I've learned...

They're written by Andy Rooney, a man who has the gift of saying so much with so few words.

I've learned... That the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.

I've learned... That when you're in love, it shows.

I've learned... That just one person saying to me, "You've made my day!" makes my day.

I've learned... That having a child fall asleep in your arms is one of the most peaceful feelings in the world.

I've learned... That being kind is more important than being right.

I've learned... That you should never say no to a gift from a child.

I've learned... That I can always pray for someone when I don't have the strength to help him in some other way.

I've learned... That no matter how serious your life requires you to be, everyone needs a friend to act goofy with.

I've learned... That sometimes all a person needs is a hand to hold and a heart to understand.

I've learned... That simple walks with my father around the block on summer nights when I was a child did wonders for me as an adult.

I've learned... That life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.
I've learned... That we should be glad God doesn't give us everything we ask for.

I've learned... That money doesn't buy class.

I've learned... That it's those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular.

I've learned... That under everyone's hard shell is someone who wants to be appreciated and loved.

I've learned... That to ignore the facts does not change the facts.

I've learned... That when you plan to get even with someone, you are only letting that person continue to hurt you.

I've learned... That love, not time, heals all wounds.

I've learned... That the easiest way for me to grow as a person is to surround myself with people smarter than I am.

I've learned... That everyone you meet deserves to be greeted with a smile.

I've learned... That no one is perfect until you fall in love with them.

I've learned... That life is tough, but I'm tougher.

I've learned... That opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss.

I've learned... That when you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.

I've learned... That I wish I could have told my Mom that I love her one more time before she passed away.

I've learned... That one should keep his words both soft and tender, because tomorrow he may have to eat them.

I've learned... That a smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.

I've learned... That I can't choose how I feel, but I can choose what I do about it.

I've learned... That when your newly born grandchild holds your little finger in his little fist, that you're hooked for life.

I've learned... That everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.

I've learned... That the less time I have to work with, the more things I get done.

Mix Tongues?

Janadas Devan – on words

PUBLIC discourse in Singapore, conducted usually in English, has been studded of late with Chinese and Malay expressions. Consider these examples from the past months.

NTUC secretary-general Lim Swee Say, in arguing why companies should be required to the reveal the age profiles of their workforce, said: This way, even if the “CEO sumpah (‘swears’ in Malay) ‘I never discriminate against the older workers’, he will have to explain himself.”

Dr Amy Khor, chairman of the government feedback unit Reach, when speaking in Parliament of the CPF changes, reported that some people feared the changes would leave them with “bo chi, bo kang (‘no money, no job’ in Hokkien)”.

A grassroots leader at a dialogue session, who felt that elderly Singaporeans should be given access to their CPF savings early so they can “have a good time at the IR”, asked Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong what would be the use of having money when one is old and bo gei (“without teeth”).

Mr Lee replied: “If they win (at the IR) they will tan tio (‘benefit’). If they lose, their children will take care of them. If they have no children, the Government is there. Bao jia (‘definitely win’).”

But that would be disastrous for the country as a whole, Mr Lee warned – “bao si (‘sure die’).”

He added “Bo gei you cannot enjoy, but bo gei, bo lui (‘no teeth, no money’) is worse.”

The longevity insurance, the Prime Minister went on to tell his audience, is a winner – “bao ying (‘sure win’)”. “If you look at obituary pages… you read, mo mo gao ling jiu shi (“So-and-so is 90’ in Mandarin). So many 90-years-olds… and some over 100.”

Mr Lee speak three languages – English, Mandarin and Malay – fluently and some Russians too. But I do not recall him mixing it up – code-switching, as it were, between tongues – to the extent that he did at this dialogue. What is going on?

Well, obviously, Singapore’s leaders have discovered that breaking occasionally into Chinese or Malay, even when they are speaking primarily in English, can be rhetorically effective. The examples above also indicate a more relaxed attitude on their part towards Chinese dialects.

According to the General Household Survey, one in five Chinese Singaporeans habitually speaks a Chinese dialect other than Mandarin at home. For this reason, Manpower Minister Ng Eng Hen urged MPs recently to “spew forth with passion your Hokkien lyrics and poetic metaphors” when speaking to their constituents about the CPF changes. It is doubtful if poetic metaphors, in any language, can ever be persuasive on financial matters, but it is significant that Dr Ng mentioned Hokkien, not Mandarin.

We have certainly come a long way since the early days of the “Speak Mandarin” campaign. As my colleague Peh Shing Huei noted recently, there was a time when ‘even simple dialect phrasers in locally produced Mandarin drama serials were scrubbed out”. Yam seng, for instance, the traditional toast, was in the early 1980s replaced on television with “the politically correct Mandarin phrase, gan bei”. That may not qualify as “a kind of linguistic genocide”, as Mr Peh quoted the film-maker Tan Pin Pin as saying, but it would certainly qualify as an authentic case of asinine inauthenticity.

Singaporeans do speak a variety of languages. Almost all of us are bilingual, if not trilingual, to some extent or another. Even people like me who communicate primarily English, do occasionally break into Malay or Hokkien or Tamil – to clinch a point of contact with our interlocutors. That is how we habitually cakap-cakap among themselves. This newspaper always provides English translations of even the simplest Chinese or Malay expressions it cites – even cakap-cakap, amazingly enough, even bo lui – but most us above 50 years old don’t need them.

This facility of ours for bi-,or tri-lingual citations is I think wonderful. It is boring to be always speaking in only one tongue. There are Malay expressions that convey thoughts English cannot. There are Chinese and Indian sayings that encapsulate insights unavailable in English. Since we are bilingual, there is no reason why we should not occasionally slip into our English speech and writing the odd phrase or two from one of the other languages we know. The variety achieved thus would be pleasing; the variations would lend our communications a certain multidimensional quality.

As a matter of fact, English writers have been doing this for centuries, sprinkling their writings with quotations from both ancient and modern languages.

“Five words sum up every biography” Video meliora proboque; deteriora sequor”, I read the other day in an essay by Aldous Huxley. “I see the better way and approve; but I follow the worse way”. The English translation conveys accurately enough the same thought, but it lacks the precision of the Latin original.

“What is she really like? It is hard to judge beneath the joie de vivre.” How often have we not read sentences like that? Joie de vivre is usually translated as “joy of living”, but the English version lacks the panache, that certain je ne sais quoi – other French phrases with no exact equivalents in English – of the original.

“Looking into the heart of light, the silence./ Oed’ und leer das Meer.” That comes from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The German line, a quotation from Wagner’s Tristan, means simply “Desolate and empty the sea”. So why couldn’t Eliot have written just that? Well, read the lines again and it would be clear their affect and sound turn crucially on the German intrusion.

All this is quite different from bo gei, bo lui, admittedly, but only in degree, not in kind. If magazine writers can routinely invoke someone’s joie de vivre, there is no reason why Mr Lim cannot utter the odd sumpah. If British and American writers can break occasionally into Latin or German to achieve particular effects, there is no reason why Singaporean writers cannot break occasionally into Mandarin – or Sanskrit or Arabic even – to achieve similar effects.
Mixing it up in this way would be far preferable to mixing it up in Singlish. This maintains of the integrity of the different languages; Singlish doesn’t.

“Bo gei you cannot enjoy, but bo gei, bo lui is worse” – that remains a grammatical English sentence despite the Hokkien intrusions. “Ah Pek no teeth, siong. Ah Pek no teeth and bo lui, worse one” – that is Singlish, a grammarless confusion of English and Hokkien.

Faham, tak?

Chocolate

Life is like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're gonna get - Forrest Gump (1994)





Some time is good to live life impromptu..


And for chocolates, this Apple Chocolate from Royce is one of my strong recommendations!

Achievers less prone to Alzheimer's

- ST 07102007 -

People who are disciplined and organised are less likely to get the illness

A SURPRISING study of elderly people suggests that those who see themselves as self-disciplined, organised achievers have a lower risk for developing Alzheimer's disease than people who are less conscientious.

A purposeful personality may somehow protect the brain, perhaps by increasing neural connections that can act as a reserve against mental decline, said study co-author Robert Wilson of Chicago's Rush University Medical Center.

Astoundingly, the brains of some of the dutiful people in the study were examined after their deaths and were found to have lesions that would meet accepted criteria for Alzheimer's - even though these people had shown no signs of dementia.

'This adds to our knowledge that lifestyle, personality, how we think, feel and behave are very importantly tied up with risk for this terrible illness,' Wilson said.
'It may suggest new ideas for trying to delay the onset of this illness.'

Previous studies have linked social connections and stimulating activities like working puzzles with a lower risk of Alzheimer's.

The same researchers reported previously that people who experience more distress and worry about their lives are at a higher risk.

The new findings, appearing in Archives of General Psychiatry, come from an analysis of personality tests and medical examinations of 997 older Catholic priests, nuns and brothers who participated in the Religious Orders Study.

At the start of the study, none of the participants showed signs of dementia. The average age was 75.

Everyone took tests, including a standard personality test. Then the researchers tracked them for 12 years, testing yearly for cognitive decline and dementia. Brain autopsies were performed on most of those who died.

During the 12 years, 176 people developed Alzheimer's disease.

Those with the highest scores for a personality trait called 'conscientiousness' at the start of the study had an 89 per cent lower risk of developing Alzheimer's compared to people with the lowest scores for that personality trait.

The conscientiousness scores were based on how people rated themselves, on a scale of 0 to 4, on how much they agreed with statements such as: 'I work hard to accomplish my goals', 'I strive for excellence in everything I do', 'I keep my belongings clean and neat' and 'I'm pretty good about pacing myself so as to get things done on time'.

When the researchers took into account a combination of risk factors, including smoking, inactivity and limited social connections, they still found that the dutiful people had a 54 per cent lower risk of Alzheimer's compared to people with the lowest scores for conscientiousness.

Could lower conscientiousness merely be an early sign of Alzheimer's?

The researchers think not. At the start of the study, the less conscientious people were no more likely to have lower mental abilities or more memory problems than the most dutiful people in the study.

Renee Goodwin of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health was not involved in the new study but has done similar work that found a connection between conscientiousness and better health.

'It's having self-discipline and energy, doing the healthy things,' she said.
Because priests and nuns are an unusual group, the findings may not apply to the general population, Goodwin said, but she noted that there was a normal range of personality types among the participants.

The research may lead to strategies for developing dutiful personality traits as a way to prevent dementia, she added.