Super Supplements

I've been taking this regularly.

It claims to contain seven different berries and it tastes pretty good too. But I don't really think it's going to benefit me in any way.

It's very much like prayer. It doesn't work but it's polite sometimes to say a prayer or to say you will keep someone in your prayers. I used to think that was hypocritical when I was younger but I now know it's just plain politeness.  This brings to my mind something that has puzzled me somewhat.

Why are some people asked to lead in prayer and others never?  Richard Dawkins admits that he leads in prayer in his university where he is a Fellow.  But that is different.  He leads in saying grace before meals because the tradition of his college requires all Fellows to lead in grace.

What about in church or in a Christian setting?  Among the musicians in my church, there are only a few of us who are asked to lead in prayer.  What makes someone get asked to lead?  It's not a random thing because there is always a fairly large group of people who are never asked.  It's got nothing to do with their faith.  They may be fine pious Christians.  It's like an unspoken rule but there must be some criteria by which people are guided but I do not know what it is.  Do the people in this group feel slighted?  I've never asked and probably will never ask.

Among the church musicians, I must be one of the least "Christian".  If I'm not asked to lead in prayer at all, I'll understand it perfectly.  I'm not one to hide my thoughts and most people are aware exactly where I stand in religious/supernatural matters.  I have serious doubts about the faith and although I will always soldier on and cling to my childhood religion, it is perfectly reasonable if a more worthy believer whose faith is free of doubt and confusion is chosen to lead in prayer.  I certainly won't feel slighted because the reason is obvious why I should be sidelined.  And I'm not one of those with ego problems who has a need to be seen to do pious things.

Surprising though it may seem to most people, I belong to the few who are regularly asked to lead in prayer.  And it's not just the church musicians.  In many other circles that I'm in, the same thing happens every time there is a need to have someone lead in grace or to say a prayer.  Of course if there is a clergyman, the honour is always given to him but I do get asked very often.  What can the reason be?  Are these people deceived into believing that I'm "holy"?

I've never really thought about it until this morning when I took the berry extract supplement.  One thing led to another and the ineffectiveness of such supplements led me to consider the inefficacy of prayer and from that thought, I went on to wonder what the criteria were for someone to be asked to lead in prayer.

Having examined the question, I think I now know what the answer is.  Those who are never asked to lead are usually silent people.  It is a common fallacy to assume that quiet people are prayerful.  Monks in monasteries take the vow of silence  and the Bible tells us to "Be still and know that I am God".  God supposedly speaks in that "still small voice".  Silence is always associated with prayer and religious devotion and saying nothing is looked upon as a virtue.  When Jesus was tried, one of the gospels says categorically that he said nothing.  Of course there is another gospel that tells us that Jesus said a great deal but I'm not now examining biblical contradictions so we'll let that pass.  The daily devotion some Christians do every day is also commonly called "Quiet Time".  In the minds of most people, a quiet person in church is probably one who has heeded St Paul's command that we should "pray without ceasing".  The general assumption is this group of people have prayed enough.  Let's not bother them with more prayers.

Everyone knows I don't pray.  If prayers are said in church, my mind is always on other things and I do not try to hide it.  Very rarely do I consider the words of a prayer unless there's something in it that stands out.  Now here is the simple answer to the mystery:

Those who ask me to lead in prayer do so out of concern for my soul.  By leading in prayer, I AM praying.  They are hoping that by getting me to lead, I am praying after all and that's half the battle won.  It's through prayer that the Foe (one of the many names for the Devil - yes, there are people in this century who still believe in this ancient creature of legends) is vanquished.

Then what about those people who are always asked to lead in prayer when they don't seem to have a faith that is riddled with doubts and they appear as if they do pray quite a lot on their own anyway?  Perhaps they have some secret sin that I know nothing of?

The next time someone is asked to lead in prayer, think about this.  Why is he asked?  Is he asked because he, like me, has doubts about his faith or is it because he has some deep dark sin in his closet that nobody knows about?

This week begins with Thor unleashing his fury

This is what it looked like at 7:10 this morning.

April Fools' Day, oops, Palm Sunday

I was in church for 4½ hours today and that included the rehearsal for next week's Easter services.  Like the sermon in every single church on this planet today, today's sermon was based on our Lord's triumphant entry into Jerusalem and we had the reading from St Matthew's Gospel.  Strangely, nobody seemed to avoid St Matthew, seeing that he wrote a deliberate untruth because of an obvious misunderstanding of Old Testament prophecy and his eagerness to make Jesus seem to fulfil the prophecy.  For details, please see what I wrote in another blog entry two years ago: CLICK HERE

Hosanna in the Highest

May we who shout "Hosanna" today not be the ones who will also cry "Crucify".

As I posted the above on my Facebook wall early this morning, I was just thinking how disposed some were to point the accusing finger at me.  Someone hinted once that I was no different from the Pharisees who were trying to trap Jesus.

Why was I told that?  What wrong had I done?  I remember it most vividly.  It happened in a Bible study in January 2008.  We were studying Mark's gospel and everyone took turns to say what each verse meant to him or her.  The leader was quick to guide us to the "right" and conservative interpretation.  I was silent throughout until I was finally told to say specifically what Mark 9:1 meant to me.  The whole incident prompted me two years later to write this in my blog:  CLICK HERE

Bearing in mind what my views were, you can imagine how unhappy the rest in the group must have been.  The next day, I wrote a conciliatory email and included an evangelical interpretation that was of course well received.   This was what I wrote on 27 January 2008:

I did some reading up from an evangelical commentary and went on to give an interpretation which, as I have said, was very well received.

I even got an email in reply thanking me for my email and the writer made it clear that this new interpretation "made logical sense".

I leave it to you to decide if it indeed makes logical sense.  Happy Palm Sunday as we remember our Lord's triumphant entry into Jerusalem.

The day I took a pic in a toilet!!!

I've been called a camwhore by friends who know me well and although I don't like that word, I do take a lot of photographs every day.  That vile word "camwhore" has taken a meaning of its own and will probably enter the OED one day.  It is one of those words that are coined and propagated online through social networking sites such as facebook and google+.   It wouldn't surprise me in the least if that word were found exclusively online.

However much a camwhore I might be, I'm always careful not to take a pic in the toilet or changing room.  It may not be so bad if I were a woman since there are no urinals in the women's toilet and no woman is ever in any state of undress publicly, not even in their own toilet and there are only women around.  Women are generally more modest and they would lock the cubicle before they would even remove a jacket.  Men think nothing of appearing starkers in the toilet or changing room so taking a pic in such a place can of course lead to a serious misunderstanding.

As I was about to leave the toilet in a school this morning, I saw a sign that had me roaring and I felt compelled to take a pic.  I waited for two boys to leave and as soon as I was alone, I took a quick shot with my mobile phone:

Sorry, I have just removed the name of the school from the pic.  This is the internet and the cardinal rule is not to reveal too much.

Yes, the sign had me laughing and it was eye-catching.  Kids these days are so delightfully witty and even teasingly naughty.  But how effective was it?  The truth is I left the toilet without turning off the lights.  I'm just not used to turning off the lights in a toilet.  Who knows?  There might have been someone in one of the cubicles.

Jerry Coyne insulted Roman Catholics?

I've seen in forums accusations hurled at Jerry Coyne, the renowned biologist, which are totally false that he insulted Roman Catholics.   It all began with the debate Jerry Coyne had with John Haught on 12 October last year in the University of Kentucky.

That debate led to a huge outcry by the internet community because although both parties agreed to have the debate filmed and posted online, John Haught refused to allow posting of the video after the debate.  I have seen the video and I can understand why.  John Haught was soundly thrashed in the debate.  Note: the video has since been made available and you can see it by clicking HERE

John Haught started off with the usual quote mining which I used to think was the pastime only of Protestant apologists but evidently, Roman Catholic theologians need the same crutch too.  But to be fair, he wasn't that bad.  He quoted a few people and naturally, Jerry Coyne wanted to explain that you can't say science is compatible with religion just because some scientists believe in religion.  He gave the statistics to show anyway that 93% of scientists are atheists and he went on to say what this photo succinctly encapsulates:


He's really saying Catholicism is NOT compatible with paedophilia just as science is not compatible with religion.  That can't be insulting, can it?

Dawkins: public figures must be examined on their private beliefs

Watch this video, "God and Global Warming" - with Chris Hayes.  Dawkins is saying that politicians should be cross-examined on their private beliefs. He sounds, as always, perfectly rational even if his idea is revolutionary and perhaps not so universally acceptable.

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

Google+'s hangout alone sets google+ way beyond the rest

There are many interesting features in google+ but hangout trumps them all.  Today, at 12:45, the Catlin Seaview Survey scheduled a hangout for all who were interested in reefs and underwater photography at 3:45pm (Sydney time - 3 hours ahead of me) at the Great Barrier Reef with a diver communicating with us from underwater all done live through hangout.  The half-hour live video conferencing was great.  It was almost like I was diving at the Great Barrier Reef myself.  I screen-saved quite a bit.  Here's a sample.

When the Straits Times refuses to publish your letter.

Is it a sign of old age when I begin to look through my old diaries and photo albums and my old letters?  I stumbled upon a letter which I thought I ought to post on this blog.


Like most people in Singapore, I used to write letters to the Straits Times and have done so since I was a student.  Most of the letters were published without any hitch.  The only letters that the Straits Times refused to publish were letters that showed up the errors made by their journalists.  What sort of errors do these journalists make?  What else?  Grammatical errors, of course.  As a rule, I have absolutely nothing against grammatical errors and I quite enjoy reading articles with some errors.  It's more memorable that way.  I recall reading in a newspaper in India a long time ago an article about a court hearing in which the "infirmities" of various arguments were presented.  If it hadn't been for the quaint use of words, I should not have remembered having read the newspaper in India in the first place.

In 2003, I read an article in the Straits Times by Steve Dawson, the paper's weekly correspondent.  I read through this excerpt, noted the grammatical error but I let it pass even though Steve Dawson was writing about the correct use of English in a national newspaper and the thought did cross my mind that he should have been more careful.

Anyway, I mentally skipped the error and went on with the rest of his article.  He then spoke about how his Eurasian daughters would make errors in English and he would take pains to correct them.  He went on to say that his daughters would remonstrate that their teachers spoke this way and so it had to be correct.  This was how he replied to them:

Oh, how the arrogance annoyed me!  He was writing for the main newspaper in Singapore and he made a glaring grammatical error that many of us are careful enough not to make even in our speech and here he is going on his high horse as an Englishman and a journalist as if they meant anything!  Dawson should remember the words from the musical "My Fair Lady":

Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely disappears.

In America, they haven't used it for years!
Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
Norwegians learn Norwegian; the Greeks are taught their Greek. 

In France every Frenchman knows
his language from "A" to "Z"
The French never care what they do, actually,
as long as they pronounce it properly.
Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.
And Hebrews learn it backwards,
which is absolutely frightening.
But use proper English you're regarded as a freak.
Why can't the English,
Why can't the English learn to speak?

I immediately wrote to the Straits Times.  But I should have known.  They don't publish any article that might "embarrass" their journalists.  They told me that on the phone a long time ago when I wrote to complain about an advertisement by SMU that contained an outrageous grammatical error.  I had thought that an institution of higher learning, even if it only purports to be a mere business school, should have been more careful in its use of the language.  They said it would be inappropriate to embarrass their journalists or advertisers.

But I wrote to them nonetheless.  I began by referring them to the article and added this:

That is entirely true.  I view language only as a tool of communication and pedantry in language is something I despise.  But when someone sets about telling others they are wrong, he had better be sure he's right in the first place.

I then proceeded to explain why his language was ungrammatical, made references to the works of grammarians and concluded as follows:

I was hoping the Straits Times would publish the letter as a reminder to its journalists that they should think before they write.  This was in 2003 when journalists and tv presenters knew some English.  Today, it's much worse.  Just turn on the tv in Singapore and listen to the news readers and tv presenters, if you don't believe me.  Of course there are good ones too but they are now the exception.

As could be expected, my letter was not published.  I have countless other letters that were not published because it would be embarrassing to the Straits Times journalists who need a great deal of mollycoddling.  But this is the age of the internet and I will, from time to time, post these letters.

Google+ Instant Upload album

Just had a bad experience with the google+ Instant Upload album.  Instant Upload is wonderful but the album is extremely unstable.  When the album is filled up with many photos uploaded instantly from your mobile phone, it will break into two albums.  One album contains the bulk of the photos and that album is immediately re-titled "Instant Upload xxxx - yyyy" (xxxx being the date of the earliest photo taken in that album and yyyy being the date of the most recent photo taken).  A few of the latest photos remain in the new "Instant Upload" album.

When the break took place today,  the bulk photo album just vanished. So what I now have is an older album called "Instant Upload 2012-02-20 - 2012-03-06" and the new album simply called "Instant Upload" but it only contains pics taken today.  All my photos uploaded in the Instant Upload album from 6 March to today have vanished.

If you are using the Instant Upload album as the only storage for your photos, remember it's unstable.

Beautiful Arch

One of my pet peeves is the tearing down of old buildings by the municipal authority.  The Singapore government is notorious for this.  I will always maintain that the old National Library building shouldn't have been torn down.  There's a charm to it that no modern building can have.  There are still many buildings and structures that exude the old-world charm.  Here's one I just took:

I love arches especially when they are old.  Here are samples of the arches I've taken which I picked at random from my computer.  Some may think I've taken rather shoddy examples of arches and I should post the famous Arc de Triomphe but like I've said, these are random arches that are currently in my computer.  And I'm comparing these arches with one in Singapore and this is a huge disadvantage to Singapore which has a rather short history.  All the same, our arch doesn't look too bad at all.

We have so few of these old buildings and structures.  That's the sad state of affairs in Singapore.   We can't change our history.  But we really can't afford to tear down any more of them.

The delights of being an omnivore

As I said in my earlier entry for today, this is the day my pescetarian diet ended.  And it ended with this delicious masala chicken:

It was sunny and bright when I cycled to Little India to buy the masala chicken but on my return trip, what greeted me were lowering rain clouds enveloping the entire sky.

Instinctively, I asked God to hold back the rain and I pedalled furiously home.  Of course, when I said I asked God, I meant I did it as a matter of habit, knowing full well that prayers were notoriously ineffective.  I got home just before the rain fell.  Now, is that confirmation that prayers work?  Of course not.  The only way prayers can be said to work is when they bring about a result that cannot be due to coincidence or natural causes.   A good example is my best friend who had liver cancer.  All the prayers in the world could not make him avoid a liver transplant.  His entire church prayed for him and prayer requests were sent out to missionaries all over the world. But he had to undergo 3 horrible surgeries including a liver transplant and many rounds of chemotherapy and in the end, he still succumbed to the cancer like anyone else in the same state as he.  His life wasn't extended by even a minute.  In fact, quite a lot of liver cancer patients do better than he.  Prayers only seem to work when we ask for silly things that can go either way, eg asking for the rain to be held back for ten minutes, something which nature does all the time.  And if I had been drenched in the rain, there is a ready answer for it.  I was insincere when I "prayed".  Mine was more an exclamation than a prayer.  Naturally, God wouldn't answer a prayer that is so insincere and it's no wonder that I was drenched.  I should consider myself fortunate that I was not struck down by lightning.  After all, God has been known to do that to perfectly innocent people just because God was in a grouchy mood.  The example of Uzzah springs to mind.

For thousands of years, people have died from the simple common cold despite prayers to God.  And then suddenly, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin and for the first time in church history, God begins to heal people with infections in ways that he previously could not.  Sorry, I meant in ways that he previously chose not to.  We'll see success in prayers for those with incurable cancer when medical science progresses to that level.  God always keeps pace with medical science when it comes to healing.

Vegetarianism and I

Years ago, I read about a cow in a Hong Kong abattoir that refused to budge when it saw the other cows ahead of it being killed.  It simply knelt down and cried.  Yes, that was the word used in the report.  The cow cried.  The workers in the abattoir could not move it forward and it held back the other cows.  Finally, they got it out of the abattoir and donated it to a Buddhist monastery where the monks left it to graze grass on the huge expanse of land surrounding the monastery for the remainder of its natural life.  Buddhist monks are of course vegetarians and if the slaughterhouse workers (yes, let's call a spade a spade - "abattoir" somehow takes away the harshness of what it really is) had donated it to a church or a mosque, it would have been a different story for the poor cow.

That story broke my heart in three places and I vowed to be a vegetarian.  No meat would pass my lips and that was that.  I succeeded in being a total vegetarian.  In Singapore, there are always vegetarian restaurants you could go to and in every hawker centre (as it used to be called before some idiot changed its name to the insipid "food centre"), there is at least a stall selling vegetarian food.  Buddhism is the religion of the majority of Singaporeans and there is an increasing number of Buddhists who have very admirably turned vegetarian.  And when one is bored with Chinese vegetarian food, one can always turn to Indian cuisine which is readily available all over Singapore.  Indian vegetarian dishes (like all Indian food) are so delicious, it's not hard to imagine eating them for the rest of one's life.

And that's how I became a life-long vegetarian and this blog entry should end here but alas, life is more complex than that.  I did become a strict vegetarian after reading about the crying cow and I felt ever so self-righteous when I looked at the unwashed masses which consisted of callous meat-eaters.  Heaven knows how many cows, chickens, pigs and fish had shed tears before they were murdered just so they could appear on the plates of these wild carnivores.


Just look at this pic and tell me if any one of you can find it in your heart to snatch the calf from its mother and dash its head against a rock or drag its mother to a slaughterhouse with prods and kill it while the calf struggles after its mother with pleading moos.

But I succeeded in being a strict vegetarian for only two days.  On the third day, I ate meat and lots of it.  But that's not the end of the story.  I tried again.  Many times.

My most successful stint of vegetarianism is a form of vegetarianism called pisci-lacto-ovo vegetarianism.  That's a vegetarian who can eat eggs, milk products and seafood.  I became a pisci-ovo-lacto vegetarian for six months in a stretch.  It's easy because you can eat many different types of food and you really don't feel like you have missed anything.  That notwithstanding, by the end of the six months I was on this diet, I felt I was too weak to go on.  I felt like I had muscular dystrophy and after all, we are omnivores and we've got to allow our bodies to be nourished on food that our biological makeup requires us to have.  That was when I went back to eating normal human food.


There is a notice in a vegetarian restaurant that says this (click on it for a larger view of it):

 Of course that is all rubbish.  We aren't carnivores like the tiger but neither are we herbivores.  Why is a comparison made to the monkey?  Our closest cousins are the chimpanzees and these are most certainly omnivorous.


I decided it was much more beneficial to my health if I went back to my usual diet which is basically anything and everything and that pushed up my cholesterol level and on 5 March 2012, I embarked on a new diet.


I became a Pescatarian.


That's just a shorter word for a pisci-lacto-ovo vegetarian.  Since the last time I adopted that particular diet, a new word has been coined which of course makes it easier for us pescatarians to describe our diet.  But mine had to have a twist to it.  I had to decrease my triglycerides which (from what I read on the internet) means decreasing my carbohydrate intake.  I've been very strictly compliant with my new diet but I need energy for all the biking that I do and a decrease in carbohydrates won't help.  So I have been piling up my plate with fish, fish roe (which I'm really partial to) and eggs until someone who was observing me just remarked that I might be poisoning my system.  Today's oceans are not like what they used to be.  Fish these days carry in their bodies large amounts of pollutants that include harmful particles such as mercury, lead and even arsenic.  The guideline is that we should limit our fish intake to twice a week.

It looks like I will need to tweak my diet once again.  As of today, I'm no longer a pescatarian.  And it's all for the sake of my health.

Let me take you by the hand and lead you through...

Early mornings are a lot more pleasant for a bike ride. The activity or revelry that took place the night before would usually leave behind in the crisp morning air a tale of some of its secrets.  It may be the litter from a wild scene of raucous partying by riotous youths or, it may be what I saw this morning as I climbed the steep slope towards Marina Bay Sands - a fat middle-aged foreign-looking man dragging his luggage, looking petulant, bedraggled and forlorn, a scene that conjured up in my mind a feverish night of gambling and drinking, of heavy losses and the despair that followed.  


I took a pic of what used to be Marina South but is now wholly occupied by Marina Bay Sands.  As you can see, there is always something respectable about Singapore; it's cleanliness and orderliness are second to no other city in the world.  

Shortly after taking this pic, I looked to my left through the supporting columns of a flyover and saw a strange building structure that I had not seen before.

I cycled on and after turning into a different road, there loomed ahead of me the imposing Marina Bay Sands building, seen from a different angle, complete with the Singapore Flyer further in the distance.

It didn't take long before I saw policemen on the road.  Don't forget - this is one of the safest countries in the world.  Nobody frets when criminals are locked away for ever.  There is no "unsafe neighbourhood" and you could take a stroll anywhere on the island at 3am and you wouldn't get mugged.  Those in the West can talk about personal liberties and the rights of a criminal but we don't care about these things.  We only want to be able to walk or bike anywhere we want without being threatened with harm.  Criminals who don't like it here are welcome to go to Norway where they can kill a hundred youths on an island camp and not have to face the gallows.  An Anders Breivik  would swing by his neck and we'd all be perfectly happy.

From Marina Bay Sands, I took a turn into the business district, and five minutes later, I was on the Esplanade bridge.

This photograph brings back a lot of memories. More of this in the future.

 Here's another photograph taken on the Esplanade Bridge.

The blissful ride was a little marred when I passed by what looks like a homeless man.  As far as I know, there are no homeless people in Singapore.  How can this be?  But I'm jumping to wild conclusions.  He may have been out late and drinking and since he was in a state of drunken stupor, he dozed off here.  As soon as he wakes up, he'll be heading home to his wife who is even now busily preparing  breakfast and a few harsh words to greet him with.

 

Speaking of breakfast, I soon headed for home and pedalled as quickly as my waning strength permitted me.

Body-building competition?

At a body-building contest today, 10 contestants displayed their chiselled figures:

But not all of them were that well-built.  One of them was laughed at by the audience when he moved to the front row.  It's easy to see why.

The guy at the centre was so obviously like a fish out of water.   It wasn't just that he wasn't muscular enough, he was positively skinny.

I was later told that these were not top range body-builders.  They were all National Servicemen, 18-year-olds who were undergoing a 2-year compulsory military training.  Now, that makes more sense.

This isn't a city that never sleeps.

There are cities that don't sleep and Singapore most certainly isn't one of them.  Here is a pic of what I took at 7:51 this morning.  This area is the Las Vegas of Singapore but it pales by comparison with Las Vegas which at this hour, would have been bustling with activity and swarmed with vehicles and people.

A Fairy-Tale Village

Travelling on a public bus up and down hills and through narrow lanes sounds like fun but after a couple of hours of doing this, I felt nauseous.  It didn't help when the bus stopped at the final destination, a dead town with all the appurtenances of a vibrant town but not a soul in sight.  It could very well be that we were two days to Christmas and the town folks had gone away.  From where the bus stopped, I had to walk 2km out of the town.  It was ominously spooky to walk through a town that had nobody at all.  But after 2km of walking, the sight that greeted me was well worth all the effort.  I had come to see a fairy tale village atop a hill that's only accessible by a footbridge.

This is what it looks like when the sun sets.  Yes I stayed till sunset.

O Love that will not let me go

11th November 2011, Friday.

You may run in any direction but He's always there - 

looming and towering over every street corner. 

That's precisely how I felt this morning as I wandered through the narrow streets after breakfast in this cathedral city, the seat of my religion. I had intended for this to be a cycling trip but it's too cold and dreary to cycle. I will instead turn this trip into a pilgrimage of sorts. It's a time of reflection - from the time I was an acolyte to my current state. I have always joked that I'm a Cosmopolitan Christian. I've followed just about every single tradition of Christianity. I was even once a fundamentalist - in my turbulent teens.  But what I did not bargain for was to be an atheist and I did become an atheist once. My life has always been one big struggle with atheism which is of course perfectly logical and rational.  It's really tough for those of us who have a religion.  It's very hard to believe in a system that postulates something really fanciful but hasn't got a shred of evidence to prove the truth of its claims. But now is not the time to think and reason.  As Luther cleverly pointed out, "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has" and elsewhere, he said "Reason is the Devil's greatest whore".

Whenever I visit a large cathedral, I can't help thinking how hard it must be for the altar boys. Most people who have not carried the candlestick to the altar do not know how heavy it is. It's huge, ornamental and made of silver and the aisle in a large cathedral is dreadfully long.

Hypercritical or humorous?

I have blogged before about this strange peculiarity I've encountered many times in Singapore of folks zealously making up their own grammar rules to trip others up. Click here 


One of the most irritating habits of these over-zealous folks is to pick on the less educated segment of Singaporean society and to make fun of them.  The cardinal rule that governs anyone who attempts to correct others is of course a rather reasonable one - he had better be right.  Alas, these revilers are often guilty of worse errors than the supposed errors they purport to embarrass their victims with.

A recent article published in the Catholic News under "Readers Contributions - General Viewpoints" is, at first blush, a disgraceful example of this.  The writer takes up the cudgels on behalf of the anti-Singlish camp and insists that Singlish speakers are incomprehensible abroad and should remain in Singapore.  At least, that is presumably what the writer intends to say but he lacks the necessary proficiency to accomplish this rather simple task and instead writes this:

Unless an individual or particular group plans on never leaving the warmth and security of the nest, of never venturing outside one’s immediate group, Singlish suffices.

This is one blunder no speaker of Singlish makes.


This article was brought to my attention by the New Nation.  Apparently, the Catholic News, sensing trouble from the article and desirous of staying away from further bad press (a US group is now seeking to have the Pope charged in the Hague for alleged crimes against humanity, ie paedophile crimes and cover-up within the Church), deleted it from their website but as we all know to our great delight, the internet is the internet and any deletion is bound to leave behind an indelible electronic footprint the link of which the New Nation cleverly published .     

I have since read the offending article more carefully and I'm now persuaded the writer is in fact making fun of the anti-Singlish camp by being overtly ridiculous.  Just take, for example, the first two sentences in the article:

The reason for the use of correct English is predicated on pragmatism and not on emotion or group convenience. For the purpose of dialectic let us categorise English into non-standard and standard. Non-standard will include, for example, variations like Appalachian English and Singlish. The refulgence of the differences lie, in general, in the grammar, sounds and vocabulary of the spoken “dialects”.

Leaving aside obvious grammatical errors including mistakes in what in my time was called "Agreement" or "Concordance" but is now more elegantly termed "Concord" by polished grammarians, the vocabulary is itself laughable.  How can the writer be serious?  I'm sure I'm right and the writer is merely indulging in some tongue-in-cheek humour.

HOW AMERICA CONFUSES THE WORLD

Yesterday, I had a very pleasant lunch with members of my wind ensemble and a lovely couple, Viva and Joy.  Naturally, any conversation with me joining in had to turn light-hearted, frivolous and even vacuous.  I had to stop Teng Siong and Viva from talking about cars!  How anyone can dwell on the subject of cars is something really quite beyond me.  I can imagine having a perfectly enjoyable time talking about bicycles but cars?

Indra spoke with sadness about how he discovered through me that his school song was a flagrant plagiarism of a Canadian patriotic anthem, “Maple Leaf Forever”.  Last year, I posted a video of the Canadian anthem on my Facebook wall and he saw it to his horror.

To continue with the topic that Indra had started, I proceeded to explain how the obviously ungrammatical line in his school song came about: “Oldham dauntless hero came”.  Before I could continue, Joy insisted that the line was not ungrammatical.

At first blush, anyone can tell that the sentence lacks the definite article, “the”.   It’s obvious that the sentence should read “Oldham THE dauntless hero came.”  But what made Joy think that it was grammatical?  Joy has a perfect grasp of the English language and she isn’t the sort who would normally make a mistake of this nature.

The source of her confusion lies (I almost wrote “across the Atlantic” the way most grammarians do but of course my location is vastly different) across the Pacific in the USA.  Burchfield, the grammarian, has written on this peculiarity of Americans in leaving out the definite article that usually goes with an occupational title.  He gave as an example from a newspaper report: “... written by economist Sylvia Ann Hewlitt.”  Burchfield writes that this is “especially common in journalistic work.

Joy must have been confused by this development in American journalistic style which apparently has influenced the writing styles of the entire world.  But this does not excuse ACS (yes, it’s my pet topic – ACS-bashing) because “dauntless hero” is not an occupation.  Even if you take “dauntless hero” to be a profession, it should precede the name, not follow it if you are going to omit the definite article.  Taking Burchfield’s example, we can say something was “written by economist Sylvia Hewlitt” but we can’t say it was “written by Sylvia Hewlitt economist”. But “dauntless hero” is not an occupation in the first place.

On all counts, the sentence “Oldham dauntless hero came” is ungrammatical and ugly.

Why then did ACS have that line in its school song?  True to its school tradition, the person who “composed” (I place the word in inverted commas out of respect for real composers) the school song lazily copied not just the tune but the lyrics too from “Maple Leaf Forever”.  The corresponding line in “Maple Leaf Forever” is:

“Wolfe the dauntless hero came”.

Now you see it!  “Wolfe” is monosyllabic and because Oldham has two syllables, any ACSian will tell you to just drop the definite article which serves no purpose in ACS.  After all, in ACS, isn’t THE Best always a yet-to-be?