Results of Chingrish (2) Contest

There were 8 entries this time. (Well, actually only 6 as you shall see.)

A recap of the entries:

1. Shilpa - Laxative.

2. Chris - (No guess.)

3. Cool Insider - Job that requires running about.

4. Etel - (No guess.)

5. Tigerfish - Do BIG toilet business.

6. Chun See - Business continuity assurance. (Or something to that effect. Trust a management consultant to come up with a term like that.)

7. Fr - No peeing here.

8. Firehorse - Related to toilet stuff.

Thanks to all of you for your entries. And the results are...

*drum roll*

Sorry, none of your guesses were correct. The photo in the last entry was part of a sign hung at the door of a Taiwanese restaurant in Joo Chiat Road:



The traditional Chinese words, written in simplified Chinese as 营业中 means "operating" or "open for business" or simply "open" - any of the 3 English answers would have been correct. Chun See's "business continuity assurance" guess comes close but not quite correct.

Nevertheless, everyone of you still walks away with an award, as usual.

The Persistence Award goes to Shilpa, Tigerfish, Fr and Firehorse for participating in this contest for the second time:



And now, the Special Awards.

The Lame Out-of-guess Award goes to Chris for not only his lame remarks but yet tagged me with a lame meme which he knew that I won't do:



The Maiden Effort Award goes to Cool Insider for guessing for the first time:



Finally, the So-close-yet-so-far/Goggle Award goes to Etel and Chun See for coming so close to making a correct guess but didn't:



Etel did a Goggle Google search but yielded no results. She had probably used the terms ["to run business" chingrish] in her unsuccessful Google search. If she had used ["to run business" chinglish] or even ["to run business" engrish] she would have found that celebrity blogger Kenny Sia had blogged about it before here. Wikipedia even has an entry on it and so do dozens of other websites like this one.

Having said that, I would like to clarify that when I posted this poser on April Fool's Day, I didn't know that this Chingrish sign had already been documented by so many websites. It was only after Etel gave me the idea to do a Google search on it that I discovered it was so.

So what's the moral of the story? Without any intention to sound smug, there are two things that I learnt here:

1. When looking for information using Internet search engines, it is very important that you specify the right search words; and

2. It doesn't necessary mean that you are less Internet savvy when you reach my age.

So take heart, Chun See and Fr.


Disclaimer: As usual, this post is meant to be light-hearted and fun. I apologise if anyone is sore about his/her award. He/she has 2 recourse - go apply some ointment or go ahead, strike me off from your "favorite blogs" list.