Singapore Lah!

This tale combines Singapore's famously high investments in public transport with the subtleties of language and the idiocy of crowds. T...

I've written before about how Singaporean speech is an eclectic tonic of English and Chinese with mixed vocabulary, grammar and accent. ...

Going to China from Hong Kong has always been pretty easy. Our route was best served by a boat from the Kowloon Ferry Terminal for a 2 hour ...

My dictionary lists 11 major meanings of the word " cheap ", though not it's middle English sense of " a market ", f...

One of the blogs I read regularly had an article about academic swotiness. I don't have first hand experience of this (obviously) but ...

Yiddish has given the English language some great words. Who hasn't admired someone's chutzpah , been called a klutz , kvetched ab...

There are already 93 million Chinese called Wang and the number's growing (the top 10 Chinese surnames are Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu, Chen, ...

Side of Jurong Marine ice delivery van: " Hotline: 6265 7337 " Side of van: " Killem Pest Pte Ltd " Side of van: " ...

Last week's Sunday Times led with MM Lee encouraging Singaporeans not to give up on their Mother Tongues. His pont is that while English...

The Dutch are a funny lot, and as contributory proof, I give you the word Gezelligheid . It's one of those complex words without a direc...

Soon after arriving, I was asked how I was getting on with Singlish ? " Fine " I said, I've been working in Asia for years. ...

Okay, bear with me on this one. The premise is from an old Sherlock Holmes film where people are viciously attacked and witnesses describe ...

I'm smug that I can remember most of the ( NATO ) phonetic alphabet useful for spelling out names, call signs, IDs and so on. On calling...

Scene: a local plastic-ware shop. A man is trying to buy a plastic bread bin. After much fumbling with the cardboard box, the shopkeeper de...