Bagrancy

There are only two points I want to bring up on my first day of exams.

One is with regards to a certain professor in NUS' Japanese department. Let's just call him Dr. Asahi - that's a close enough approximation of his first name... and coincidentally, also reminds me of that show... What was it again? Scary Movie 4? Sony sashimi whatever whatever!

Anyway, Dr. Asahi here is a bona fide spelling genius. He's a full professor (I think) in NUS, but his lecture notes look like they were discarded floor plans for the tower of Babel.

Firstly, the bloke has pretty bad lecture structure, with points overlapping multiple lectures resulting in a massive headache when studying - and I mean massive.

Secondly - and of greater concern to us - is the fact that Dr. Asahi loves to mis-spell.

Yes, Japan experienced the bubble economy burst in '89 due to American dollar pressures, excess liquidity, overspeculation on land, blah blah blah. But what in the blue hell is the - babble - economy? Is it not a cardinal sin to repeat the phrase 'babble economy' over the course of 3 months of lectures... especially when one of your slides with a chart from some random textbook is clearly headlined bubble economy, but the very next slide you revert to babble?

Babble. Babel. There must be some sort of conspiracy here. The funniest thing is that he graded the project Kenneth and I (well actually it's us plus two other girls, but I think we can claim most of the credit for magnificently redoing the project - again) partly on the basis of grammar and sentence structure. How awesome is that! I thawt I taw a puddy tat!

At the end of the day, kudos must be given to him for correctly identifying our work as a 90% grade effort - which is once again amusing, considering that this too was a bunch of last minute sweat.

And to top if off, his comments on the project were entitled 'The Phenomenon of Bagrancy'. Substitute that 'B' with a 'V' and you've our essay title.

Mmm. Very cool. In conclusion, Dr. Asahi loves to mis-spell. This isn't his only fantastic effort at it. There are others, but babble is the clearest in my mind because of Kenneth yelling "WHAT THE FUCK IS THE BABBLE ECONOMY!!!" over the phone.

Second thing. A week or so back, I read in the forum section of the Straits Times a letter complaining about the increasing dearth of English-speaking service staff due to an influx of mainland chinese into local service industries. I've experienced this in increasing frequency over the past few months, and I couldn't agree more.

When I go to a fucking western restaurant, I DO NOT FUCKING EXPECT TO TRANSLATE THE FUCKING MENU FOR YOU INTO CHINESE. YOU HOE. You are the waitress YOU WAIT ON ME DO YOU UNDERSTAND? I AM THE DINER. I AM NOT YOUR FUCKING BUTLER OR TRANSLATOR. KNNBCCB.

This has been in my mind for some time now. I'm glad I finally translated it into words. And with that, I return to my studies.