Right name, wrong place..
Serious board meeting late last week.
Men and women who control billion-dollar business empires in attendance.
Suddenly one man seemed to be convulsing, his body reverberating.
What happened?
What happened was he happened to take a quick peek at his smartphone and saw this headline:
“Bukit Panjang’s Pang Sua Pond now a wetland park.”
He thought it said Pang Sai Pond.
In Singapore’s most commonly-spoken Chinese dialect, Hokkien, Pang Sai Pond means “Pond for Defecating” and in Singlish – which is a bastardized version of English most people here speak when they communicate informally – it would simply mean “Pond for Shitting.”
When he shared it, after we showed concern for his quivering body – he was actually trying to stifle his laughter – he showed us the headline.
It took 20 minutes for the very serious board meeting to be restored to order.
What the heck is it with Singapore names?
Is there a conspiracy to make the names here appear lame and funny?
We have Nanyang Technological University with its acronym NTU which reminds people of NUT and we have Singapore University of Technology and Design with its acronym SUTD which at first glance looks like STUD and now SIM University, formerly known as UniSIM will now be known as Singapore University of Social Sciences, acronym SUSS.
If there’s humor in these acronyms, I fail to see it.
I see us as a laughing stock instead.
We claim to be number one in just about every damn thing but when it comes to names, we are a long road away from being smart about them.
Some years ago, some retards in high places commissioned a name consultant for advice on a new name for Marina Square, and those cons came back, kept the fat fee, and said “Nothing wrong with the name, let it stay.”
And we once even held a naming contest for our budget terminal at Changi and the winner of the contest was some idiot who named it “Budget Terminal.”
What the fuck?
I am sure there’s a historical reason for it, but who in his right mind would name a pond Pang Sua Pond?
Must be graduates of NUTS or STUDS who didn’t waste too much brain power to SUSS it out.