The Republic of Awesome

I am a social chameleon.

When I’m with primarily-English friends I speak international-English-style. Think English, the original bland flavour. Okay not so original - it’s English without the stiff-upper-lip accent of Englishmen. Or any accent for that matter.

Budden right, got some of my fwens speak with a more local accent one. So then hor, my England suddenly has a lot of ‘la’ and ‘lor’ and ‘le’ and ‘one’. Liddis very local right? Like if you not from here confirm kienot unnerstand what I saying one… (and two… three….)

Additionally, I think the finer unnoticible chameleon nuances slip into my speech when talking to different groups of people. Things like matching others’ key phrases, mannerisms and habitual ways of speaking. It’s like an eerie automatic mirroring response I have in-built.

Then there are times when I’m speaking to people with accents. I have to admit I’m  probably consiously trying to avoid picking up their accent. Why?

Cos it’s fucking insulting.

Imagine this guy, as Chinese as a chink in a chain-link fence, talking like he was freakin born on the Australian outback amongst the kangaroos and koalas and local tribes.

“G’fucking’day, mate!”

Plus of course no one likes it when some chap who clearly prefers to pepper his speech with ‘la’ and ‘le’ suddenly goes all stiff upper lip when talking to an ang moh. Like, wtf mate.

Do you social chameleon too?

I’m blogging on the first day of CNY because I couldn’t go back…

Cos I got stopped at customs. Cos I forgot my passport. Cos I was silly.

I’m sad but not too phased - we all fail sometimes.

Anyway, this song has had severely massive play time in my head. By massive play time I mean like how new popular songs are played so much on the airwaves that you swear you’d stab someone if you heard it again.

Except this song is a smooth bossa nova, which unlike pop doesn’t incite my murderous nature:

Estrella - Ternyata

It’s a beautiful song. For make benefit glorious people who don’t know Malay, I shall peruse my 11 odds years of Malay education to translate.

Estrella - Ternyata translation:

Could you lose €30 million and still joke about getting your dick caught in the zipper?

This guy can.

Morten Lund is an entrepreneur from Denmark. In a nutshell, he is a venture capitalist and had his hand in many techonogical startups, most notably Skype. He was recently declared a bankrupt after losing a big ass amount of money in a newspaper venture.

Watch the video. It’s really inspiring stuff.

Host: “How much did you lose?”

Lund: “Well with my paper project I lost like €30 million…”

Host: ” €30 million…”

Lund: “…and it was all in. So they’re gonna come and pick up my house.”

Host: “Really?”

Lund: “Yeah.”

Host: “That’s pretty bad…”

Lund: “I was happy before, so I’ll probably become happy again.”

(…)

Host: “We have to congratulate Morten on something. In Europe it’s really non-cultural to talk about failure….you hide it… and you’re coming up here on stage in front of 1000+ people to explain how you lost €30 million.”

Lund: “Yeah… but I also once had my dick in the zipper? (chuckles) I mean, we all fail all the time, you know…”

Epic respect.

______________

Blog plug

Lund maintains a blog here: http://lundxy.com/

Thanks to Kevin for mailing me the video. He blogs here: http://hamletshero.blogspot.com

An interesting study conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London demonstrated that multitasking actually lowers your IQ.

Yes I know. You’re going, “oh shit! I’ve been simultaneously checking my IM, email, Facebook, blog all this while! I’m going to be a dumbfuck!”

Bush did too much multitasking

Well yes, and no. If you’re already a dumbfuck anyway no amount of multitasking could have hurt. Yes, go cry in the corner.

However, more importantly, this article in Discover Magazine revealed the details of this interesting experiment.

There were two groups involved in the King’s College experiment and both were assigned a simple IQ test. The control group is allowed to concentrate on the task at hand. The experiment group on the other hand had to respond to emails and IM’s whilst completing the test.

Naturally, the experiment group performed worse, with 10 points lower than the control group. Contrast this to doing the IQ test while drunk  or high which leads to a 8 point reduction.

Thus, the conclusion that multitasking lowers your IQ more than smoking pot. LOL.

Nonetheless I’m sure you can see the flaw in drawing such a conclusion from the experiment. (If you can’t then… stop multitasking lol)

One’s IQ isn’t actually decreased by multitasking. Rather, multitasking has an adverse effect on one’s ability to concentrate and perform tasks. Well, duh.

The moral of the story is you shouldn’t believe the conclusions of so-called “scientific studies” until you’ve examined facts properly. This is called critical thinking.

The other moral is that we shouldn’t multitask when we have something important to do!!

So shut down your MSN, Facebook, email browsers, etc.

No, it’s not an online browser game involving Banglas. But it does involve plenty of testicles, literally.

I was seated and well stoned at an isolated bus stop in Potong Pasir when all of a sudden some woman approaches me. She has a thick foreign accent and appears to be from a nearby ASEAN country.

Woman: Ehh help! Got man he open his pants at me. And then he follow me…

Standing at the corridor of a nearby shop was a Bangla man. I gave him the compulsory ‘what la, dei??’ gesture.

Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz demonstrating how assholes like myself do it.

His response was to jiggle his somewhat covered balls at me like they were some magical anti-protagonist talismans. Wattafak.

Okay, an aside for you ladies. Us guys, although we’re the same species as you… we tend to lean a little closer to our gorilla cousins.

Thus the primitive ball jiggling display of aggression had to be countered by another primitive display of gorilla aggression. It’s all National Geographic, baby.

I stood up with my most cholo-like lean while giving the Bangla a mean stare. In more colloquial terms, it’s called ’stare cock’.

You anthropology majors probably know this as the ‘aggressive stare down’.

It says only one thing: ‘Imma fuck you up so bad your kids gonna come out looking like me.’

The Bangla flasher, recognizing that my cajones were larger than his, backed off.

Fight averted. Relief swept over me. Beating a Bangla worker to a state not unlike Ramly burger patties in the middle of Potong Pasir is not my idea of fun.

Ramly burger is fucking delicious by the way.

Anddd back to the story. The woman thus returns to her establishment. Moments later, a  man (her husband as I found out) came walking from her shop.

Man: Where that bastard go?

I point, he goes. She follows and tries to weigh him down like a useless anchor. It’s the stuff of cliched Channel 5 dramas.

Ultimately, she fails and he goes trudging off into the alleys. She thus rants to me about her situation. I find out she’s from Myanmar. She doesn’t want to involve the police. I warn her that her hubby beating the intestines out of the flasher is only going to complicate things.

Myanmar, for you dolts who failed geography.

Speak of the devil he returns wielding a large stick. He may or may not have made flasher-flavoured Ramly burger patties with aforementioned stick.

He thanks me for helping his wife out. By the tone of his voice, no burger meat was produced.

Darn. I love violence.