Pajamas party time.
George Yeo paid a courtesy call on the 11th Panchen Lama on September 12.
When I was in Manila a couple of days ago I read the following on straitstimes.com:
“Foreign Minister George Yeo paid a courtesy call on the 11th Panchen Lama on Tuesday.
“Mr Yeo, who is in Beijing on a working visit, made the visit in his capacity as a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee and the Vice Chairman of the China Buddhist Association.”
So Georgie is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee? Wow? I thought they only allow mainland Chinese communists! And I thought Georgie’s a Catholic! But apparently not, Georgie is obviously a Buddhist, not only that, he is a communist Buddhist and he is also the Vice Chairman of the China Buddhist Association if you have read the same online report I read.
If you get the sentence structure wrong this is what will happen and for that to happen with a newspaper like The Straits Times, there’s no excuse really.
I am no English language expert, but when I was a primary school kid learning English we were always told to get the sentence structure right.
The oft-quoted example of how wrong sentence structure can convey an entirely different meaning is the sentence “I shot an elephant in my pajamas” – readers will wonder why there’s an elephant in that guy’s pajamas when what he actually meant to say was that he was in his pajamas when he shot an elephant.
So who’s the member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee and the Vice Chairman of the China Buddhist Association? Is it Singapore’s foreign minister George Yeo or the communist Chinese government-appointed Panchen Lama?