//beconfused

_(Windows Frumpy?)_

In Latvian, “Vista” means “fowl” or even “frumpy woman” in slang.

“Everybody in my office bursts out laughing whenever I start talking about the new operating system,” 26-year-old customer assistance manager Zanis, who works in the Latvian capital, Riga, told AFP.

At Microsoft Latvia, they have opted to play up Vista’s positive aspects and point energetically to the more poetic, international definition of the name.

“The name of the new operating system is well known in international communication and means a vision, a view, a perspective,” public relations manager for Microsoft Latvia, Ilze Nagla, told AFP.

“When Latvians learn of the technical opportunities the system offers, they will pay more attention to its advantages, not its name,” she added.

Source: Yahoo! News

Well, any form of publicity would be good.

[via CrunchGear]

We ought to embrace our local chat language more. The local chatting language is an ultra-sophisticated form of language that only the youngsters understand. We don’t use much afk, lmao, imho or l33t5p34k. We just have lots of lars, lors, hees, mahs and absurd abbreviations and a bunch of misspelt words.

I don’t know how that come about; it probably evolved from Singlish and got mixed with the modern internet lingo. I recently watched this show in Channel U, a Chinese television channel, that got a bunch of people debating on the whole Singapore internet lingo thingy.

The whole segment was… bullcrap. I disagree with most of what they discussed. They went to discuss about internet lingo with Chinese language. Oh comeon, no one chats in Mandarin in MSN Messenger in Singapore. It’s all English, Singlish and Chinese words depicted in Han Yu Pin Yin (still English).

I just don’t connect with the show segment you know. The argument is that teenagers are increasingly getting into this – what is widely touted online as – cool lingo and the parents all don’t damn understand what they mean.

The parents are naturally annoyed, upset and displeased when teenagers type words through MSN with strange spellings. Grandparents are upset too. But the segment just went on showcasing the various scenarios where frustrations set in on strange chat lingo that parents face.

Yes, it is a problem but it’s one with no solution. Teenagers love the lingo, if you use it, it’s like you’re part of the club kinda thing. I wasn’t really one of those who use such language excessively as I didn’t start chatting with local people. So my exposure is those American type of lingo. It took me a month to get used to how all my friends speak online.

If parents are really interested, just go to some teenager chat room and start talking to the teenagers, I’m sure it won’t take long to learn that anyway. I don’t see what’s the fuss too. I just think teenagers have absolute right to chat in a language that is common to themselves. If parents don’t understand, just learn. If you can’t learn, just don’t.

I just don’t see the importance of learning the Singapore chat lingo anyway. And when they can’t learn, they got frustrated that their children and go to some talk show and lament about it. Get real, that’s really childish in my opinion. If your child decides to speak French to his clique of French language student friends, are you going to go to a talk show and complain? Just start a blog and complain lar, like me lor.

In Singapore, every parent wants the best for their children. Hence, kiasuism is practiced. I don’t know how to spell it, it looks better as “kiasu-ism”, it’s pronounced as kya-soo-ee-zum. Kiasu-ism is the culture of Singapore, it’s about being excessively competitive.

So these poor kids, possibly inclusive of me, went to enrich themselves with all sorts of class.

The class that Singapore kids (or rather parents) love:

* Swimming
* Piano
* Violin
* Wu-shu (Chinese martial arts)
* Ballet
* Abacus
* Guitar
* and obviously all the tuition classes.

It’s this I-want-the-best-for-my-child thinking that made kids suffer through their childhood. It has become some sort of a culture in Singapore already. The kids don’t choose what they want, the parents do it for them. Not that this is a bad method or anything. I mean the kids can’t possibly choose these wisely.

My mother did pretty much the same, she threw me into the water and got me to learn swimming. I never really like swimming as a sport though. The reason is simple: In swimming, you basically go one lap, return, go another. Well, at least I can keep afloat if in water.

I have abacus class too, if you don’t know what the hell is that, just stick with your calculator. I find the calculator much useful though.

And tuition class is a must. I can imagine my mother saying, “I second that”. Possibly 95% of the students have at least gone through tuition once. My mother says, “It’s not the best way to study, but it delivers”. [By the way, my mother speaks can't speak English, I translated.]

So perhaps the tuition can be explained, but I don’t think the swimming, piano, ballet or the whatevers can be. Why enrich the child? My aunt says, “It’s to give him an extra route to proceed too if his academic career is performing none too well”. [I translated my aunts words.]

I can’t deny that too, but my cousin went to abacus, guitar, swimming and piano (not forgetting tuition too of course) before. He is one busy man. I’m sure he’s not the only one going through so many enrichment course.

It’s a culture thing I guess. [By the way, if I were to back being a kid, I wish I learn a musical instrument. Something like piano or violin.]