Confused English

FEAR is an acronym in the English language for "False Evidence Appearing Real" - Neal Donald
Been having a bad sore throat and popping lozenges.

Emigrate or Immigrate
You immigrate to a place, you emigrate from a place;
e.g: Zach is planning to immigrate to Canada from Great Britain
Zach is planing to emigrate from Great Britain to Canada

Ancestor or Decendant
In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Albus Dumbledore said that Lord Voldemort was “the last remaining ancestor of Salazar Slytherin,” which is wrong. Luckily it was corrected later.The real word to use would be 'the last remaining descendant of Salazar Slytherin'. Lord Voldemort great-great grandparents would be his ancestor, he is their descendant.

Breath or Breathe
Breathe is the verb and breath is the noun.
You take a deep breath when you feel you need to breathe.

Kindergarten or Kindergarden
Believe it or not, the Germans were correct, the standard English for it would be the German spelling 'Kindergarten'.

Mischievous or Mischievious
The extra I is a michievous addition. The correct spelling is mischievous.

Please RSVP or Please Reply
Stop feeling like a French and just write 'please reply'. RSVP is short for French Répondez s’il vous plaît (reply please). There is no need to add extra please in the word if you are planning to use it and no, it's not short for reservation. It just a polite way of asking your guests to answer whether they are coming or not. So guest..please answer it.

Not only does the English Language borrow words from other languages, it sometimes chases them down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and goes through their pockets-Eddy Peters

Online divorcee jailed after killing virtual hubby

For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.-Jean Dubuffet
When the thin line of reality and fantasy became a blur...this is what happen

By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press

TOKYO: A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband's digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday.

The woman, who is jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data, used his identification and password to log onto popular interactive game "Maple Story" to carry out the virtual murder in mid-May, a police official in northern Sapporo said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

"I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry," the official quoted her as telling investigators and admitting the allegations.

The woman had not plotted any revenge in the real world, the official said.


She has not yet been formally charged, but if convicted could face a prison term of up to five years or a fine up to $5,000.

Players in "Maple Story" raise and manipulate digital images called "avatars" that represent themselves, while engaging in relationships, social activities and fighting against monsters and other obstacles.

The woman used login information she got from the 33-year-old office worker when their characters were happily married, and killed the character. The man complained to police when he discovered that his beloved online avatar was dead.

What is insanity, anyway? Is it when you scream and everyone else whispers, or is it when you fight for what's right, even when everyone else thinks your wrong?-Unknown

Customer Mistakes with Technical Support

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization. ~Ambrose Bierce


Customer: "I don't use DOS. What would happen if I deleted that directory?"
Friend: "Does Windows 98 support Linux?"
Customer: (angrily) "You said I would get 98 windows with this computer. Where are they?"

*****

Customer: "How much do Windows cost?"
Tech Support: "Windows costs about $100."
Customer: "Oh, that's kind of expensive. Can I buy just one window?"

*****

Tech Support: "May I ask what operating system you are running today?"
Customer: "A computer."

*****

Tech Support: "How can I help you?"
Customer: "Well, everything is working fine, but there is one program that is not."
Tech Support: "What program is it?"
Customer: "It's called 'MSDOS Prompt'."Tech Support: "What's wrong with it?"
Customer: "Well, I click on it, a black screen shows up with NOTHING but a sign that reads: 'C:\WINDOWS>', and it just sits there and doesn't do anything. I have to turn off the system to go back to Windows."

*****

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger. ~Frank Lloyd Wright

Jokes: Things you don't want to hear during surgery

I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso.-Rita Rudner

"Better save that. We'll need it for the autopsy."

"Someone call the janitor - we're going to need a mop!"

"Accept this sacrifice, O Great Lord of Darkness"

"Bo Bo! Come back with that! Bad Dog!"

"Wait a minute, if this is his spleen, then what's that?"

"Hand me that...uh...that uh...thingie."

"Oh no! I just lost my Rolex."

"Oops! Hey, has anyone ever survived 500ml of this stuff before?"

"Darn, there go the lights again...."

"Ya know, there's big money in kidneys. Heck, the guy's got two of 'em."

"Everybody stand back! I lost my contact lens!"

"Could you stop that thing from beating? It's throwing off my concentration."

"What's this doing here?"

"That's cool! Now can you make his leg twitch?"

"I wish I hadn't forgotten my glasses."

"Well, folks, this will be an experiment for all of us."

"Sterile, shcmerile. The floor's clean, right?"

"What do you mean, he wasn't in for a sex change?"

"Anyone see where I left that scalpel?"

"And now we remove the subject's brain and place it in the body of the ape."

"Ok. Now take a picture from this angle. This is truly a freak of nature."

"This patient has already had some kids, right?"

"Nurse, did this patient sign the organ donation card?"

"Don't worry. I think this is sharp enough."

"FIRE! FIRE! Everybody get out NOW!"

"Darn! Page 47 of the manual is missing!"

Surgery is always second best. If you can do something else, it's better.-Dr John Kirklin

As long as it's black

You can paint it any color, so long as it's black- Henry Ford


Do you ever realize that the cars on the roads are in totally boring colours. White, gray, silver, black dominates most of the cars colour making our road quite colourless. Maybe perhaps once in a blue moon you would see a shocking red Ferrari (well maybe not Ferrari but a taxi instead) or a bright yellow Lotus Elise but still most of the time its like watching a period film, black, white and grey.

I keep wondering why they didn't make car's paint with a lot more colours and why most of us opt for those colours anyway? If you go to see a car dealers he would say that many of his customers choose those black, white and grey cars more that the red, green or yellow one. And I wonder why?


Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.- Pablo Picasso

hmmm...Marital Bliss...

We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited. -Alfred Adler

If only all of the marital problems can be solve by splitting things into two, wouldn't the world be a more peaceful place to live and marital lawyers would find themselves twiddling thumbs instead of crunching numbers....

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - A couple in rural Cambodia has terminated their 18-year marriage with a divorce settlement that entailed sawing in two the wooden house they once shared, villagers said Friday. The husband, 42-year-old Moeun Sarim, has taken away with him all the bits and pieces of his half a house, said his 35-year-old wife, Vat Navy.

"Very strange, but this is what my husband wanted," she said by phone from a village about 62 miles east of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. She said they ended their marriage last month.
"He brought his relatives and used saws to cut the house in half," she said, adding that she now owns the other half that is still standing. The house is made from wood with a tile roof and propped up on wooden pillars, a typical style for a Cambodian country home.

She said her estranged husband and his relatives, after ripping apart half of the house, carried all the debris to his parents' house nearby.

She said the divorce was prompted by her husband's jealousy about her alleged relationship with a policeman in the village. She denied having an extramarital affair.

"He wanted a divorce, and I said, `Let's divorce,'" she said.
The husband could not be reached for comment.

Bou Bout, a village chief, said local officials and police were present as witnesses the day the couple split their 20-by-24 1/2 foot house into half.

"Local officials tried three times to get them to mend their differences, but the husband would not budge," Bou Bout said by phone.

If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based. Betty Freidan

Einstein's Chauffer

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.- Albert Einstein

This is a true life anecdote about Albert Einstein, and his theory of relativity.

After having propounded his famous theory, Albert Einstein would tour the various Universities in the United States, delivering lectures wherever he went. He was always accompanied by his faithful chauffer, Harry, who would attend each of these lectures while seated in the back row! One fine day, after Einstein had finished a lecture and was coming out of the auditorium into his vehicle, Harry addresses him and says, "Professor Einstein, I've heard your lecture on Relativity so many times, that if I were ever given the opportunity, I would be able to deliver it to perfection myself!"

"Very well," replied Einstein, "I'm going to Dartmouth next week. They don't know me there. You can deliver the lecture as Einstein, and I'll take your place as Harry!"

And so it went to be... Harry delivered the lecture to perfection, without a word out of place, while Einstein sat in the back row playing "chauffer", and enjoying a snooze for a change.

Just as Harry was descending from the podium, however, one of the research assistants intercepted him, and began to ask him a question on the theory of relativity.... one that involved a lot of complex calculations and equations. Harry replied to the assistant "The answer to this question is very simple! In fact, it's so simple, that I'm going to let my chauffer answer it!"

One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.- Albert Einstein

Irony...

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.-Robert A Heinlein

I read an article yesterday about the wierd Starbucks policy of keeping their water taps running at their cafe, the reason....as a way of keeping bacteria out of the system. Who did came out with such idea? If it does really works don't you think all the operation theater in hospitals world wide would have adopted the policy. Heck they have more reasons to keep the bacteria out of the water system than coffee cups.

They waste so much water equivalent of a small country usage or more specifically the supply of 2 million people in Namibia! (I wonder though if there are Starbucks Cafes in Namibia)

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny...~Isaac Asimov

Monday Blues

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate - Oprah Winfrey

Hari Raya is over (well not actually over since there are like 23 days left of Syawal), but since Raya holiday is over and we all are shipped back to work so in a way it is over except for those weekend open houses.Funny how things turn out...you starve yourself for a month and then you eat like a starving person all in one or two days. Non stop eating fiesta( doesn't it feel wrong somewhere?)

Raya is fun for kids because it is the day that allowed them to be bankers and keep a lot of money. As adults it is not so much fun anymore since you become the financer and has to fork out a lot of money. (I've got RM15 as duit raya since they said I'm not married so I'm entitled to it...hehehe).

And for the first time in like 4 or 5 years I'm injury free and I didn't get sick on Hari Raya or the days that followed. Horray for me!. I learn to cut the amount of cold drinks I consume, eat less and try to stay away from sick people. I'm fit as a fiddle.(although I need to get back on the threadmills after all those ketupat and lemang...hmmm)

Celebrate what you want to see more of - Thomas J Peters