Friday, March 25, 2011

How to boot your computer when the battery is weak

Have you encountered the problem of being unable to boot your computer?

Well, I have. One of the reasons is weak battery connected to CMOS and I have learnt of a way to overcome this.

If this happens at night and you have no place to buy a CR2032 lithium battery to replace it, let me teach you a method to boot your CPU. The trick is very simple.

You just start your computer and quickly press F2 to force the computer to go to the configuration stage. Now, click 'Load Default CMOS Setting' or something to this effect. Then, click save and exit and press OK. Now, your computer should be able to bott.

I hope this finding is useful to my dear readers.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Honesty is the best policy

It was such a coincidence that I witnessed two real cases of honesty shown by two different people, a woman and a man.

This morning, I was on my usual trip to Jelutong market to have my breakfast when I was touched by the act of a woman who bought newspaper from the vendor from whom I bought my newspapers, namely The Star and Kwong Wah Yit Poh. When I was there, I saw a woman returning one ringgit and twenty sen to the newspaper vendor. She told her that it was embedded in the newspaper that she had bought. How honest the lady was!

After breakfast, my wife and I were on our rounds to buy our things. We stopped at a hardware stall to buy a can opener. A Malay lady was beside us buying something too. Then she gave the man five ringgit. On checking, the hardware vendor realised that there were two five-ringgit notes. Immediately he called her back because he wanted to return the extra five ringgit to her. Another case of honesty being displayed right in front of me again.

As I have said in my earlier posts, our lives are full of causes and effects. If your take someone's things or money, somehow or other you will have to repay him or her in this life and the next life and you will have to pay more. That is how karma works. Hence we should not take what is not ours.

In short, honesty is the best policy.

Monday, March 14, 2011

How to use 'kita' and 'kami' correctly

In response to a reader's request, I shall deal with the difference between 'kita' and 'kami' in this post.

The pronoun 'kita' refers to the speaker, the person who listens to him and other people. You can remember it by the last letter 'a' for 'all'. For example, the world belongs to me, you and other people. Hence we can write a sentence such as the one below:

Dunia kita sedang mengalami pemanasan global.
[Our world is experiencing global warming.]

Look at another example as shown below.
Kita harus menghormati ibu bapa kita.
[We (all of us) should respect our parents.]

As for 'kami', you can remember its usage by this pneumonic: Kami -->The King and I
This pronoun refers to the speaker and other people other than the one who listens to him.

For example, if you are telling a friend of your experience climbing a mountain with your friends, then you would write something like this:
Kami mendaki Gunung Jerai pada minggu lalu.
[We (my friends and I) climbed Mount Jerai last week.]

Here is another example:

Semasa awak tiada di sini, kami sudah menyiapkan kerja ini.
[When you were not here, we (my friend s and I) had completed this job.]

I hope the above explanation and examples are useful in helping readers to use 'kita' and 'kami' correctly.

Friday, March 11, 2011

About 'banyak' in Malay

According Tatabahasa Dewan Third Edition, the word 'banyak' (many) can be classied under two categories, namely 'kata bilangan' (counting words) and 'adjektif' (adjectives).

To tell readers the trick of recognising each of them, I need to illustrate it by using the following two sentences.

Sentence 1
Banyak buku dibelinya di kedai itu. [Many books has he bought at the shop.]

In the above sentence, the word 'banyak' is under the 'kata bilangan' category.

Sentence 2
Banyak tempat yang dikunjunginya selama ini. [The places he has visited so far are many.]

The above sentence is actually a 'ayat songsang' or 'reverse sentence' formed by placing the predikat in front of the subject. The original sentence is: Tempat yang dikunjunginya selama ini banyak where 'Tempat yang dikunjunginya selama ini' is the subject and 'banyak' is the predicate as this belongs to one of the four basic sentence patterns in Malay, namely Frasa Nama - Frasa Nama (Noun phrase - noun phrase), Frasa Nama - Frasa Adjektif (Noun phrase-adjectival pharase), Frasa Nama - Frasa Sendi Nama (Noun phrase - prepositional phrase) and Frasa Nama - Frase Kerja (Noun phrase - Verbal phrase)

The original sentence just quoted belongs to the sentence pattern Noun phrase - adjectival phrase. Let us convert this sentence into the 'ayat songsang' or the 'reverse sentence'.

Tempat yang dikunjunginya selama ini [subject] banyak [predicate] -->
Banyak [Predicate] tempat yang dikunjunginya selama ini [Subject]

The trick here is if you see 'yang' after 'banyak', the banyak belongs to the 'adjective' category whereas the 'banyak' that appears in the subject alone is categorised as 'kata bilangan'.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

How to use 'responsible for' and 'responsible to' correctly

Some people get confused when it comes to using 'responsible for' and 'responsible to'. Well, in this post, I am going to tell readers their correct usage.

The expression 'responsible for' is used in front of something. For example, you can say 'I am responsible for getting new members for my club.' Another example is 'A policeman is responsible for the safety of the masses.'

As for the expression 'responsible to', it is used in front of 'someone'. For instance, you can say ' I am directly responsible to my superior.' or 'A prefect is responsible to the disciplinary master.'

So much for the usage of 'responsible for' and 'responsible to'.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

The Internet is our teacher

Many a time, I encounter problems regarding ways to make Windows 7 work the way I like it. From past experience, the best place to look for help is the Internet. Sure enough, I have solved most of my problems through help given by the Internet.

As there are many people around the world who write on a variety of topics in their posts, they are a source of knowledge to others. Personally, I have discovered that many of my posts on English have been used to answer questions posed by Internet surfers. For example, the article on Present Participle was used wholesale to answer an Internet user's query.

I am happy to be of help to those who like to learn English. You can always go to the label 'Tips on English' to read all the articles I have written on using correct English. My experience in learning and teaching the language helps me to understand the language better and I am too willing to share the knowledge with readers all over the world.

When I say that the Internet is our teacher, I am telling the truth. I have benefitted from this vast source of knowledge, with myself contributing a bit to it.

Long live the Internet - a good source of knowledge.