Here’s an admission: I write sucky copy.

No, it doesn’t suck in the grammatical sense. It sucks in the sense that nobody will ever read it. Or, even if they do somehow muster the willpower to try and comprehend the words, they’d fail miserably.

Why?

It’s full of corporate-speak and/or technical jargon. It’s bursting with buzzwords that’ve been used ad nauseam. Imagine eating a cinnamon roll that’s ALL cinnamon. I myself strain to proofread my own copy.

But yet I continue to churn it out because, like it or not, it’s the client that I have to satisfy at the end of the day, not myself nor the target audience.

And what the client wants is stuff that contains crap words/phrases like “leverage”, “cost-effective” and “scalable” in everything about IT solutions. Not forgetting a liberal sprinkling of acronyms such as “XML”, “MySQL” and “JSP”. Just an aesthetic touch you understand.

When it comes to training and certification, they want to convey the idea that learning with them will “fast track” or “accelerate” your career. They want copy that will motive the TA to “take the leap” with them onto the “cutting-edge”. Wherever that is, whatever that means.

Ok, fair enough. They’re a huge IT company and they’re entitled to want to put in the technical bits or the corporate claptrap. But, as if that wasn’t bad enough, they want to be friendly and personal as well. Maybe I’m not skilled enough but I’m having difficulty reconciling the two.

Anyway, for those of you who need help (everyone really) in understanding corporate-speak, here’re a few definitions I’ve shamelessly copied from here.

Challenge

A big problem that nobody in the company knows how to fix. A challenge may very well lead to the demise of said company. If your company spends more time talking about challenges than home runs, it may be time to look for a new job.

Corporate

The group of people in a company that make the important decisions and all of the money. You are most likely not a member of this group.

Corporate Vision

The list of things that a company would like to provide and accomplish. Most are more like hallucinations than visions.

Fast Track

Usually referring to a person that has moved up the corporate ladder faster than they could prove their worth or be held accountable for the mess they made.

Leverage

A fancy version of the word “use.” For example, instead of saying “We could use your product knowledge to help us make a sale”, the corporate type would say, “We could leverage your product knowledge to help us make a sale”. The use of this word is one of many examples of people trying to sound important in the office.

Resource

An employee. Resources are managed by a group which calls itself “Human Resources.” Like hardware, resources have fixed lifespans, can become obsolete and can even malfunction.

Value-added

Tacking on extra features (for free) to an existing product so that customers have difficulty comparing prices with competitors.

win/win

A fascinating business concept that somehow eliminates the “loser” in any deal or project. A win/win situation is when a customer pays their bills on time and doesn’t ever complain.

Hallelujah or just Haha?

An excerpt from The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

“O Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagnetic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Volumes of Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia – what could we do for Thee that Thou couldst not do for Thyself one octillion times better? Nothing. What could we do or say that could possibly interest Thee? Nothing. Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. No longer can a fool like Malachi Constant point to a ridiculous accident of good luck and say, ‘Somebody up there likes me.’ And no longer can a tyrant say, ‘God wants this or that to happen, and anybody who doesn’t help this or that to happen is against God.’ O Lord Most High, what a glorious weapon is Thy apathy, for we have unsheathed it, have thrust and slashed mightily with it, and the claptrap that has so often enslaved us or driven us into the madhouse lies slain.

The Reverend C. Horner Redwine

The Barnstable First Church of God the Utterly Indifferent

Even though it’s got quack written all over it, it’s not an untenable position to hold. Ah well, I refuse to think about religion right now.

Men are good at some things, women at others. Men,…

Men are good at some things, women at others. Men, for example, excel at operating remote controls, carrying shopping bags and maintaining a horny disposition. Women, on the other hand, are good at watching soaps endlessly, getting out of carrying shopping bags and giving men their generally horny disposition. They are also ridiculously good at planning vacations. Which is exactly what Pat did at the NATAS travel fair over the weekend.

At every counter we got to, she invariably did the talking. She knew all the relevant questions, spotted the best bargains and managed to dig out everything there was to know. I, conversely, sat or stood around trying to look intensely interested. Not that I couldn’t be bothered with the trip, I just didn’t want to deal with the details.

So it is that we’ll be headed for Taiwan in December for five glorious days of eating. Forty meals in five days is quite realistic, I think. It’s all about gastronomic fortitude (see John’s crab entry) and digestive enzyme supplements.

We do many things to strengthen parts of our bodie…

We do many things to strengthen parts of our bodies

Heart – go jogging

Biceps – do preacher curls

Abs – do crunches

Fingers – Go to Mellben

I’ll be lying if I said that we seeked out this Down-Under-sounding crab coffeeshop for the fitness of our phalanges, but it sure worked out that way. After almost an hour, you suddenly realise that your legs are still there, numb no doubt, but there. Everything seems to come to a standstill when you are wrestling with dead crustaceans.

You finally realise what an Olympian feels on the day of the race. You hear only your heartbeat, the crowd is mostly a blur (much like the Winning 11 audience), your mind is tuned to respond only to the starting buzz… ok, that’s quite exagerrating it, but we did miss a whole raining spell in the process of taking down two large crabs, one in butter herb sauce and the other in black pepper.

Next time, claypot vermicelli crab, looks real delicious. With a little training and practice, we may even be able to follow Joel’s original plan: one man, one crab.

Titanic was screened last night for the 47th time….

Titanic was screened last night for the 47th time. And I’m sure they’ve used that trailer before. The one proclaiming how much water, how many extras and how many retakes were involved.

Anyway, in keeping with the maritime theme, here’s an old picture which I still find hilarious.

An unwed mother is less of a mother than a married one

Is this the stand the government is taking in its pro-family drive?

Part of Dr Vivian Balakrishnan’s reply when queried as to why pro-family benefits do not extend to unwed mothers:

“We recognise they [unwed mothers] have needs and we will do our best to help them. But they cannot be pegged at the same level as women who are married or who were previously married and are now divorced or are widowed through no fault of their own.”

This is hogwash.

Married or not, a mother is a mother and she will need help in raising her children. This is even more so in the case of unwed mothers and yet the government decides that these are exactly the type of people they will graciously turn their backs on.

But of course, the state claims there are reasons for this, no doubt for the greater good as inevitably seems to be the case.

For one, Dr Balakrishnan claims that we cannot afford to let the state become a surrogate father.

But he’s missing the point totally.

The issue here isn’t whether unwed mothers should get more benefits than married ones, it’s whether they should get equal benefits. We’re not talking about the government making any special effort to help them. We’re talking about giving them the assistance and respect they deserve based on their status as mothers and NOT on their marital status.

Dr Balakrishnan goes on to say:

“Our intention was not to make it harder for them. But we did need to send a social signal that in marriage and procreation… the best environment which children are born into must be a nuclear family.”

Let me get this straight. By denying these benefits to a single mother, who in all probability, will have to work, raise her child and endure some level of discrimination, the government isn’t intentionally making things difficult? Maybe he means this on some higher metaphysical level which I am unable to comprehend cos it sure looks like unwed mothers are getting the short end of the stick here.

And what’s that I hear about a “social signal”? Maybe he could’ve been clearer by saying this “We want to make sure that people will look at an unwed mother’s situation and think to themselves “I wouldn’t wanna be in her shoes”.

An aside: Why didn’t Irene Ng, the MP who raised this question, have any rebuttals? Oh wait, I forgot I was reading the Straits Times.

In my years of experience with urinals, I have fou…

In my years of experience with urinals, I have found them downright impossible to miss. Even when raving drunk, the golden arc has been fired no more than a few inches off center. It’s simple. You stand with your feet shoulder width apart right smack in front of one and let fly. It’s foolproof. Or is it?

Apparently not.

Judging from the swamp-like appearance of the average male toilet, you’d think we were trying to pee into teacups. Puddles here and puddles there, some joining forces to become super-puddles which are awfully slippery and stink to the heavens. So, after sloshing through the muck and being forced to pee on tiptoe, the obvious question comes to mind – how on earth do they do it?

A scene from Me, Myself and Irene comes to mind. “Myself” has just spent the night screwing around with Irene, leaving “Me” to wake up in the morning, stand in front of the toilet bowl, and pee straight into a picture frame on the right wall.

Hmmm… the possibilities present themselves. Perhaps the lawyers next door aren’t just busy practicing law. Perhaps the folks at EFI across the corridor are really EFI-ing around.

But despite the government’s repeated calls for more sex, surely there are some non-conformists who remain staunchly celibate purely on anti-PAP grounds. What could cheese our beloved leaders off more than a well-coordinated refusal to exchange bodily fluids? Already we can hear Dr Chee’s impassioned cries. “We aren’t prostitutes!” or “Money ≠ Sex!”. And, to show his commitment, he gives his wife the cold shoulder. No hunger strike needed, no futile Queen’s Counsel, no damages to be paid.

But I digress. The question in point now is – how do the rest of them miss?

Alas, one can only speculate. Perhaps the relief of one’s bladder is such cause for celebration that they are compelled to perform a jig while performing the act. Perhaps when one of the missers steps up to the urinal, the laws of physics discreetly look away. Perhaps they were simply re-enacting a scene from Anaconda. I cannot say.

But right now there is no time for further analysis because, if you’ll excuse me, I need to wash my shoes.

Parenting is a thankless job. Not only do your chi…

Parenting is a thankless job. Not only do your children take up all your time and money, grow up and then leave you at home (or at a home), now you get stupid as well!

Head of study, Dr Hosung Lee said: “It explains why parents think their kid is the smartest in class or the best athlete, even if that child is as dumb as a box of rocks or needs a calendar to time a 100-yard sprint.”

A real life Becker.

"Then" Should Be "Now"

Writing ads is fascinating. Every detail counts. I’d been fretting over one particular ad for a few days. Just one word in the whole paragraph gnawed at me incessantly – the 2nd “Then”. Did it make sense? It did. Was it necessary? It was. Did it sound repetitive? To me it did but I wasn’t sure. So I showed it to a few people but none of them felt anything needed to be changed. “Maybe I’m just being over-fussy again”, I thought. Nonetheless, I showed it one more person, Ah Neh (never mind how the nickname came about). He said, matter-of-factly, “Then” should be “Now” and tears welled up in my eyes. Of course! That was it. Why hadn’t I thought of that? It was right there on my bloody nose. Ah heck. That’s the way it is sometimes.

[Weiming, upon accosting me at Khatib MRT] You look like a Malay.

Ack.

Over the last week, I’ve had the misfortune of wri…

Over the last week, I’ve had the misfortune of writing website after website. While some have been mucking about in Bintan on the pretext of a company retreat and a certain quality analyst has been spending “defect” free days lazing about in his industrial building, I have been churning out the most boring stuff the virtual community has ever seen.

I have no interest in writing promotional websites especially when the product/event is essentially the same, just that the countries are different. There’s no sense of achievement hence not many braincells willingly get drawn into combat. Most remain intent on sending and receiving hunger signals or thinking about sex or wondering why all they think about is food and sex.

(And, as if to say “There you go, son. Here’s a little variety for ya”, I have just been tasked to write an invitation eDM.)

But it hasn’t been all bad. I actually had the chance to work on a campaign, even though the product was kinda boring. For once, some copy-driven ads made it to the frontline, where they’ll no doubt be shot down by the client. It’s a step forward though. They usually get shot by me first.