Basically, this book is full of meaningless trivia on a subject I happen to like. It was amusing but not deep or scholarly.
I learned, among other things, that:
“blimey” is a contraction of “God blind me!” (60)
“biro” is pronounced “by-row” and refers to the kind of ballpoint pen invented by Lazlo Biro (60)
to express disbelief in German, say “My hamster is scrubbing the floor.” (88)
When and Why I Read It
Bought it cheap in Colorado.
Genre: nonfiction (reference / language)
Date started / date finished: 08-Jul-16 to 17-Jul-16
Length: 202 pages
ISBN: 9780785825289 (hardcover)
Originally published in: 1995
Amazon link: Do’s and Taboos of Using English around the World
However, “Don’t leave your handphone & wallet behind”, assuming we find ‘handphone’ acceptable, sounds fine, since ‘handphone’ and ‘wallet’ can easily be considered a pair of items that would be forgotten together.
“Record shows 50% of the reported lost cases in taxi are Handphones and Wallets” on the other hand, has several problems…
I would rewrite that as follows.
Records show that 50% of the items reported lost in taxis are mobile phones and wallets.
On the other hand, I like the ampersand on this half of the sign much better. Even if it is crowding the descender on that letter ‘y’.
Although writing is a timeless sort of endeavor, the technology we use for writing and research has changed a lot in recent decades, so much of the discussion of process in this book is laughably out of date. On the other hand, there’s some good information here about the internal mechanics of story.
Genre: Non-fiction (writing)
Date started / date finished: 7-Jul-16 to 13-Jul-16
Length: 258 pages
ISBN: 0898793475 (paperback)
Originally published in: 1968/1989
Amazon link: Writing for Children and Teenagers (only available used)
Personally, when I’m critiquing fiction, I find it very, very difficult to evaluate things like character, plot, and pacing if there are a lot of distracting technical errors.
One easily fixable error I often see is this one.
Whenever I see this mistake, I feel as if I have been stabbed in the eye.
EDIT (2025-08-26): I have just learned from my husband Siqi that the first example, with a period inside the quotation marks, is correct in Chinese. That might explain why I was seeing people write that way in Singapore!
From the Wachowski siblings who created pop-culture touchstone The Matrix (1999) as well as personal favorite Speed Racer (2008) comes Cloud Atlas (2012), a clever and ambitious positive spin on the novel of the same name by David Mitchell. I like it in some ways but not others.
It’s not a movie that can be easily summarized; it spans six different timelines that are tied together in surprising ways.
I’ve now watched the movie three times: once on a tiny screen on the plane, where much of the subtlety went straight past me; again via iTunes on a laptop screen; this time via iTunes on a huge TV shortly after reading the book.
For more on what I noticed about it this time (including SPOILERS), and ways the movie differs from the book, keep reading.
I was not particularly optimistic about Rise of the Guardians. But I should have trusted Dreamworks. They have made the best clap-if-you-believe-in-fairies movie I have ever seen. I thought I was over the whole childlike-holiday-spirit movie ethos, but apparently not. The movie was amazing. How on earth did it not make a profit? It was way, way better than the creepy adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel Hogfather, which covers a lot of the same ground. There are also maybe some echoes of Epic here, but Epic wasn’t nearly as good.
Apparently, Rise of the Guardians (like that weird, weird mess, Meet the Robinsons) is the brainchild of writer William Joyce. Oh, hey, wait, Epic is his too, actually. Huh. He must really have a thing for hummingbirds.
Anyway, the premise of Rise of the Guardians is that a lonely magical teen named Jack Frost is called in to help four others (Santa aka Nicholas St. North, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Sandman) who guard the children of the world because the Bogeyman, Pitch Black, is trying to gain power again by making them afraid. If he succeeds, he could destroy belief, and with it, the guardians themselves, along with all hope and happiness. But Jack is just a carefree punk who doesn’t know where he came from. What could he possibly do?
The red paper band in the photo says “Xinjiang Specialty”. The part of the red paper band that you can’t see in this photo says “Selected Hami Melon”. Wikipedia informs me that this is a type of muskmelon named after a city in—you guessed it—Xinjiang, China.
It’s like a cantaloupe (cantaloupes are also muskmelons), but a bit more oblong like a foo—like an American football, that is. Footballs generally being spheres. I think rugby balls are this shape? Whatever. Here’s another photo.
I find the shape slightly disconcerting. It’s as if someone squeezed the sides together.
It seemed crunchier than cantaloupes are, in my experience; the texture was more like that of a honeydew melon. This could just have been a particularly unripe one, though. I mean, hey, what do I know? On the other hand, according to the internet, it’s supposed to be crunchy. Anyhow, it tasted good! That’s what’s important here.
These things are apparently also called ‘snow melons’. I guess it gets cold in Xinjiang.
So, what’s a ‘rock melon’? The orange melon sold everywhere in Singapore at fruit juice stalls is invariably called rock melon. As far as I can tell, ‘rock melon’ is just another name for cantaloupe/cantalope, and whatever you want to call it, it tastes great with prosciutto.
If you think you’ve learned enough about melons for one day, think again. Botanically, they’re vegetables. (They’re related to cucumbers, squash and gourds.) So that whole “what is a tomato, really” debate… you can have it about melons, too.
Also, in case you haven’t stumbled into the parts of the internet that explain how humans have for centuries interfered with the genetics of food crops to make food more delicious, have a look at this article about the watermelon in an oil still life painting from the 17th century.
In The Legend of Tarzan, the fascinating, civilized man-beast who’s at home in the jungle and gets the anachronistically spunky girl is buried in a narrative tailor-made to showcase a whole roster of white men’s offenses.
I mean, really… what is this movie about? Because it seemed to me to be, start to finish, about The Evils of Western Civilization.
My advice? Go and watch the other CGI jungle animal movie about a human raised by animals. Mowgli’s story doesn’t even demonize the villain.
For a list of other vaguely related fictional works I prefer along with more on this movie (including SPOILERS) and a bit on the actual history of the Congo, keep reading.
