Identity Register for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Malaysia

The NRD (National Registration Department, or Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara) website FAQ is full of hilarious grammatical errors and Borat-like language. There are waaay too many gems on that page, so I'll just reproduce the whole text here. All errors are from their website:

1. What is NRD's website?

NRD website is abbreviation to official web National Registration Department. NRD website make major world to information and national registration department service through Internet.

2. Why this website been created?

Latterly, information and service majority National Registration Department has been prepared by online and NRD website been created to provide convenience to the public find information and service that are provided.

3. Whom were allowed surf and use this website ?

Generally, this website could be achieved by all society. However, there were some information and service that need registration.

4. What is privacy policy for this website? Am I been recorded or not?

All access and your use up on this website shall not be recorded. To further information, please visit to 'Privacy Policy And Safety Policy' in bottom of each page.

5. What method for I contact National Registration Department?

You can contact us:-
Public Relations Office
Tel: (redacted)
Fax: (redacted)

6. How should I sent my feedback to Goverment Agencies?

You can fill form in the division "Public Complaint System" In NRD website. It would be channelled to the divisions relating.


(Thanks for the tip, Medaline.)

Update: A screencapt for posterity

Update Dec 9, 2008 : The webpage has been removed. Good thing I made a screencapt.

"Personal friend" is the new FWB

It's unfortunate that despite all his accomplishments, Dr. Chua's lasting legacy may be the creation of a new euphemism - personal friend.

Since this concept of "personal friend" may be new to some Malaysians, I would like to point everyone to the casual relationship section in Wikipedia (warning: has some rude words).

A friend opined that "personal friend" sounds like an oxymoron, but I disagreed, because the two words are not contradictory. "Personal friend" would be a type of redundancy, or more accurately, a pleonasm (the use of more words than necessary to express an idea clearly).
Now he may have questionable morals (and grammar), but I still think the formerly honourable minister should have gone out with a bang.
Instead of the initial "I will not resign" statement, he should have reenacted that famous scene from Gladiator, and snarled at everyone:
"Are you not entertained?! Is this not why you are here?!"

;-) :-p

Are you discrete, or discreet?

Consider the following sentences which have previously appeared in The Star:
"...dining room was plush without being overwhelming while the service was charming yet discrete."
"Xxx's two discrete rooms are the perfect place to entertain business guests for private functions."

In both cases, the intended word was probably discreet. Discrete means "constituting a separate entity : individually distinct", according to M-W. Just a tiny difference in spelling, yet they have completely different meanings. Unfortunately, your spellchecker won't flag this, because both are valid words. These would be examples of malapropisms.

IT-savvy users are most likely to encounter this word in a description such as
"discrete graphics", which refers to standalone graphics cards (usually using processors from nVidia or ATI). Even here, there's also confusion over the two words; if you google for "discreet graphics", you'll get 700+ hits.

Speaking of discrete graphics, it looks like Intel is going to enter this already competitive market. Interestingly, the company is the overall leader in PC graphics, by virtue of its built-in (integrated) graphics technology used on many motherboards. They carry names like "Intel Extreme Graphics 2" though most serious gamers would call them "graphics decelerators".