I Judge You For Using Incorrect Grammar

Yes, I do. I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. It annoys the hell out of me when I see, read or hear bad grammar, and I notice it everywhere; on people’s blogs, on massive billboards, on huge multi-million advertisements that takes up the entire page of a newspaper, out of people’s mouth, and even from protest rallies down on the streets.

For the love of God, I beg you this – if you cannot possibly know the whole functionality of such words like ‘is’,'am’ and ‘are’, or not knowing the past present future of a verb after words like ‘has’, ‘is’ and ‘were’, don’t just assume that it’s not important and that people won’t notice it. They do. I do too. And the reason why nobody says anything about it is because they don’t want to hurt your feelings by telling it to your face that your English sucks.Well tough, because I’m going to break it to you: Your English sucks real bad, it sucks even more than anything that has ever been sucked before.

And if you don’t do anything about it, the whole world will still be laughing at your face. If you can’t even put a bit more effort to learn it correctly, just don’t bother using English at all, because what you are doing is wrecking the whole point of using the language in the first place. And what’s even worse is that you are flaunting it for everybody else to see it too. It’s as if you’re screaming it out loud for everyone to hear, “Hey, people look, my English sucks!’

For Indonesian bloggers with bad grammar: Instead of creating a global image for your blog, you’re just inviting people to laugh their asses off of that piece of yoke you call blog. No matter how nicely done it is, if you use English with fugly grammar, then people from English-speaking countries all over the world will just think of you as lazy ignorant twats.

For ad firms who call themselves “the creatives”: If you can make that much money out of creating some ad that doesn’t make sense to anyone but it’s merely bought because everyone is jinxed to thinking it’s cool, then you can hire a properly-educated English teacher to teach the whole lot of you the difference between the word ‘elegant’ and ‘elegance’ and the knowledge on how to use both words properly, you dumb eejits.

For Indonesian so-called actors and actresses who think they’re celebrities just because they’ve been in one stupid local TV series: Stop mixing Bahasa and English, it makes you look like retards in expensive clothes. Although you know perfectly well that retarded people throw up all over themselves – because that’s exactly what you look like right about now. Messy, disgusting and just plain stupid.

And for street protesters: I can understand your background limitation in English education, but because there are so many of you I’m sure you can afford better spokes person to fix your errors.

If you like this article, you will also love Rima’s writing on Stuff Indonesians Like #7: Being Fluent In Foreign Language 

Mean Girls

Girls are mean. Not exactly in a cat-fight kind of way, but more like the bitchy comments they say to each other or the negative responses they give out when other friends are doing better.

I remember when I was in high school I had this best friend (notice the past tense ‘had’) and one day when we were walking together to English Second Language class, her arm linked to mine affectionately, she casually asked me what I scored for the final English test. When I told her I got an A+ her whole face changed rigid and she snorted out, “Easy when you’re a teacher’s pet.” which shocked me to the core and I had to say “Excuse me?” to which she immediately plastered a fake smale on her face and go, “I was joking! Relax!”

But I recognised that face already and I knew what it meant. It was the familiarity of a girl not liking her friend for doing so much better than her – as if the whole thing was a competition. I didn’t notice it before but the signs became even more visible on other occasions when we were both out to the city and she bumped into some of her friends, instantaneously she stood right in front of me and started talking with them for ages, and not once did she ever introduce me to her friends, which was very rude, I must say. I am glad to say by the time we got to college we stopped talking to each other completely – which was done on her part. One day she just snubbed me off for no reason. I didn’t bother confronting her because I hadn’t done anything offensive to her and being friends with her was tiring me out – what with all those mind games and the invisible rivalry between us. So I was glad to discover that by the time we got to third year in university she had gained so much weight that she looked like the female version of a Michelin. I in the other hand had scored a boyfriend while she desperately moped around the campus and eyeing every guy she met.

But that was just one mean girl of which I had encountered during my adolescence. There are other mean girls who are not aware of the mean things they say to each other. Girls who say negative things when you are happy. Girls who make you doubt your big decision instead of supporting you. Girls who only want to be friends with you when they want you to do them a favour (I get this a lot), and girls who refuse to accept who you are because they discover that you’re not the person they thought you were.

When I finally met my ‘The One’ after so many failed relationships in which I had to keep dissecting and analysing together with my bestest friends, I was so happy and obviously the natural thing was to tell the good news to them. So I was deeply disappointed when one of them retorted disbelievingly, “How do you know if he’s The One?” when all I wanted was for her to be happy for me, because I held her opinion in high regard. Especially because she was actually getting married at that time, which was why it seemed odd to think such question would come out from her.

I am sorry to say that sometimes they feel like they have more in common with me back then when I was single, lonely and frustrated out of my wits because of the fear in becoming a spinster. We were chums when it came to talking about guys and why they were so difficult and made us so miserable. It was like Carrie and The Gang or Bridget Jones and her chummies.

So when I stopped saying, “No man would ever want to spend the rest of his life with a sad old spinster like me”, and instead sang about, “I am so happy I finally meet my other half”, they said that I had changed, and that perhaps I shouldn’t be so sure about it so much. As if it was so unnatural of me to be that happy.

When I stopped feeling cynical and sceptical about life, my friends and I stopped having anything in common. When they were cussing about relationships and getting married off, I was talking about dreams and goals and retirement plans. When they were wondering why men were so complicated, I was wondering about my purpose in life. I felt a huge gap between me and my friends, and I had the sinking realisation that none of my friends knew who I really was nor the person I was becoming to be.

People do change – all the time. It happens even to those who claim that they don’t. There are those who can accept these changes as phases in life that we all must go through, but there are also those who refuse to think that we can ever be someone different.

I refuse to have a bleak outlook in life – even if it meant becoming an unfamiliar person to those around me. Because at the end of the day, who is going to tell me to get up and do better, if not myself? It saddens me to say that sometimes, even those who are closest to you can kill your dreams as much as those who are strangers to you.

Crazy

Miracles will happen as we trip
But we’re never gonna survive unless
We get a little

Crazy

In a sky full of people
Only some want to fly
Isn’t that crazy

When the world is upside down and those around you sneer and criticize you for wanting to be different, they call you crazy.

When all around you refuse to believe in what you are, even those closest to you, because you refuse to be just another human being who fills this limited space of the earth, they say you are crazy.

But what’s crazy is the fact that the society is trying to dampen your spirit in becoming who you are. Calling your dreams ‘silly’ and your ideas ‘impossible’.

Everywhere and everyday we see lost and empty souls wandering around the world, not knowing their purpose and simply living their lives day by day. Not daring to dream, not daring to hope, and not daring to be who they are.

It is safer to conform to the norm, the say.

I say it is insane to be just like everybody else.

Stop trying to be someone you are not, they say.

I say I am never the person you thought I was.

I would rather be called crazy instead of selling my soul to the world.
I would rather be called crazy instead of living the rest of my life wondering what would happen if I jumped off that cliff.
I would rather be called crazy instead of allowing others to tell me what I should do next.

If you are like me, I guess we are all a little bit crazy.

But we’re never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy.

01 01 08

It’s the New Year all over again. And the earlier inevitable question of “What are you going to do on New Year’s Eve?” were thrown back from one person to the next.

One might feel left out for not planning to celebrate it in the hugest party ever, complete with the whole fireworks and counting down the seconds thing accompanied with funky music blaring out in the background followed by singing Auld Lang Syne afterwards, such as you have seen in many corny American movies.

One might also think that the whole New Year’s Eve celebration was way overrated and chose to just go through it as if it was just any normal evening and went on with their routine as if nothing really changed at all, except the date of the year in which they had to live through.

There were also those who had to pass the change of the year by making sure that the whole system in the country kept running civilised, like the police and the people working on the freeway gates, or train machinists who had to keep the train going otherwise those who came all the way to the city for this one particular Eve just to see the mighty fireworks show wouldn’t be able to get home afterwards.

On an Eve like such, it was obligatory to hear police sirens echoing in the distance every now and then, leaving some of us who passed the night in a quite manner feeling rather displeased by disturbing thoughts of others celebrating the night in a rather riotous ways.

Moreover, it has come to my attention that people chose the New Year as the New Beginning Of Life – though the realisation that we are all getting older is inescapable, there is that hope that we will all do better in the forthcoming year. That’s why New Year’s Resolution never gets old.

For those who had the misfortune of being the victims of natural disaster can hope that the new year will be much kinder and that people will stop abusing the earth they are all living in.

For those who feel that they are stuck in a dead-end jobs can hope that there will be better vacancies available out there – places in which they can really make a living and not feel as if they are going through living hell just to feed their families.

For those who feel the need that the beginning of the New Year is the perfect time to achieve the goals in which they have failed previously before, whatever they might be; losing weight, be more organized, say more ‘I love you’s to their loved ones or even kicking off a habit that sounds so simple and yet so hard to break off, like smoking for example – the New Year is a brand new second (or thrice? fourth?) chance to do better.

And for those who yearn the presence of another soul to complete the emptiness in their heart can wish that this is the year that they will finally meet The One, because Lord knows that more and more souls out there have tried so hard to do so and yet become more repelled by the idea of going through on another insignificant dates and getting their heart broken for the umpteenth time.

But if there is one thing that does not fail – even if everything else has – is Hope. It’s a gift that everyone of us is bestowed upon with, even if we all have gone through many bad patches in life in which we wish we should never reiterate again, if the Lord above be so kind to us all.

So the most important question to ask next is not “What did you do on New Year’s Eve?” or “What are your New Year’s Resolution in 2008?”, but it’s “What are your hopes for this coming New Year?”, so that we can all light a little bit of hope and encourage each other to face the year with a positive attitude.

Happy New Year 2008!