Ah... might as well make time...

Clients are a pain in the behind.

If not the one thing that I learnt from my previous company was that clients are always a pain... Not that they want to be, but that's just how they are. I'm sure it's not their goal to be a pain for us, as their suppliers, but then... Where got people do things like that one!!!???

Hmmm...

I've been having some communication problems with the people around me lately and i am seriously wondering if it's my hearing... I've been driving this sports-car-wannabe isagawara of a proton for the past year or so... (Alamak! Roadtax and insurance is due soon and that will kill me...) And it's pretty loud inside the car... The manufacturers had the nerve to put in semi-sports pipping and took out the muffler so that i can get the attention i need wherever i go! PUIK! I had no freaking choice but to buy that car ok... (monetary reasons) and i am seemingly suffering for that now... i seem to not hear a lot of things nowadays... maybe my hearing's starting to deteriorate...

But then, Communication is Always a Gamble. (That's like Rule #1 of Communications Theory) And thus, whenever you speak, there's a potential mis-understanding waiting to happen. That's because in communications theory, the basic model of communication is the sender>message>receiver model... and the message is always the problem. This is a side-effect of a multi-cultural, multi-lingual Malaysia.

In Malaysia, advertising is a headache because we come from a lot of ethnic backgrounds and most of us have kept with our traditions, practises, speech, dialects and our unique ways of meaning making. And it is this jumbled-up process of meaning making that's creating all the problems in Malaysian English. We have been trying to assimilate Hokkien, Tamil, Malay, Cantonese, and whatever else you could think of into our English and in true Malaysian fashion, Manglish is as good a mix as the Rojak in SS15!!! (uuummmm.... slurp... sedap....)

How to make meaning??? How to catch up with the latest 'catch-phrase'??? They're always changing! One day it would mean this, then it would bear a whole different meaning with a different group of friends. Then we have to be careful not to use words that would potentially offend this group of citizens, or that group, or the other group, or that group... then don't advertise lar!!!

So, in Malaysia, where culture and understanding of English is as diverse as the blue yonder, communication is always a problem...

... brain hangs and can't function no more...