The strange way of words

The following text is originally lifted from the trivia section of The Jakarta Post dated Thursday, 15 November 2007.

~Compiled from various sources~

• Why is it that if someone yells “duck” they are helping you, but if they yell “chicken” they are insulting you?
• Why is the name of the phobia for the fear of long words Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia?
• Why is it when you’re almost dead you’re on death’s doorstep, but when you are actually dead you are not in death’s house?
• Why do people say “You scared the living daylights out of me” when daylight is not living?
• Why do we have to pay a toll on “freeways”?
• Why is its good to score under par in golf but its bad to be “under par” in anything else?
• How did a fool and his money get together?
• Are part time band-leaders called semi-conductors?
• Why is it that humans can move their eyes in opposite directions toward the nose, but not away from the nose?
• Do chickens think rubber humans are funny?
• Why is bra singular and panties plural?
• If the plural of tooth is “teeth”, why isn’t the plural of booth “beeth”?
• Why do scientists call it research when looking for something new?
• Why do people who know the least know it the loudest?
• Why do you press harder on the buttons of a remote control when you know the batteries are dead?
• If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?
• How can the weather be “hot as hell” one day and “cold as hell” another?
• Why are the adjectives “fast as” and “slow as” often used in conjunction with hell, is hell slow or fast?
• If you’re in hell, and are mad at someone, where do you tell them to go?
• If women ran the Pentagon, would missiles and submarines be shaped differently?
• Can atheists get insurance for acts of God?
• Do hungry crows have ravenous appetites?
• If athletes get athlete’s foot, do astronauts get mistletoe?
• Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii?
• Why are there flotation devices under plane seats instead of parachutes?
• Why are cigarettes sold in gas stations when smoking is prohibited there?
• Why do fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing?
• If you can’t drink and drive, why do you need driver’s licence to buy liquor, and why do bars have parking lots?
• If 7-11 is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, why are there locks on the doors?
• Why is that when you’re driving and looking for an address, you turn down the volume on the radio?
• Shouldn’t there be a shorter word for “monosyllabic”?
• Why are they called “stands” when they are made for sitting?
• Why is there only ONE Monopolies Commission?
• Why does “slow down” and “slow up” mean the same thing?
• Why is it when two planes almost hit each other it is called a “near miss”? Shouldn’t it be called a “near hit”?
• Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars, and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has white paint, and he has to touch it.
• Instead of talking to your plants, if you yelled at them would they still grow, only to be troubled and insecure?
• If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
• Why are a wise man and a wise guy opposites?
• Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
• Why don’t sheep shrink in the rain?
• Do sheep get static cling when they rub against one another?

Read more...

Let's sign Al Gore's petition for the Bali Climate Change Conference!

Aku sudah ikut menandatangani petisi di bawah ini (yang ditujukan untuk memperlambat dampak-dampak dari pemanasan global). Jadi, aku harap kalian semua juga ikut tandatangani ya! Selamatkan bumi kita yang tercinta ini!

The text below is a genuine message written by Al Gore

Dear Friend,

In Bali, Indonesia thousands of delegates from nearly 190 countries have gathered at the UN Conference on Climate Change. In ten days, I will address the conference to urge the adoption of a visionary new treaty to address global warming and I want to bring your voices with me.

Click here to sign my petition today and I will bring your signatures on stage with me as a clear demonstration of our resolve:
http://climateprotect.org/standwithal

Together, we will call on the US government to assume a new leadership role in solving the climate crisis.

World leaders including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd have all agreed to aggressively battle the climate crisis - yet our country still lags behind.

Over the next ten days, I would like you to help me get people from across the country to sign our message to the global community. We can demonstrate that the American people understand the immediacy of the climate crisis and want to work with the nations of the world to solve it. Time is short - we need to mobilize everyone to bring this message to Bali: http://climateprotect.org/standwithal

The American people want a visionary treaty to address climate change and for the US government to play a positive leadership role in its development.

Thank you,

Al Gore

P.S.After signing the petition, please urge your friends and family to sign the petition and join the movement. http://climateprotect.org/standwithal

Read more...

My Review of JLPT Level 4 for Year 2007

I had mine in Jakarta, where there were approximately 1000 people attending the exam (for levels 2 to 4) in my venue alone.

The JLPT this time round took place on a bloody sunny Sunday, 2 December 2007 in a relatively-unknown-yet-far-faraway university of Darma Persada located in the suburbs of Eastern Jakarta.

As expected of a 3^rd class college, the campus looked pretty dilapidated to me, kinda like a public high school (or an SMU Negeri in Indonesian) with twice of the average size.

The exam commenced at 9 o’clock sharp with the Moji-Goi section, followed by the Chokai and Dokai-Bunpou sections respectively with interspersions of respites between each sessions, and ended at 11.55

Here are my review of those 3 sections that I’d gone thru:

1. Moji-Goi (Kanji&Vocabulary)

I knew it all along that if I rote memorised all the 800 vocabs from faraway before the D-day; I could’ve mastered this section better. However, my lax attitude coupled with my indiscipline had myself studying like hell the whole 800 lexicons needed for the exam. Thank God I managed to memorise around 90% of the vocabs in the end and able to answer all the questions without any difficulties. ;P

2. Chokai (Listening)

I blamed myself for failing this section. I could’ve bought the past-year exam cassettes needed for the test (at least so that my ears could get lil’ bit used to it), but I didn’t. I looked for the cassette in my Gakushudo centre in Gran Wijaya, wherein I was faced with the fact that they had run out of the cassetes. So be it; even though the questions were supposedly easy, my sense of hearing missed a lot of points. Damn, I should’ve killed myself, lols.

3. Dokai-Bunpou (Reading&Grammar)

All the three days before the test was spent drilling on the Japanese particles to (such as O, No, Wa, Ga, E, To, Ni, etc) as I was well aware how often this ilk of question came out in the lvl4 JLPTs. Well I had them downloaded actually, because I bought nothing (I mean it!) for the preparation of the JLPT… Lols. I think I could score at least 80% on the whole paper.

So… what’s left now? My tips and tricks for you who are having the exam next year, of course.

To be noted here, things aren’t the same for different levels in JLPT. People who had gone thru the level 2 and 1 mostly say that the order of sections in increasing difficulty for their exam is like this:

Chokai, Moji-Goi, Dokai-Bunpou

However, for me (and I believe for most people too), the order for JLPT4 in increasing difficulty is like this:

Moji-Goi, Dokai-Bunpou, Chokai

Weird huh, how Chokai as the hardest section in level 4 could get turn into the easiest one in level 2? My logic says that it’s due to the fact that when you’ve studied Japanese for a long time and acquired more lexicons, your ears could finally get a better grip on listening to Japanese speakers and comprehending them would be no big problem. Anyway, That’s just apiece of my thinking.

I still hope I could get 90% or above though.

Can’t wait till March, lols.

Read more...

Just when you thought you knew it all

The following text is originally lifted from the trivia section of The Jakarta Post dated Tuesday, 13 November 2007.

~Compiled from various sources~

• A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
• You can lead a fool to wisdom, but you can’t make him think.
• A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can see from the top of a mountain.
• Never test the depth of a river with both of your feet.
• Hear and you forget; see and you remember; do and you understand.
• The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.
• Anger is a condition in which the tongue works faster than the mind.
• There are no short cuts to any place worth going.
• Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.
• A man who thinks too much about his ancestor is like a potato – the best part of him is underground.
• A ship in the harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
• Your heart understands what your head cannot conceive; trust your heart.
• A peacock who sits on his tail is just another turkey.
• He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
• It is never too late to be what you might have been.
• If you are willing to admit faults, you have one less fault to admit.
• You cannot get to the top by sitting on your bottom.
• Life is like a sewer… what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
• It matters not what you do, as long as you are the best one doing it.
• If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will never bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
• In golf as in life it is the follow through that makes the difference.
• The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does.
• Learn from the mistake of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.
• It is only those who never do anything who never makes mistakes.
• Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.
• Many complain of their looks, but none of their brains.
• If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
• There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.
• To be loved is to be fortunate, but to be hated is to achieve distinction.
• Practice makes perfect, but since nobody is perfect, why do we practise?
• Three may keep a secret, of two of them are dead.
• You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
• Patience will come to those who wait for it.
• Incoming fire has the right of way.
• Build a man a fire, and he will be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.
• The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually fear you will make one.
• It is easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.
• Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.
• There are three faithful friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.
• Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.
• The trouble with being punctual is that nobody’s there to appreciate it.
• Technology is a way of organising the universe so that man doesn’t have to experience it.
• Parents can tell but they never teach, unless they practise what they preach.
• Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognise a mistake when you make it again.
• Man who sneezes without hanky takes matters into his own hands.
• He who smiles in a crisis has found someone to blame.
• The hand that turns the knob opens the door.
• Money isn’t everything, but it sure keeps the kids in touch.
• There are two kinds of people in life: people who like their jobs, and people who don’t work here anymore.
• Love is a temporary insanity curable by marriage.
• A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking
• If your parents never had children, chances are you won’t either.
• We the willing, following the unknowing are doing the impossible.
• Half of the people in th world are below average.
• To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.

Read more...

The man who owns several successful cloth factories - seldom wears any clothes himself.

The original text can be found here.

He is a Hindu holy man, who has renounced the material world - yet he is also a business tycoon who employs thousands of people.

It might sound incredible - but a French citizen in India is living proof that it can be done.

Christian Fabre, or Swami Pranavananda Brahmendra Avadhuta as he is now known, was born in the south of France in 1942.

He became a Hindu holy man, or sadhu, some years ago.

Now he runs an ashram, or a hermitage for holy men, in the south-eastern state of Tamil Nadu, roughly 400 kilometres (250 miles) from Madras, the state capital.

Tough going

But this is only half the story - Mr Fabre also operates a number of cloth mills in southern India.

To those who know Hinduism's holy men to be unworldly sages and ascetics, this may seem a bit strange.

But Mr Fabre sees nothing strange in his parallel business interests - rather, he sees them as an extension of his faith.

Back in France, he grew up in a family with ties to the garment industry.

He came to work in India in the 1970s, and fell in love with the place.

"I was so powerfully attracted to India's culture, faith and its people that I cannot bear the thought of going back to France," he says.

Mr Fabre and his family moved to India. Although their new life got off to a good start, the going quickly got tough, until one day, almost all his money had run out.

Not long afterwards, his wife and son left him and returned to France.

Mr Fabre remembers sitting with a cigarette in hand, having lost his job and his family, wondering why this had happened to him.

Faith makes business boom

At the time, his house was opposite that of a Brahmin family. His first exposure to Hinduism came at their hands.

A woman from that house introduced him to a Hindu sage, or swami.

Mr Fabre recalls how, on his way to see this holy man, he came across a man suffering from leprosy. Despite his disease, the man was in high spirits.

He remembers asking himself, "If this man can manage to be happy, then why can't I?"

After this, he discovered a renewed faith in himself. He bought four sewing machines and secured some orders from a major French clothing company.

Slowly, his business began to grow.

Today, his company, Fashion International, has 35 factories which employ 60,000 people.

The clothes they make are exported to Europe and beyond.

Last year, his company exported 30,000 items of clothing, and was taxed 3,700,000 rupees.

And as his business boomed, Mr Fabre's faith grew stronger. He did not stop taking instruction from his teacher, or guru, and continued searching for answers to his questions.

Saffron in the boardroom

His guru eventually invited him to take up the sanyas - renounce all worldly attachments such as family and money, and focus on the search for enlightenment.

Mr Fabre says, "My guru made me swear, that as a condition of taking up the sanyas, I must also maintain my business. He said that I should not leave behind my work."

Mr Fabre now lives in the ashram in the manner of the other sadhus in his holy order - in the nude. When he leaves the ashram, he dresses in the saffron robes typically worn by Hindu holy men.

He also wears the sadhu's saffron robes to his business meetings.

For Mr Fabre, there is no opposition between his business interests and his life as a Hindu holy man.

He does not care for money. "I do not keep a single penny for myself. I divide all my profit between my workers."

And his employees are not the only beneficiaries.

This industrialist holy man has been truly industrious - for the villagers living near his ashram, he has provided running water and improved public hygiene facilities.

Read more...