(Theater) Castaways: The Pitiful Existence of the Incomprehensibles

What would you do if you have a play starring no one? What would you say to a mime? Would you play dead?

 Experience theater like never before. Strange things will happen very soon.

Date: 23rd & 24th April 2013 
Venue: Main Auditorium, 
             International Islamic University Malaysia, Gombak 
Ticket: RM 5 (Student) RM 8 (Public) 
Facebook Page - STAGE: Castaways

For booking of tickets, do contact: 
012 - 205 5118 (Najihah) 
013 - 267 0297 (Sahidatul)

If you're bored and in need of entertainment, do check out this student performance. It's meta theater people! Its theater with a difference.

Peace out!
 

English Pronunciation

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

Peace out!

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Talk about a university that truly rolls with the times. If you can't stop teens from having sex then make them have safe sex. A complete 180 from what my previous university believed in. I think I'll really like it here :P

IIUM Theater Week

I should've done this earlier but I forgot. But since I love my students that much... COME ONE, COME ALL TO IIUM's THEATER WEEK.

You guys better greet me at the door with a kompang, and smoke machine now.

And IIUM shall be proud...

Remember the entry 'Be my Guess?'. I'm 'guest'-ing that entry really cracked most of you up. And since I have been in desperate need of cheering up of late, I've decided to share more funny liners that my friends and I have spotted throughout IIUM during our study years. If IIUM were to find out about this post I'll probably be in deep sh*t.

But what the heck. Onwards with the funnies!

Taken from a 'Go Green' poster

This is neither British nor American spelling. Please note wriggly red line whenever you type something. It's wriggly & red for a reason.

Taken from IIUM PC Fair

"Promote! Promote! 1 day only. If you don't come now I cannot promote you. "

(Also note that 's' has somehow disappeared from 'unit'. Ashamed to be in the same poster as 'special promote' perhaps?)

Taken from an IIUM Bazaar

The word makan in inverted commas suggests so many different meanings for those with the "imaginative" minds. Give a teen an opportunity and they'll amaze you with his/her perverseness.

Taken from an ad in IIUM

Never mind all the grammatical mistakes. Concentrate on "Are you 'in' Harry?" *LoL* I told you, give any opportunity for perverseness and it shall happen.

Taken from a poster in IIUM

Anybody care to sign up? Tools needed for the workshop: long trench coat, dark sunglasses, cap and running shoes.

Taken from a 'Maintain Cleanliness' poster in IIUM

Decoy (taken from Oxford Dictionary):

1. a bird or mammal, or an imitation of one, used to lure game.

2. a person or thing used to mislead or lure someone into a trap.

3. a pond from which narrow netted channels lead, into which wild duck may be enticed for capture.

So are we supposed to use a bird/ mammal to clean as we go? Or mislead someone when we want to clean? Or perhaps jump into a pond full of ducks after we clean? Hmmm...

Taken from a sign at one of the IIUM cafetarias

To check if you are a male, you must ensure that you have extra hanging appendages in between your crotch. If in doubt please do not hesitate to ask the nearest persons next to you. If in further doubt please go to the nearest administration office and drop your pants for further clarification.

So there you go folks. Hope you all had a good laugh. And please don't hesitate to point out further funny liners if ever you see one. We all could always do with a good laugh or two :)

*pics courtesy of Zetty Amny. She and I had plenty of good laughs over these few pictures .*

Jane Austen kicks Zombie ass.

Imagine women of the Victorian era all in long dresses with necklines all the way up to their chin and hairdos that'll stretch your scalp, all involved in a death battle with zombies.

Or...

these same women all involved in a tumultuous love affair with SEA MONSTERS! Man oh man, the things people come up with nowadays.

This whole Supernatural/ classic literature mashup is somewhat bizarre, I tell you. But in a good way. I totally support anything that'll generate more interest in reading the classics. Yes even the Twilight series. Even though I detest the very idea of the non-fanged, glittering (So gay) bloodsucking vampire series it has at the very least generate an interest among youngsters to read Wuthering Heights. All because it's Edward Cullen & Bella's favourite book.

They even revamped the book cover so that it resembles the 'Twilight' series and even highlighted the fact that its Edward & Bella favourite book. Talk about feeding the obsession eh?

Now take Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief for example. Before the book series (and now the motion picture) came out kids/ teens probably didn't know that Hermes is not merely an expensive brand name and thought that Apollo is a type of snack. In reality they're both names of Ancient Greek gods. So despite the fact that it is pure fiction this series is actually informative. Heck even I got some benefit out of reading the series. Some information I got out of the book was actually useful in one of my lessons. Who knew eh?

I actually learned about the 12 Greek Gods from this book. And trust me the book is WAY better than the movie. WAY better.

So yeah, if literary purists were to say "Oh my god, you're ruining great works of literature!" then I say " Shut your trap, and be glad. Mashup classics is the latest fad." Hey, I just rhymed! And I stand true to what I just said. As great as any fad may be it'll still fade away in time but great works of literature, be it the classics or modern literary works, will forever stand the test of time. All we need to do is generate enough interest in people so that they'll never be forgotten.

So do check out the books. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was number three on the New York Times Bestseller list and the same author now just published another book entitled Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter which is now number four on the New York Times Bestseller list. Meanwhile Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is written by a different author but is published by the same company.

*And since my birthday is like a week away (1st April!!) I would LOVE to have one of these books as a birthday present. Please... pretty please, someone? :D

I'm not a sadist. Really!

Who would've thought that a couple of videos on World War 1 would actually make my students cry. Never did I realise that I had some pure, innocent souls that would actually be touched by the sheer intensity of WW1 footage. Why would I when I myself is a far cry from being innocent. My heart is now an unfeeling stone that nothing beyond outright torture and mutilation would elicit any sort of response from me.

Do I feel bad for making them cry? Of course!

But did I get satisfaction from seeing them cry? Hmm... erm, yeah.

Now before you all start hurling stones at me please allow me to explain myself. Contrary to what I just said I do not derive satisfaction from another person's misery. This satisfaction is simply because I knew that somehow my efforts have paid off. Through their tears I now know that my students have finally understood the full impact WW1 had on people. And they cry because they now know why the war poets wrote dark, depressing war poems.

VIDEO 1: The Horrors of War.

I showed them this video simply because it had footage on how the battles were fought in WW1. Imagine, at the tender age of 18 you are required to go to war not knowing what to expect. World War 1 was the first war with modern weapons. Technological advancement in warfare resulted in approximately 16 million lives lost.

Video 2: Shell Shock

This is probably the more gruesome out of the two videos and is probably the reason tears started falling. This video simply shows the physical and psychological trauma that surviving soldiers had to go through because of the war. WARNING!! It is not for the faint-hearted. So approach the play button with caution.

However despite the depressing outcome of the class, I really relished class that day. The students now can probably relate better to the theme of war atrocities. And hopefully as a result of that they'll now have a much critical view on war. Peace has now become a commodity. Owned only by those with more money and bigger guns.

As for myself, what I got out if it is the fact that I have managed to draw-out a different kind of response other than the customary 'blur' look that most of my students usually have on. That in itself is a major accomplishment :P

It's hard to say goodbye...

The inevitable end has finally arrived

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The semester is finally coming to an end.

Got you going there for a minute, didn't I? :P So yeah, I only have about 2 more weeks before the end of the semester but I've somehow managed to finish syllabus for one of my classes. Thank God! So now I just have to concentrate on 20th ce lit and after that I'm freeeeee!! Yippeee!

But once classes are all done and over with, mixed together with the feelings of relief is always the feeling of melancholy. You just can't help but feel a little sad that you won't be seeing their faces anymore. Despite all the grief they inflicted on you (the constant late submissions, marks negotiations, absence etc.), students will always grow on you.

Thus to mark the ending of another class, and the parting of ways for another set of students, I dedicate this poem to all the 45 members of LE 4500: Section 4. I hope that the class was a great learning experience for all of you as it was for me.

Parting

by: Charlotte Bronte

THERE'S no use in weeping,
Though we are condemned to part:
There's such a thing as keeping
A remembrance in one's heart:

There's such a thing as dwelling
On the thought ourselves have nurs'd,
And with scorn and courage telling
The world to do its worst.

We'll not let its follies grieve us,
We'll just take them as they come;
And then every day will leave us
A merry laugh for home.

When we've left each friend and brother,
When we're parted wide and far,
We will think of one another,
As even better than we are.

Every glorious sight above us,
Every pleasant sight beneath,
We'll connect with those that love us,
Whom we truly love till death !

In the evening, when we're sitting
By the fire perchance alone,
Then shall heart with warm heart meeting,
Give responsive tone for tone.

We can burst the bonds which chain us,
Which cold human hands have wrought,
And where none shall dare restrain us
We can meet again, in thought.

So there's no use in weeping,
Bear a cheerful spirit still;
Never doubt that Fate is keeping
Future good for present ill !

Good luck to you all in your final exams. And may your future be as bright as the evening sun.

The Reluctant Academic is BACK! YO!

Raise the curtains, cue the drums, bring on the applause. The reluctant academic is back to corrupt more young minds with her amazing 'bullcrapping' abilities and almost superhuman-like ability to withstand all 'are-you-effin-serious?' situations.

And thus after several months of convincingly bluffing her way through assonances, alliterations and all poetic what-nots, the reluctant academic was once again given the responsibility of guiding nubile young minds. Only this time, they're not so young. This time, she got the cynical seniors. Jeng jeng jeng!

The difference between fresh newbies and the cynical seniors is the plain fact that they're cynical. They're all been there, done that, and "Hey! I've heard that bulls**t before!" So the usual 'bullcrapping' routine wont fly with them at all. The reluctant academic should know. She was shot down on the very first day.

So what happened exactly? Oh lets say that she didnt do her research too well and got her facts wrong and got called out for it not by just one student but two. Alamak! But did she admit it? Noooo... she tried to bulls**t her way through it. and of course she failed miserably. Oh the embarassment. How she wanted to crawl to the corner of the classroom and die a horrible, miserable death. To add more salt to the wound, the very next class, she was again attacked by the same students. They now know her weakness. They know her kryptonite! But don't forget the reluctant academic had super powers. She decided to fight back. So the reluctant academic decided to use her powers of... BRIBERY!! Muahaha, one day of no lecture was all it took. Oh and a couple of sessions of video lectures. But that's probably more to the reluctant lecturer's benefit than to the students themselves. Videos = no talking = lecturer gets to rest. Hahaha smart ain't she?

But how can the semester go by without another exclamation of "are-you-effin-serious?" Now the reluctant lecturer faces the agony of... cute young men. Jeng! Jeng! Jeng! But to be precise she is only drooling after one young man. So what to do? what to do? Distraction, distraction, distraction. So let's see how the reluctant lecturer handles this one?

Stay tuned for more antics from the Reluctant Lecturer!

What's with all the questions? Just hire me will ya!

The interview with the rector is in a few hours. And I'm still not bothered by it? What is wrong with me?!!

Is it too late for me to get a boob job?