Remember 'The Rock' to remember 'perkarangan'

In Malay, there is a difference between 'pekarangan' and 'perkarangan'. The first word means 'halaman rumah' (the backyard or court yard of a house) while the latter carries the meaning of 'having to do with batu karang (coral). 'Perkarangan' invariably goes with 'kawasan' to form 'kawasan perkarangan' (coral area).

I usually teach my students to differentiate the two by asking them to remember 'The Rock' (one of the famous wrestlers) which in Malay is 'batu'. This is because 'r' which can be linked to 'The Rock' for easy remembrance appears in 'perkarangan'. By remembering this, students should have no problem telling the two words apart.

Let us look at how to make sentences with these two words.
1 Aminah sering mengekalkan kebersihan di pekarangan rumahnya. [Aminah often maintains the cleanliness of her court yard.]
2 Para pelacong terpesona oleh keindahan kawasan perkarangan di Pulau Redang in Malaysia. [Tourists are fascinated by the beauty of coral areas at Redang Island in Malaysia.]

Use your electronic devices often

I have this experience of not using my electronic devices such as laser disk player and VCD player only to find that they cannot function anymore. On the other hand, the DVD writer that I bought and used very often is still kicking and providing good service to me. It just proves that if an electronic device is left idle for too long, the chances are it will refuse to work when we want to.

The VCD player that I own right now was the third one I had bought. The earlier two could not function after some time because I seldom played VCDs with it. The moral is use it very often and every part of it will be functioning well until it reaches its life span.

Rafting down Pahang River

Have you been on a raft before.

Well, I have. During my stay in Jerantut, I had the chance of rafting on the Pahang River with my colleagues who taught in the same with me.

One day, Tan Pek Seng, a temporary teacher told us that the aborigines had left a raft afloat after having transported the rattan from the forest to Jerantut for sale. Usually, they would leave their raft in Jerantut and went back by bus.

We planned to raft down the Pahang River. As a safety measure for me, I wore a life-jacket because I was the only one who was not good at swiiming.

On the way down Pahang River, we could see birds and iguanas all along. Pek Seng navigated the raft with the help of a bamboo pole.

It was quite risking sitting or standing on a makeshift gadget like this. I dared not imagine what would happen if the raft were to disintegrate. After an hour's slow journey we finally arrived at the nearest small town and went ashore. Then we went back to Jerantut by bus.

Thus ended the memorable journey on a raft down Pahang River

Many, much and a lot of

Students often get confused as to the correct usage of 'many', 'much' and 'a lot of'.

In this post, I am going to explain how these three words are used.

'Many' is used to state the number for concrete things or things we can see and count and we do not want to specify the exact number. Hence we can say that 'There are many cows in the field.' and 'Many people can be seen exercising in the botanical garden.'

As for 'much', it is used to describe things in great amount. For example, we can say 'There is not much sugar in the bottle.' and 'I don't carry much money with me.' However, the nouns after 'much' is uncountable.

'A lot of' can be used for countable and uncountable nouns. Look at the following sentences to see what I mean.
1 There are a lot of apples sold in this stall. [apples are countable]
2 I spent a lot of time trying to sort my CDs out. [time is uncountable]

Tomorrow is Duan Wu Jie again

The sight 'chang' or rice dumpling reminded me of Duan Wu Jie which is tomorrow. As we don't have many members in the house, we just bought some changs for praying purposes.

Actually chang has its history in China. Once there was a Prime Minister who was very loyal to the Emperor in China but he was scandalised by another mandarin officer of high ranking. His idea for improvement of the state fell on death ears as the Emperor listed to the other mandarin officer.

The Prime Minister in question was Qu Yuan and later he jumped into Milo River ending his life. When the people heard of his death, they quickly stuff rice into bamboo leaves and tied them before dumping them into the Milo River in the hope that the fishes would spare the corpse of Qu Yuan after eating the rice wrapped in bamboo leaves. This food was later known as zhongzi in Mandarin or chang in Hokkien. The people also made a lot of din by beating drums to scare the fishes away as so to keep the dead body of Qu Yuan intact.

So much for the legend of Duan Wu Jie or Chang Festival.

How do you key in data when your keyboard fails to function?

I was in the midst of keying in something when my key failed to function. Whatever I typed did not register on the screen. I disconnected the keyboard and reinserted and still the stubborn keyboard betrayed me.

Luckily my mouse still functioned as usual. Then it dawned on me that I had to make use of my mouse to do the 'keying in'. This was what I did to 'key in' what I needed for a document which I needed to e-mail to my friend urgently and I could not get the keyboard replaced as it was near midnight.

First I opened any word file from which I would look for the letters and numbers needed for my task. For example, when I needed to key in the word 'please', I would search for the the letters p, l, e, a, s and e and copy each one by one because it might not appear in a single word and paste it to where I wanted it to appear. My mouse came in handy. All I did was to highlight a letter, right click my mouse and click 'copy', then bring the mouse cursor to where I wanted to key in and right click again and click paste. Although it was time-consuming, I managed to 'key in' what I wanted.

I hope this tip will benefit readers who happen to be in the same shoes as me some day.

How to use 'tentang' and 'terhadap'

Malay has its own grammatical rules. Some users of Malay often use 'terhadap' (towards) when 'tentang' (concerning) should be used.

In this post, I will deal with these two words and their correct usage.

Briefly, the kata sendi nama (preposition) 'terhadap' is used in front of 'nama konkrit' (concrete nouns) and 'tentang' is used in front of 'nama abstrak' (abstract nouns). Perhaps the following sentences will make this clear to readers.

1 Kerajaan akan mengambil tindakan keras terhadap mereka yang terlibat dalam vandalisme.
[The government will take harsh action against those involved in vandalism.]
The pronoun 'mereka' is visible and tangible.

2 Sebagai ibu bapa, kita harus mengambil berat tentang kebajikan anak-anak kita.
[As parents, we should be concerned about our children's welfare.]
The noun 'kebajikan' (welfare)' is abstract as it is invisible and intangible.

So much for today's dosage of Malay grammar.

How to use ‘being’ to replace verbs-to-be

For variety in our writing, we can always make use of ‘being’ to replace verbs-to-be such as ‘is’, ‘are’, ‘was’ and ‘were’ in our sentences. In this post I am going to show readers how to do it.

Let us look at how we can write the same sentence using ‘being’ to replace verb-to-be in a sentence. These are the examples:

1 When I was there, I felt very happy.
Being there made me very happy.

2 As I am slim, they like me.
Being slim makes them like me.

3 When we are hungry we eat whatever is offered to us.
Being hungry, we eat whatever is offered to us.

4 He is rich and he enjoys a good life.
Being rich enables him to enjoy a good life.

I hope readers will try their hands at making two sentences of the same meaning as I have shown above.

Teaching Science is Fun

Although I am now engaged in language teaching, namely English and Malay, I was originally trained as an Integrated Science teacher. I enjoyed being a science teacher because I got to see my pupils having fun doing the experiments themselves. Initially, Malaysia adopted Integrated Science where students had a chance to do the experiments according to worksheets, write down the outcome of them and write out conclusions. They have hands-on throughout the three years of this curriculum.

Even a thermometer fascinates a Form 1 student. They will be measuring temperatures of water being heated and those of liquid being cooled down. Sometimes they fight over the use of thermometers that many of them drop and break to pieces. They are usually asked to pay for the damage as a way to reduce breakage.

There is one experiment when I ask a volunteer to place his hand on the dome of a Van de Graaff Generator to see the working of static electricity. The students' hair will be standing on ends just like me in the photo which I showed them. My sister had the photo and she kept it as remembrance. They will always remember this experiment.

I also enjoyed cutting out live cow's eyes to show my students the various parts of the eye. This act also backfired on me when kamma caught up with me. You can read about this in my earlier posts under the label 'Religious Matter'.

The pin-hole camera which the students have made really makes them understand better the principle that light travels in straight lines.

All in all, both the teacher and his students enjoy Science if experiments are allowed to be carried out, as the saying goes 'I hear and I forget, I see and I remember but I do and I understand.'

How to copy large files to DVD

In my earlier post, I taught readers how to copy files larger than 2G to DVD,that is using INCD. This method is troublesome when we need to access the files in another computer with no INCD installed. Of course if you have INCD Viewer, you can still read the files even if you don't have INCD installed.

I am going to teach readers another way of copy files larger than 2G which can't be handled by Nero under usual normal file-copying. You need to download a software named Burning Largebackup To Dvd which can be downloaded at http://www.filefactory.com/file/agfa49d.

After installing this software, you select the files larger than 2G to be copied to your DVD. The program will split the files for you and if you required two DVD's, it will help you to copy to both disks. Furthermore, it has a restore program to rejoin your files when you need it later on.

I have tried the software and it works.

Happy copying large files using Burning Largebackup To Dvd.

Mastering a language through the dictionary

How do you spend you free time? Well, I don't really have much free time as I seem to be occupied with doing something connected with my job. However, when I am really free, I like to read the dictionary. Somehow, I will come across new words in English or Malay and I will try to remember them and make them items in my vocabulary.

Reading the dictionary is one of the ways to master a language. I have heard of a Bio-chemist who mastered the Chinese language through reading a Chinese dictionary.

Hence, I encourage those who are interested in any language to make full use of the dictionary to improve their mastery of the language.

What is the difference between ‘throw at’ and ‘throw to’?

Prepositions play an important role in the English language. Different prepositions used after the same word can carry totally different meaning. In this post, I shall tell readers the difference between ‘throw at’ and ‘throw to’.

When we use ‘throw at’, we are sending something which leaves our hand at the target with the aim of hurting it. For example, if we say ‘I usually throw a stone at the dog who is following me to drive it away.’ you intend to hurt it so that it will go away for fear of being injured further.

However, you are passing something to a person in the distance by throwing something in his direction, reminding him to catch it. In this case, you will say, “I am throwing an apple to you now. Please catch it.”

So much for ‘throw at’ and ‘throw at’ with their shade of meaning explained.

It is a matter of life and death

It is a matter of life and death. This is what we often hear people say in times of urgency. Have you wondered whether life and death matter to us?

The study of religion often brings in life and death. In Buddhism, for example, the whole teaching is about birth and death with karma being its essence. If we really understand the teachings of Buddhism we will not be afraid of death because we are prepared for it.

In Mahayanist Buddhism, there is a short-cut whereby a follower of Buddha can chant the name of Amitabha Buddha sincerely, believe in the existence of the Realm of Eastern Bliss, and vow to go there after death. Once he or she is there, he or she is in a very conducive environment to continue his practice until Buddhahood is realised. Of course one has to do good and abstain from evil all the time before death to fulfill the requirement to have a place in the Realm of Eastern Bliss.

‘Main’ and ‘Mending’ in English and Malay

It is interesting to learn that a word of the same spelling can be pronounced differently in different languages. From the study of English and Malay, I have found several words of this nature.

I shall explain two such words in this post.

The first word is ‘main’. In English it means ‘chief’ or ‘important’. However in Malay is means ‘play’. They are pronounced differently too. In English, ‘main’ is articulated as ‘may n’ or ‘mein’ but it Malay it is pronounced as ‘mar in’.
An example of a sentence in Malay is ‘Jangan main di sini.’ [Don’t play here.]
We can construct a sentence in English such as ‘Rice is the main crop grown here.’

Another word in this category is ‘mending’ which is pronounced as ‘man ding’ in English and ‘mern ding’ in Malay. This English word means ‘patching or repairing’ whereas its Malay meaning is ‘it is better’.
You can make a sentence such as ‘The cobbler is mending my shoes.’ in English.
In Malay, the sentence can be ‘Jika saudara ingin mengetahui lebih lanjut tentang ikan ini, mending datanglah ke rumah saya.’ [If you wish to know more about this fish, it is better for you to come to my house.’

Proof reading counts in our blogs

We often miss the mistakes we have made. That explains why we need someone else to read our scripts to spot the mistakes, be they grammatical errors or spelling mistakes. However, we still can detect our mistakes if we read whatever we have written once or twice. This is true because when I reread my original posts in my pocket pc I managed to spot one or two mistakes in some of the posts, mostly agreement of subject and verbs which I stress many times must not happen if we reread our script carefully.

As my post is of daily basis, at least that is what I demand myself to do, I sometimes do not read and post my daily post first the moment I have finished whatever I want to pen. Whenever I happen to spot any mistake I will edit it. I feel that it is our duty to make our posts error-free in terms of grammar and usage of words and phrases.

Teacher's Day

Today is Teacher’s Day in Malaysia. Although I have retired from being a government teacher, I am still doing a teaching job as a private tutor. Hence Teacher’s Day still means something to me.

When I was teaching in Sek Men St Theresa in Sungai Petani, Kedah I used to look forward to this day. I supposed all my colleagues had the same mind-set too. On this day, each of the classes would be holding class parties and among those invited would be their teachers. One particular class where Koh Choon Hong was a student was our favourite stopover. We enjoyed savouring the restaurant curried chicken prepared by his father, the owner of a restaurant there.

Besides food, the teachers had the chance to feast their eyes on the variety show put up by students on stage. There would be students singing their hearts out with songs to entertain the teachers. Traditional Chinese, Malay and Indian dances were quite entertaining too. We could never imagine how they could come up with such an excellent performance given the short period of time for preparation. The sketches put us in stitches for quite some time too.

The best part of the day was that teachers and pupils alike thoroughly enjoyed themselves playing games such as football, table-tennis and volley ball. The cheering team usually favoured the teachers, to our surprise

Mastering a language needs constant practice

From my own experience, I find that to master a language, one needs to practise using the language constantly, preferably every day. As I am trilingually educated, I can read, write and speak Mandarin, Malay and English.

When I was teaching in Jerantut, I got the chance of using the three languages every now and then. This is because I was teaching Integrated Science in both media of instruction which means I would speak or teach in English in one class and conducted the Science lessons in English in another class. In the staff room, there was one Chinese teacher who spoke to me in Mandarin only though I spoke to most of the other teachers in English or Malay. Under such circumstances, I had the chance to practise speaking three languages almost every day.

I was renting a house with two other housemates. Both of them did not buy any reading materials. As for me, I bought Galaxie (an English magazine), Dewan Masyarakat (a Malay magazine). On Sundays, I would buy newspapers in three languages, namely Nanyang Siang Pau (in Chinese), New Straits Times (in English) and Berita Minggu or Mingguan Malaysia (in Malay). I feel that we need to read newspapers, magazines and books in the languages we wish to master to be able to achieve our aim.

Cool down DVD disc to rectify playing problem

Have you ever experienced your video images shaking and slow to move on the screen when you are playing a DVD disc for more than one and a half hour? When this happens I usually try to pause and play alternatively in the hope that the situation will improve. However I fail most of the time. The same disc will allow me to play without a hitch on my DVD-ROM. It shows that it is not the disc that is at fault.

Later I discovered that if you eject the disc and let the disc cool down before reinserting it into you DVD player, the shaking and slow-moving of images will disappear. My DVD player can remember where I last stop playing. Hence when I insert the DVD disc again, it will play again from where I left off without the above problem anymore.

Try this trick to see whether it works with your DVD player.

Using synonyms in writing

Using synonyms is the easiest a way adding variety of style to your writing. Hence, learners of English should make it a point to know as many synonyms as possible so that they will come in handy when we need them in our writing.

I will give an example here. One of the connectors that we use very often is ‘say’. The words similar in meaning or which can be used to replace this word are ‘utter’, ‘articulate’, ‘voice’, ‘state’, ‘mention’, ‘murmur’, and ‘whisper’.

Let us look at a paragraph using the above words:

One day, when I paid a visit to John, he said that I should have gone more often to his house. I ignored what he had uttered because whenever I wanted to voice my opinion against we will be engaging in verbal war. Thus, I usually mention this to my wife in the hope that she will excuse me for not visiting her cousin. My better half loves to whisper to me when we talk in public and sometimes I miss most of what she has murmured. She will feel offended and give me her cold shoulder there and then until I offer my apologies to her.

Give me a chance

Whenever I give a warning that some punishment will be administered to a misbehaved student, the chances are he will say, "Give me a chance, sir. I will not do it again."

If the boy really regrets his action and you forgive him, he will change for the better. On the other hand, for those students who only pay lip service to their promise, excusing them once will make them ever bolder to create more trouble for you. Hence, teachers have to use his discretion whether to give a certain pupil a chance to rectify his wrong.

In real life situation, a traffic offender may plead with the policeman on duty to give him a chance by not writing down his violation of the traffic rules. It all depends on whether the traffic rule violator has the will to change for the better. Otherwise he will be flouting the law again if he is given a chance for the first time.

In short, "Give me a chance" has become a avenue for one to escape punishment or reprimand.

The order of adjectives

In English, there are rules regulating its usage. The use of adjectives is of no exception too. If you can remember this order of the types of adjectives, you should have no problems using this part of speech.

Remember this order: opinion , dimension, age, shape, colour, origin, material + nouns

Another thing to bear in mind is you should not use more than three adjectives before of a noun.

Here are some examples:
1 opinion, dimension, age + noun
A good, big, new car.

2 shape, colour, material + noun
A round red rubber ball

3 opinion, colour, origin
A beautiful yellow Japanese doll.

4 age, colour, origin + noun
An old blue British car

I am all for Mother's Day

Today is Mother’s Day. I wish all mothers a very Happy Mother’s Day.

Although Mother’s Day is of western origin, it is really significant to all human beings. Without mothers we would not have been what we are. Their love towards their children transcend all things. Have you heard of a mother who turned Hercules when she was able to lift a car that nearly ran over her child? Her love and her will to save her son had produced hormones which made her so strong that she had the strength to push the car away so that it could not her child.

In Confucianism, mother is considered the most important person in a person’s life. A son has to show filial piety towards his mother at all times. There are a lot of stories showing this. In one story, one son warmed the seat for her mother before she was asked to take her seat in winter.

In Buddhism, a person who does not show filial piety to his mother will not progress much in his practice towards Buddhahood.

All the above examples show how great mothers are and hence children should do all they can to care for their mothers and make them happy all the time.

Some thoughts I have for Wesak Day

Today is Wesak Day – a very important day for all Buddhists. It is a day to commemorate the birthday and the attainment of Buddhahood by Gautama Buddha 4000 years ago. It was on a full moon in the month of May that Gautama Buddha became a Buddha, the enlightened one. After that, Buddha started to preach his teachings for the next 49 years.

Basically, Buddha tells us that all of us have Buddha nature but we cannot realize it because of three things. These are avarice or greed, hatred and delusion. Suffering begins when we cling to these. Hence we should try to get rid of the three evils to attain Buddhahood. It is easier said than done. Anyway, we can at least lessen our suffering if we try as far as possible to stay away from greed, hatred and delusion.

We can bid farewell to avarice by practicing doing dana or giving donation. People who donate like to share what they own. They are not greedy and are willing to part with their possession to help the needy.

Hatred can be obliterated if we practise loving kindness. Love all beings, including your enemies. If we can radiate love, there is no place for hatred.

Delusion can be got rid of is we practice detachment. We often suffer because we are so attached to things or loved ones that once they are destroyed or gone, we begin to feel sad. Buddhists often offer flowers to the Buddha by placing them in front of a Buddha statue. What is the significance of this? Actually the flower signifies impermanence as it will wither as days go by. Nothing in this world is permanent. Let us take water as an example. The molecules in it keep moving all the time. Some will acquire enough energy to become vapour. Thus water in liquid form is not permanent. It turns gaseous when conditions are ripe. In short we should not attach to things and love ones too much so as to avoid suffering.

So much for some thoughts I have for Wesak Day.

He concocted medicine for me

Whom do you turn to when you are sick? Well, you will see a doctor.

When I was teaching in Jerantut, Pahang, the person I went to see was Mr Tan, the Hospital Assistant when I fell sick. He acted as a doctor and dispenser. I remembered how he concocted a cough mixture which helped to cure my stubborn cough. For running nose, I received piritons from him with some vitamin C tablets. Mr Tan was very friendly with the teachers.

As he stayed in the quarters near the clinic, we sometimes went to see him after office hours, and he obliged us when we asked for medicine when we were sick. There was not much red tape in a remote place like Jerantut then. He could get liquid medicine or tablets for us as he had the key to the store room where he kept his medicine. In those days, HA's attended to patients and dispensed medicines when doctors who only came on certain days were absent.

The different meanings of 'presently'

My students keep asking me the real meaning of 'presently'. In order to tell the meaning correctly, we have to look at the sentence to guess whether an article is written using standard English or American English. Of course, it will be difficult to tell if the writer uses a combination of British English and American English. Having said this, I will explain what 'presently' means.

In standard English or British English, 'presently' means 'soon'. An example is shown below:
Presently, there will be a lot of people queuing up to buy the latest Nokia mobile phones.

However in American English, 'presently' means 'at present'. The sentence below is an example of this usage:
Presently, I am doing a research on the side-effects of this drug.

Hence, we have to see where this word occurs to ascertain its meaning.

Green is soothing to the eyes

Green is soothing to the eyes. Being so, I make it a point to look at the grass and leaves as I go for my daily morning walk at Bukit Dumbar Garden. Sometimes, the dew can still be visible when I am doing my morning stroll.

I have heard of one retired teacher who is all for green. He wears green shirt, green pants and green underwear too. What I don't understand is he wears a green hat. As he is a Chinese, he should not have worn a green hat because in Chinese expression "wearing a green hat" is having a wife who has an affair with another man without his knowledge.

Green light at the traffic lights shows that it is safe to continue our journey. If your boss gives you the green light to do some work, you have his full permission and consent to do it.

For good health we are encouraged to take green vegetables because they contain a lot of vitamins and minerals needed by our bodies.

However a green-eye monster is one who is very jealous.

So much about the colour 'green'.

How to unscrew the cap of a whiteboard marker easily

Sometimes you will find that the cap of a whiteboard marker is too tight to unscrewed for refilling of ink. Well, I will teach you a very simple way to overcome this problem.

The difficulty in taking off the cap is the slippery grip. Here is where a rubber comes in handy. Take a rubber band and put it round the edge of the cap. Now you can unscrew the cap effortlessly as the friction between the rubber band and the cap does the work while you are turning the cap anti-clockwise to move the cap and it comes out easily.

You have to try it to believe me. Good luck.

I write what comes to my mind

Today, I shall talk about things general as I don't have a specific topic to discuss. I have been wondering how I have managed to come up with something to write every day. However, for today, I will simply whatever that comes to my mind.

Blogging certainly helps me tap my mind to generating some writing each. I am quite busy on most days. It is during the few hours before sleep that I manage squeeze in time to write this blog. I hope my effort is not wasted. I really want to help readers in solving some problems in the course of using the computer. I also want to do share to help those who are interested in English and would like to know some tips on its usage.

Keep coming to this blog to give me the push to continue penning.

Putting toothpaste to good use

I read of an interesting way to repair scratched cd. It is very simple. What you need is a tube of toothpaste. Apply the toothpaste over the scratched surface and wipe with a cotton ball until the scratches disappear. After the treatment, the files which cannot be read from your cd will be readable again.

I haven't tried it yet. If you are daring enough, you can try it but I am not responsible for any loss of data on your disc. If it is only one of the backups, then it is no harm trying.

So much for a way to do repair work.

Using nouns as verbs for variety in style

In English, we can use certain nouns as verbs to add variety to our writing style. I shall give a few examples in this post.

1 He tried to coin a new word to describe the situation. [coin originally refers to some metal which we use as money means to invent or form a new word in this sentence.]

2 Since he took over the post of Manager, he has tried to effect changes in the running of the company. [effect which is a noun originally is used as a verb carrying the meaning of 'cause' or 'bring about' in this sentence.]

3 The new head quickly chaired his first meeting. [chair which is originally a noun functions as a verb here. It means to preside over a meeting.]

Musing on Workers Day

Today is Labour Day or Workers' Day whichever you like to call it. All of us are workers in one way or other. I may be teaching, you may be working in your position as construction workers, engineers, lawyers, bus drivers, street sweepers, vendors, hawkers, nurses and so on. Each of us has a part to play towards society.

If there are no workers to build the houses we live in, we have to do it ourselves like what our ancestors did long away. The division of labour has made use do different jobs to help one another.

Today is the day we give ourselves credit. All of us deserve a pat on our backs for making progress possible for our nation.

I can't imagine how the world will be like if all of us cease to workers.