Engrish-san

In my previous job, I used to travel to Japan quite frequently and one of the peculiar things that I observed was the way they speak English. First of all, their pronunciation is very peculiar - 't' is replaced 'th' or 'd' by 'dh'. Probably they can't roll their tongue upwards behind the teeth and bring it down. In some cases, they have their own words to identify places or people - 'nihongo' for Japanese, 'Indo' for India or Indian, etc. Its hard to understand what they say sometimes because they use the sentence structure of Japanese translated with English words - and sometimes it doesn't make any sense or its just too funny.

See this website Engrish.com filled with snaps taken in Japan & China. There are some hilarious statements and captions.

This post is just on the lighter side and not intended to mock any particular person or set of people.

Best of Garfield

Opposite of 'clarity'

After a serious discussion, my colleagues looked his female team-mate and said "I hope there is no unclarity". He didn’t stop at using that sentence once but kept repeating it. His team-mate was not 'clear' what he was saying and went on asking "what do you mean by ‘unclarity’?”. The only person who was clear about ‘the disconnect’ was – me, overhearing and jamming my teeth to control my laughter. For a full 15 minutes I forced myself to contain my outburst, whilst my colleague kept chanting "I hope there is no unclarity" and "I hope they are clear" interchangeably. Standing perplexed, dazed and wide-eyed was the female team-mate still confused.

Although my conscience appealed to intercept and bridge the vocabulary gap, the fiend in me held me back. After all, incorrect English is pardonable in a heated argument.

One of these days, I hope to educate my colleague about the word 'ambiguity'.

Satyam Nursery Rhymes

raju raju
yes papa
eating profit
no papa
cheating public
no papa
telling lies
no papa
open your balance sheet
ha ha ha
-----------------------------

Ramalinga Raju had a ball (of a time)
all the Rajus had a great fall
all the SEBI officials and learned men
could not put Satyam together again?

Edward de Bono's interesting interview

Part1


Part2


He gives an awesome definition for complacency:
"a person committing suicide by falling from the top of a skyscraper - as he crosses the 3rd floor says 'so far so good'"

Part3