When Shit Happens

This post is inspired by Ms. Koh 2's "Ang moh 红毛" post.

When shit happens,

The British will say "Bloody hell!".

American will say "Jesus Christ!".

Chinese will say "糟糕了!".

Taiwanese will say "干!".

Malaysian will say "Shit!".

Singaporean will say "Oh my god!".

Hongky will say "憋家伙!".

Cantonese will say "Diu lor...".

Hokkien will say "Jia lat liao!".

Penang CB lang will say...

CIBAI!

Mengecomplicatedkan

I have just gone through some of my patents recently and I find that all the patent attorneys like to write stuff in a very complicating way.

Here's some of the examples:

Eg 1:

"The switch panel of claim 1 wherein said light converter comprises a light collector that collects a portion of said light generated on said third surface and couples said collected portion to said light analyzer."

Eg 2:

"The method of claim 17 wherein said capturing said color image includes capturing said color image of said scene of interest using an exposure period that is longer than an exposure period used to capture said grayscale image."

Eg 3:

"The method of claim 14 wherein each of said photodiodes generates a dark current in the absence of light being received by said photodiodes and wherein said first and second output signals depend less on said dark current than said first and second photodiode output signals."

They make me feel like this when I read them.

So, in-order to understand what he's trying to say, I strike out the "wherein"s and "said"s.


Eg 1:

"The switch panel of claim 1 wherein said light converter comprises a light collector that collects a portion of said light generated on said third surface and couples said collected portion to said light analyzer.

Eg 2:

"The method of claim 17 wherein said capturing said color image includes capturing said color image of said scene of interest using an exposure period that is longer than an exposure period used to capture said grayscale image."

This make me feel like this.

But for this one, after striking out all the "wherein" and "said", I still can't understand what he's trying to say.

Eg 3:

"The method of claim 14 wherein each of said photodiodes generates a dark current in the absence of light being received by said photodiodes and wherein said first and second output signals depend less on said dark current than said first and second photodiode output signals."

This is so mengecomplicatedkan...

Teleconference

Sometimes it's funny to listen to the conversation of people having teleconference in office.

When they call local or internal people for discussion, they'll speak in Hokkien:

A:" Ei! wa ai ga lu discuss jit eh ar."
B:" Discuss har mit? Data ng si send hor lu liao meh?"

When they call overseas to Americans, they'll speak in English:

A:" Hi Jason! I would like to discuss the data with you now. Can you turn to slide seven?

Instantaneously switch to broken American accents.


When they call to Europeans such as British, they'll still speak in English:

A:" Hi Andrew! I would like to discuss the data with you now. Can you turn to slide seven?

But still use broken American accents, instead of British.

Then, when they call to Japanese, my old boss who spend several years in Japan will try to show off his fluent Japanese:

Old Boss:" watashiwa xxx xxx xxxdesu xxxx xxxx desukah... blar blar"

But if you do not speak Japanese, then you have to be patience with their crappy English and try to imitate them.

This is my personal experience:

Yoshida-san:" Pin eighto?"
Me:" Yes, pin eighto of the testo boardo."

When my colleague speaks to Taiwanese supplier, she thought they speak the same kind of Hokkien like ours:

Miss HC:" So, 你要keep我in the loop pun..."

FYI, pun is Malay okay?


Another colleague tried to ask our Taiwanese supplier about the tolerance of their product package dimension:

Loke:"你们的 package height 加减多少?"
Supplier:"我们的东西没有偷功减料的!"

But the funniest thing would be listening to the conversation between my boss and our Chinese supplier with his Mandarin cum broken American accents:

Boss:" 请你 arrange engineer to help build sample to check 那个test data 的 accuracy 和 tester repeatability..."

Boss, don't force yourself lar... if you really forgot how to speak Mandarin, just speak English lar...

Bad Name

If your surname is Tan, try not to name your son Nelson. Because...

Nelson Tan = 鸟生蛋

Don't use Michael Tan too. Because...

Michael Tan = 卖鸡蛋

Don't use Leonard Tan as well. Because...

Leonard Tan = 两粒蛋

Same concept applies if you're from Chang's family...

Leonard Chang = 两粒橙

Most importantly! If your surname is 徐, don't name your daughter as 徐白玲, because her English name will end up as...

Chee Bai Ling

Cannot lar... cannot show the rest of this photo liao...

Engineering Terms in Daily Life

Engineers used a lot of engineering terms while chatting in our daily activities.

When we're waiting in long queue at restaurant, we said the stall cannot Ramp.

Homemade donuts are referred as Engineering Samples, and the one in J Co. Donuts are Mass Production. When the size of the donuts are very different from each other, we say the Cpk is low.

My engineering samples

We described women as Analogue Circuit because they are very susceptible to Noise (emotion), and you need to do Characterization in order to fully understand them.

Sometimes you need to make an Engineering Judgment when they are moody because you do not have sufficient Sample Size to support your decision as they refuse to tell you what they have in mind.

When we met with a group of ladies, we usually performed Sorting across the Sample Distribution and build up Database. The pretty ones will be considered as Bin 1, and the ugly ones will be categorized as Reject Bin or Yield Loss.

Bin 1


Reject Bin or Yield Loss

If there aren't enough pretty women among the group, we said the Yield is low. This will initiate Low-Yield-Trigger and we might need to revise our Spec Limit so that we can get something out of it. But most of the time, we'll try our best to stick to our ISO standards.

Ladies that are so ugly like her are described as Design Error or Infant Mortality.

Design Error

However for women like her,

Surfacing and 3D Rendering

We would say she have done some Surfacing and 3D-Rendering to become pretty.

Sometimes when people asked us questions which we cannot answer immediately, we usually replied them "Let me perform some Engineering Studies and Simulation.".

But one ULTIMATE term that was frequently used by my ex-colleague would be....

Dunno Lar!

My dear team-mates, cheers!

Note:
1) Ramp is the process to increase a production line's capacity in a short period.

2) Cpk is the measure of the process capability or how well a production line can produce goods in same consistency.

3) Yield is the rate of a production line to produce good parts.

4) Low-Yield-Trigger is a process initiated when the yield of a process drops lower than the critical stage.

5) Characterization is a process to determine the behavior of a system.

Kanasai Paint

I believe some of the Japanese are actually Hokkien lang.

Kansai Paint, one famous brand of paint from Japan.

The problem is sometimes they forgot how to spell the word in Hokkien...

HakKien

In Hakka, 吃完 (finish eating) pronounced as:

sit sai

In Hokkien, 吃完 (finish eating) pronounced as:

jiak liao

So, how does it sounds like when Hakka mix with Hokkien?

吃完 = jiak sai liao

And this is HakKien