This post is part of a series of posts on books and movies about the legend of Robin Hood. It discusses Robin Hood by Henry Gilbert.
See also:
This post is part of a series of posts on books and movies about the legend of Robin Hood. It discusses the 2006 television show.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/robin-hood-series-1/id275354656
See also:
Singapore is not a great place for book bargains. However, I have had some luck with book sales that travel around and set up in shopping mall atriums. (Atria. Happy now, Firefox spellcheck?)
If I were the roadrunner, this would be the perfect trap for the coyote to set up. I would fall right in it.
Now, no doubt I have some books that are pretty useless to me. In fact, you could say that at any given time, all my books except for about three of them are useless to me. Some, like the ones written in Thai, Greek, Korean, Arabic or Burmese, are likely to remain useless to me forever.
Still. Still, I ask you. Of what possible use is a book on ROCKHOUNDING IN IDAHO to anyone in Singapore? I mean, I love rocks—and books, obviously—and I fully understand the notion of armchair travel. And yet. This book. It cannot help me find rocks in Idaho as long as I am physically in Singapore.
Am I right? Seriously, this book is never going to sell…
I mean, for the same money, you’d clearly be better off with Daytrips from Washington, DC.
These multi-lingual ‘danger’ signs are famous. They’re everywhere. I had to have a photo of one.
Bonus!
A sign displaying an arrow… with instructions in words in case you don’t know what to do when you see an arrow.
at Wu Tai Shan Buddhist Temple on West Coast Road
At the entrances to the restrooms in Clementi Mall, why is the same shape being used to represent a mustache and a woman’s upper lip?
The two English as it is Broken books shown above contain photos of signs and responses to people who’ve written in to a weekly column in The Straits Times with questions about English usage.
(For a listing of all four books and then some, see the earlier post, Books on Singapore English.)
The quality of the answers in the two books has been disparaged, but I think most of the explicit explanations are informative even if they are not expressed perfectly.
Below are an example answer I like and one I don’t.
This is the lid to a tower of blank CDs.
I did a double take when I first opened the package because I would have thought ‘unlock’ would be the opposite of ‘lock’ and ‘close’ would be the opposite of ‘open’ (assuming these are all verbs).
It would be hard to overstate the extent to which I hate mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are deadly serious. But this banner is still funny.
For one thing, that warrior, with his Roman helmet, looks really out of place in Southeast Asia. The text at the bottom takes the cake, though.
It says:
SILENT WAR. FIGHT DENGUE. SAVE LIFE
Lists that aren’t parallel are a pet peeve of mine. Lists should be all nouns or all verbs. Here we’ve got a noun and two imperatives. Sigh.
Furthermore, that ‘life’ should be ‘lives’. The fact that it isn’t testifies to the frequency of singular/plural errors in Singapore.
And then finally, there’s no punctuation after the last item of the list!
I recommend:
WAGE WAR · FIGHT DENGUE · SAVE LIVES
Now I’m totally with you, out-of-place Roman centurion.
I admit to a level of interest in the vehicles of Singapore that I cannot easily explain. Arguably the focus of this strange fascination is the fleet of about forty numbered ice trucks belonging to JM Ice, I suppose because the trucks are very distinctive and colorful.
I kind of assume that each JM Ice truck has its own territory (truck 37 seems to hang out in Chinatown). The ones I haven’t seen are probably ones that go to parts of Singapore I’m not usually in. The highest number I’ve seen is 38. Sometimes I get photos, but it’s hard when the trucks are on the move!
Below is a record of the ice trucks I’ve seen (including a couple of trucks belonging to JM Ice’s competitors).
