To Meely dearie, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Shall not mention your age since you dont wanna admit it. But then again, since when has it actually mattered? Growing a year older every time doesnt really seem to affect you mentally anyway, does it? Haha! Nevertheless, hope your life will be less of a headache and alot sweeter for you from now on! Still cant celebrate it with you this year, but fret not! I promise you a blast from next year onwards (provided you still treat us as your gal pals and bother to set aside some time for us)!!! Love you always!

P.S: And in case Jm forgot/forgets to convey my msg, my share of the present is NOT VALID for use in the following activities: Mahjong, Arcade and other similar vices that DO NOT aid your studies. Pls take note!



***


Anyway, today's scenario was damn hilarious...

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Characters:
Debbie, Miki, Eddy, Bryan, me.

Time:
12ish; end of class

Scene:
All of us seated on the floor outside Sam's store waiting for him to come back from lunch so we could return our camera equipment. Talking about some random stuff until we got to the subject of the languages. Suddenly Miki asks if we any of us knows Mandarin (Only Debbie and i; Bryan, despite being Singaporean, studied Malay while Eddy's Hongky so he doesnt speak it either). Miki then takes out her Mandarin assignment from her bag and shows it to Debbie and me. It contained a list of words like 布丁，三文鱼，沙发，巴士 etc. and she asked us to translate it into English for her.


Me: (pointing to 布丁) This is pudding!

Debbie: (pointing to 三文鱼) This one is sardine rite?

Me: Haha, no la...its salmon...

Debbie: Oops. Hahahaha, as you can tell, i've forgotten all my chinese already. Those years of learning chinese is primary school were more than enough for me!

Me: Ya! Tell me about it man!

(Me thinking to myself: Wa, i thought only Singaporeans felt this way. Looks like Malaysians also tak boleh tahan sia!)

Eddy suddenly joins in.

Eddy: O! This i can do!

Debbie: Eh, ya ah..he knows Cantonese so he can read Chinese words too!

(Eddy starts writing down all the English translations immediately and is done in less than a minute)

Miki: (Complaining) I dont understand! Mandarin is so weird! For Japanese we have kitagana, kanji and (cant recall whats the other one she said) because speaking and writing are different. But for Chinese, theres only 1 form and its so confusing cos the words dont mean the same thing!

Debbie and me: (puzzled) Huh?

(Miki demonstrates by writing the words '馬上')

Debbie: (excitedly) This means 'immediately'!

Me: (nodding) Yeah!

Miki: Yeah, but its so weird cos if i read it in Japanese, 馬 is 'horse' and 上 is 'up'. So 馬上 means the 'top of the horse'?

(Debbie and i instantly turned to look at each other and then burst out in a huge guffaw, slowing down to a stop only because of our depleting energy)

Debbie: (nudging me) Hey! How come i never thought of that before ah?! Hahahahaha...

Me: Ya! Me too man! Hahahahahaha...

(We continue laughing while Eddy and Bryan also chuckle in the background. Miki still has a blur look on her face)

Miki: (pointing to 三文鱼) This one too! In Japanese it means '3 lines fish'! Why is it 'salmon'?

(Debbie and i burst out laughing again)
.
.
.

(Miki then points to 巴士)

Miki (to Eddy): And also, why is 'bus' 巴士? 'Ba' (巴) is like a big desire and 'shi' (士) means something like a knight. So a knight with a great desire is a bus?!

Eddy has a stumped look on his face while the rest of us surrendered and erupted into laughter one last time.

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Boy, this is some damn good amusement to usher in the end of the week.