Coolcat's Jottings

Fren: Where does your cousin work ah, CC?
CC: Oh, in Company XYZ.
Fren: Eh, the one that is located in State ABC ar?? I've heard of that company before. It's one of the best places to work in lar. Not many people know it wan, but I do. Eh, what's your cousin working as?
CC: As the Head of Bla Bla Bla.

As I mentioned that person's designation, I sensed something alien surging my every pore, invading my every sense. It was quite different from the normal feeling of being proud of a dear one's accomplishments.

It felt very much like parental pride. *gulp*

If so, then I think I am about to join the ranks of people of my folk's age, who revel in the accomplishments of friends and loved ones.

I gave myself a few mental slaps to restore some semblance of sanity and felt the alien sensation leaving me. When the time comes, I'll embrace it as a normal evolution of life. But until then, it's too darn premature lar.

shudder

MF, Kevin, Jo and I watched Pygmalion yesterday. The promo bit below was irresistible to theater-goers with a penchant for language play and the like.

A tale about language, class, manners and matters of the heart that is as true today as it was at the beginning of the last century. And given Malaysia's unique penchant for the use and misuse of English; the opportunities for Manglish, malapropisms and hilarious turns of phrase are fantastic.

When MF managed to get good seats at 40% off (thanks to Maxis One Club), we decided to go ahead and watch the local play that was based on Pygmalion (from which My Fair Lady was based upon).

Pygmalion is a character from the Roman poet Ovid in the tenth book of his Metamorphoses. Pygmalion is a sculptor who falls in love with a statue he has made.

Pygmalion, son of Belus, was a lonely sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory. He prayed to Venus, the goddess of beauty and love, who took pity on him and brought the statue to life. ~ excerpt taken from here

By then, our expectations were quite low, thanks to some bad reviews that we read. But since we've bought the tickets already, we have no choice but to go ahead lah.

Throughout the show, I couldn't help comparing it to the wonderful experience I had watching My Fair Lady on vcd. How real the chemistry was between Eliza Doolittle and gruff Prof Higgins. How well-crafted the story line was, that the only bits that seemed draggy were the parts that featured Eliza's dad.

Our local Pygmalion rated quite low in those areas. I couldn't feel the connection between the two leading casts. At several points of the show I actually found myself yawning and nodding away sleepily because I found it draggy. Or maybe I had that huge fishhead curry to blame? Sadly, I found most of the language jokes in the first half of the show to be rather unfunny.

Hmmm, and oh, I felt that they should have done away with Lisa's dad's role. I couldn't see how having him in the story line actually added anything to the whole show. Instead of his long and draggy scenes, I felt that they should have put in the scene where Lisa started learning how to pronounce words correctly and use it to show a growing bond between the tutor and the student.

What made this play not a total waste of our time was the vocal talent that Michelle Quah had. Man, were we mesmerised by the pure poetry and power in her amazing voice. The supporting chorus girls had wonderful voices as well. But the best supporting actress has got to be Sarah Sharum - the lady who played the fun and brazenly sexy role of 'Mrs. Pearce'. In the hands of a less seasoned actor, that role could have been over-acted and gave the audience heart palpitations of the bad kind. But Sarah played the role so well and in such a tasteful way that I felt like I wanted to rush out and get myself a cute maid's costume as well. In short, I wished I could act like her!

I didn't realise that Harith couldn't sing all that well until he had to sing in a duet with Michelle. Gosh, the gap between the non-singer (Harith) and the professional vocal trainer (cun mommy Michelle) was so apparent that I wondered why they had to put poor Harith through that. Well, at least the man could sing in tune and he gave it all he had, gutsy guy that he was. A lesser man would have chickened out of it.

I guess it was unfair to compare our local production to the hugely successful 1964 movie but I couldn't help it lar. The effort was commendable but there's still a long way to go.

We had a wonderful supper afterwards at Nailis - an interesting makan place that was nicely built to resemble a fishing village - complete with huts up the trees where you can eat closer to the sky. And on the way back home, we had a listen to the My Fair Lady broadway soundtrack and that reminded us of why we came out in the first place. To support our local arts effort to someday be of international standard fare.

Grace - adorned with a razzy hairdo and beauty mark courtesy of Rina

It happened during cell today. As we were talking and sharing, and later celebrated Gracie's birthday, I realised how much I have changed from who I was not too long ago. Some for the better, some for the worse. But who's to say what the final outcome will be. For to get to one's final destination, surely quite a few rough bumps on the road are to be expected.

From a sabo-intolerant person, I have transformed into a wacko who loves tormenting people on their birthdays. I'm still trying to figure out if that's a good or bad transformation, heh.

As everyone was sharing their observations of the scripture passage, a few gems came up and found a place in my heart. It was such a refreshing thing to happen. There are some things that took so long to unravel, get over or even see. And in one crystal clear moment, it suddenly makes sense. Most of it.

You start to breathe a little better. You feel like your chest is a little less constricted. You see a little more light.

I love moments like these.

I was reading up on some techie-related stuff this morning, when I came across this ad, so jarringly bad grammatically that I just had to take a closer look.

It led to this article which was talking about Google domination of the Internet world. But that did not answer my question: How on earth did CNet News allow this article header to be published so blatantly without correcting it whatsoever. If I, a kuci blogger would take some pains to correct my grammar mistakes on my blog titles, what more a mammoth online presence like CNet News?

Strangely enough, a comment from a reader who took offense of that article shed light to this very interesting title. He said:

I think I'm just going to stop reading so I don't get so irritated. First of all, this phrase is far too played out.

Secondly, people commonly joke about a poorly translated Japanese animation when they use the "All your base are belong to us." phrase but it's really not funny because it's racially motivated. Racial intolerance is not cool.

Wow. What was THAT all about? Further comments from other readers (most of them irritated by the first commentor's statement) finally answered the question that gnawed upon my curious mind.

1. "All Your Base" is one of the funniest bits of pop-culture references of all time. Poor dubs and subs is the FUNNIEST thing about watching any foreign media. Non-English speakers get the SAME kick out of watching Hollywood films dubbed or subbed into their native language. Stuff gets lost and it's friggin' hilarious, so lighten up! Race has zero to do with it.

2. Everybody who is posting about freedom of speech and free thinking needs to CHILL THE F*CK OUT! Every time someone makes a comment that the majority of folks disagree with, ten people chime in with "this is what's wrong with America" comments. Settle down folks. The only thing to see here is a funny line about "All Your Base" and one guy who doesn't get the joke. Let's not overreact. And to everyone who has no idea what is being debated here, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base

And for another "All Your Base" reference (again involving Google) see:

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2005/09/google_take_all.html

It seems that the 'All Your Base' phrase shot to popularity in year 2001. I wonder where I had been to NOT even get a whiff of it. So now I know what it is all about. I am greatly enriched. Yaay.

Two things that came to mind from reading the heated comments over that seemingly bland and simple article:

1. Communication is a tough thing to do. No matter what you say or how you say it, there are some folks who would probably never get what you are trying to say. Written communication is worse because the hearers can't see your facial expressions nor hear the tone of your voice.
   
   On more than one occassion, I have been irritated by the stuff I read. Upon reading a second time or clarifying things with the author, I realised that more often than not, I had misconstrued the author's intent or the author chose a poor set of words to communicate his/her intent.
   
   So before flaming that person with a piece of my mind, I would normally sit over the matter for a while or clarify with that person first. There are some battles that one should rightly take up but when it comes to spoken or written words, I'd normally take the more cautious approach. Unless of course that if that person disses my loved ones and friends - something which I cannot take standing still. Yeah, blind loyalty has a way of clouding the mind in the heat of the moment.


2. The best type of people are those who can laugh at themselves. Ooooh, I wanna be one of those! A good sense of humour is essential for survival these days. Nuff said.

Over and out for now.

Dan wanted a favour from my girl assistant - to help him scan some documents. He's a salesman at heart, and we all know how flatteringly smooth some salespeople can be. And so one day, he came over our cubicle and put on his grooviest voice to an old tired line:

Hey there, Lenglui*....

Carol, a prettily adorned colleague who was sitting nearby turned her head at that greeting and said,

Yes... Dan? You called me ar?

After a moment of stunned silence, all of us burst out laughing. Dan called her a perasan case and she defended herself by saying:

Next time be more specific lar. Got so many lengluis here wat.

Dan shook his head:

But you were the only one who answered!

Poor Carol. But I think the good-hearted gal just wanted to perk up our dreary afternoon in the office.

* Lenglui - pretty girl