates with little inclination toward an education or a career in engineering or the sciences.

The rest of the comments came from people who majored in engineering, math or science subjects and are also working in related industries.

Their concerns were either to joke about how engineers are in fact ‘fighting fires’ instead of preventing them, or to be defensive about the perceived slight.

Nevertheless, since they didn’t spot the error (or perhaps the error is only a concern to people who are interested in linguistics), I guess the ad will still manage to reach out to its target audience.

Post-script: On hindsight, actually, the biggest failure in terms of communication and humour are actually mine alone.

Sigh. In the future, I shall just stick at doing what I do best i.e. re-tweeting what people are saying about The Weight of Silk on Skin.

Post-post-script: I misread a comment!

A math graduate/teacher just texted me to clarify this interpretation he provided:

This is an ad for BSs and BSc, not BEng. The alternate reading [that B.Ss. and B.Sc. graduates are/will be the bane of engineers] actually makes more sense in light of that fact.

Looking at this pig-ture just gives me so much joy.

Relevant: “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.” (The Sheep-Pig by Dick King-Smith a.k.a. Babe)

Colleagues,

The projectors in these rooms are not working well:

…

We have raised the matter to [redacted] to help us resolve the problem as the vendor is not co-operating with us.

I felt like clicking on ‘Reply to All’ and sending this image to everyone:

Unfortunately, I was worried my point would’ve been lost. So I did this instead:

In other news, I’m thinking of setting up a Tumblr called “Things I Wish I Could Say In Public But Can’t Because Of The Need to Be Socially Appropriate”.

For obvious reasons, I can’t provide you with a sampling of the fare that can be on offer. However, if this Tumblr is indeed created, it definitely wasn’t me.

In other, other news: WAR PIGS! (Or their contemporaries, FIRE PIGS!)