i am a product of singapore..

more than 22 years of indoctrination and social conditioning has rubbed off me in more ways than one..

my brit colleague has been hard at work drawing a map of the UK with nice pictures for certain chosen parts of the UK (like he drew the welsh flag, a haley coo - highland cow - the beatles for liverpool, etc), and finally put up his finished product on one of the doors of the room we're in today. and i was jealous cos that door doesnt have anything singaporean on it, at which he suggested that i put up some singlish phrases.

which is a really great idea - i'll elaborate more on that later - that i have undertaken with much enthusiasm. however, i was going to do a 'title sheet', and when i read out what i wanted to write - "Singlish: the colourful world of English in Singapore" - he laughed out loud and it then occurred to me just how TOTALLY Singaporean campaign-like that sounds!

i'd previously put up quite a few singapore posters, and we had a good laugh at the somewhat cheesy and exaggerated taglines on the postcards - like "a city with its head in the future and soul in the past" or something like that - but i'm doing this sort of cheesy stuff myself!

urgh.

i think i'm going to stick with it though. haha. i suspect that despite the cheesiness and his amusement, he thinks that it has a somewhat nice ring to it, and i cant really think of anything better than that either (that's unfortunately how unimaginative i am). and i'm guessing that it would work rather well in the japanese context too, because goodness knows that only the japanese can read really corny stuff and think that it's somewhat cool. haha. but still, if anyone has good suggestions as to what i can write as a nice 'title', please let me know before monday, as that's when i'll resume my little project :)

well now about singlish. considering that he's now the person i talk to the most (and i know what all of you are thinking about: sorry, he's taken, and i have no romantic interest in him either) - we're both working everyday at the same school and the room is like a private office cum pantry for both of us - my singlish and singaporean accent is slowly reappearing in bits and pieces ever so occasionally. and he's really good at languages too - he knows french, some japanese, italian, spanish and icelandic (he did study abroad in iceland for about a half a year or more) - and is interested in them too, so i've been teaching him a bit of singlish too.

i realise that i've talked about this before, but he's REALLY REALLY amused by some of the phrases like "dont talk cock" and "itchy backside" and "vomit blood", and he says all these with such a RIDICULOUS accent that i laugh non-stop when i hear him say all of them. haha. i have at least 1 term to teach him some proper singlish intonation, and i hope i succeed. it will be sweet success to corrupt someone who speaks Queen's English - and he speaks the middle/upper middle class London accent to boot. but i told him that i should make a recording of him trying to speak singlish as a sure-fire laughing 'potion'.

maybe i should bring my mp3 recorder into school tomorrow and do some recording. and if i do, i'll post it on youtube or something so that all of you can hear it too! :D