Miscellaneous Musings in December

European style Macaroons

      What are these rather garish cookie things?  They're macaroons, I gather.   These colorful (I mean -- "colourful") ones are very popular at this time of year.  They're pretty sweet, and they look like they ought to be hanging on a Christmas tree.  But everybody around here buys, sells and serves them.     But nothing that's so colorful can be good for you, I daresay. 




    Where I come from, a macaroon is a considerably more humble cookie, as in this picture on the left.   Each one contains about 96 calories (compared with over 200 for a chocolate chip cookie), so they're not terribly bad for you, though they certainly aren't health food. 

American style Macaroons

   

Hari Raya Hamper -- Malaysia

  
     Another thing you see everywhere in this country are "hampers" filled with goodies.  We'd call them "gift baskets" in my country, and of course we do have them, especially around the holidays.  But here--my goodness!  Everybody sells or gives hampers to others--hampers full of beauty products, hampers full of baby stuff, hampers full of. . . . well, just about anything!  And some of them are enormously expensive.  One hamper of beauty products donated for our Christmas bazaar was valued at RM 1,000 (US = $320, Jap.Yen = 24,800, GBPounds = 204).  Hm-m--m.  Expensive!


    Hubby has changed barber shops recently.  The other day, he asked the name of the one he now patronizes.  One of the three barbers shrugged his shoulders and said, "No name."  So, I guess you just refer  to it by saying, "The one across from the Hindu temple" because it has no name.  How can a healthy 
business have no name?  Hm-m-m again!


      There are a couple of linguistic quirks around here that make me smile.  One is the use of the verb "revert."  In my mind, "revert" means something like "to return to a former state or condition," as in "If you revert to your former eating habits, you'll gain weight again."  But around here, "revert" is used to mean "get back to you."  So, people will say or email things like this:  "I'll check and revert to you tomorrow. "  It sounds strange to me, but I'm getting used to it.


   Another cute language quirk is the way people refer to things that happened in the past, whether yesterday, last month, or a long time ago.  I've been told it's due to direct translation of something you would say in the local language, Bahasa Malaysia (or Bahasa Melayu, which is also used.)  Anyway, if you want to say anything like "in the past" or "a while ago" or even "last week" you express it simply by saying "last time."  And if you want to talk about something that happened a really long time ago,  you say, "Last, last, last time."  My friend who lives happily in a condo-in-the-sky actually uttered those words to me the other day.  We were talking about something that had happened in the good ole' days, and she said, "Well, last, last, last time, it was ~"   I don't usually correct my friends' English, but I couldn't help saying, "You mean, long, long ago, don't you?"  And with that, I say, "Hm-m-m-m" for the last time tonight!