Monday, March 27, 2006

More Spelling Fun!

The standard of english in Singapore's educational institutions have been declining the last few years. It is in such an appalling state (just look at the spelling errors and grammatical mistakes I've already made!) that I feel more a further need to teach the kids out there how to spell. But given the limited space I have and having much less popularity than Miss Wendy Cheng (who, incidentally doesn't use very good English either... oh don't flame me though), I shall restrict myself to my oft-cited letter of late: the letter 'V'!

V is (also) for 'Very-long-time-never-see-you': As Stripey has chosen to point out to me, he hasn't seen me for a very long time. Which is, of course, no longer true since I just saw him for dinner today and we had a nice chat at a Kiliney Kopitiam. I think we were both somewhat disappointed with Mai Otome, but on the whole, the series does have its merits. We also discussed the economics of the wedding dinner, and cbk also contributed a new term in my expanding lexicon: the XMM (Xiao Mei Mei; more on other 3 letter shortening of useful phrases some other time).

Also, to Stripey, cbk (aka the Chongster) and zw, I'll be off to La France in May and June, so you guys may use that 'Very-long-time-never-see-you' phrase on me again some time later this year. But rest assured: I won't miss any of your weddings if I can help it! (not that there are many in the first place!)

V is (also) for 'Verisimilitude': I first learnt this big word in university. To be honest, I still don't really know how to use it in a sentence, but suffice to say, to describe something as having verisimilitude is to say that it looks realistic. The phrase first came to my attention when I did classes on American Film (cross-faculty module alas - I wasn't an Arts student). It was a bombastic word to describe scenes we saw on film, whether or not it looked realistic. You won't believe it now, but in the 1930s, films in black and white with cardboard backdrops actually looked realistic to viewers then (they had vintage, those films... can't say the same for nosh like 'Attack of the Clones' - yuck). Another big word I learnt back then was mise-en-scene - something to mean cinematography, though not quite technical.

V is (also) for 'Victory', 'Valour', 'Vigilance', 'Vengeance', 'Vigour' and 'Valiant': Somebody back in the 80s had the bright idea to name the (then) new missile corvettes (MCV) using the letter 'V' (no doubt, he must have read 'V for Vendetta', that 'V' focused spelling book). Somebody should have pointed out to him that 'Valour' and 'Valiant' somewhat mean the same thing, but that fact was probably lost on the powers that be in the navy at that time. Having served my NS in the navy, the MCVs were the pride of the navy (then... probably not so much now) and their names evoked enVy.

I wanted to say, though, that despite the somewhat fancy names, the MCVs have the best names in the entire fleet. Seriously, the name RSS Victory (or my fav: RSS Vengeance) evokes more awe than RSS Punggol (a mine clearing vessel, one of several named after ulu places in Singapore - it was ulu back then but not now), RSS Sea Lion (the navy wants you to think these are lions which surf the seven seas, and not the cousin of the seals of Ocean Park), RSS Endurance (it's a kind of 'garang' name, but it just shows how uncreative the bigwigs in the navy were - this name was recycled from an older ship), and RSS Brave (along with its patrol vessel brothers, Daring, Dauntless, Boring - kidding with that one - these ships further display the lack of ingenuity with ship names).

I think ships should be named after presidents and other kickass politicians, like its done in the US navy. Think RSS Yusof Ishak, or RSS Wee Kim Wee for a change. Well, these names don't exactly strike terror in a foreign naVy, but they definitely are a better way to remember a dead statesman (of course, the MAS can always top that by putting his excellency's face on a 2 dollar note). I hope the naVy does do something more creative with the upcoming frigates it is intending to purchase though.

That's it for now - no more V-ishness and hopefully I haven't crossed the line with that irresponsible defense nonsense. Cheers and Vive la Franc3! (in slightly more than a month's time!)

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yoyo, thanks for still remembering my nick The Chongster :P Hope to cya soon...