One hardly converses in Malay anymore when one has left school. (Not that anyone did converse very much in Malay at school; it's just cos the rules said you had to on Mondays (don't ask why) and if you didn't, you'd get an offence slip, and three offence slips meant you had to write an essay or go 'kutip sampah' - that's 'collect garbage' in the national language). Anyway, a bunch of us bored overworked drones in the office had a good laugh at ourselves this afternoon doing total injustice to our long-abandoned tongue, over the e-mail. The usual call to lunch would consist of a mass mail to the regular lunch 'kaki' flashing an e-mail subject of a routine "What's for lunch?" or "Any lunch plans?", or an anxious proposal of "Let's have chicken rice!" if the writer was exceptionally famished. Well, somebody got creative today and launched this spiel.
So it started with
"Aku kelaparan. Lunch nak makan apa?"
[I'm hungry. What shall we have for lunch?]
And continued along the lines of
"Tak nak terlalu pedas, boleh?"
[Don't want anything too spicy, ok?]
Then it got more verbose.
"Wahai kawan-kawan yang bijaksana, bagaimana keadaan cuaca di luar?"
[O my learned friends, what's the weather like outside?]
Passionate, even.
"Malangnya, aku tidak tahu. Tiada jendela di sudut tingkat dua puluh yang terpencil ini."
[Alas, I do not know. There is no window in this desolate corner of the twentieth floor.]
Yes, I know what you're thinking. The people in my profession have an absolutely weird sense of humour. :P
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