A friend was fiddling with the messaging functions on a new iPhone, sent me some text and asked me whether I received it as an SMS on my 'hp' (meaning handphone or mobile phone) or as an e-mail.

Fond of not giving simple, straightforward replies, I did not send my response as just the mere 'hp' or 'phone' or 'sms' any other similar term referring to the cellular phone. I texted back 'Hewlett-Packard', intending to use its familiar 'HP' initials. My friend thought I meant the PC, and took it that I got the message as an e-mail.

It's like, to most people, ABBA may be the musical group from Sweden that made songs such as Mama Mia popular. But, to me, ABBA is the rhyming scheme of the first eight lines (octave) of a Petrachan sonnet.

As long ago as when the ABBA movie was having its first run, some colleagues on the night shift were in the company-provided transport on the way home. Philip Coorey began a discussion on the World Cup and Surinder Singh, sitting nearest to him, seemed keen on giving his views as well.

After a while, Surinder asked Philip: 'Which World Cup are you talking about?'

'The Cricket World Cup, of course,' replied Philip (a Sri Lankan), to which Surinder said: 'I thought you were talking about the Hockey World Cup!'

Almost in unison, the rest of us responded: 'We all thought you were talking about the Football World Cup!'

It gets worse for those of us who like to use several languages in the same sentence.

My friend, Jacob Idiculas, was once doing his usual round of sending huge drawings (building plans, for instance) for photocopying at Motion Smith's, then in Battery Road. On that particular day, he just wanted one copy each of the plans and told the Caucasian lady boss there so: 'One each, please.'

A few hours later, when he went to collect the copies, he was shocked when asked to fork out double what he had expected to pay. Then he discovered that the shop had made two copies each of the huge drawings.

'Didn't I say I wanted only one each?' Jacob asked the Caucasian lady.

'Yes, you did and that was what I told him,' she replied pointing to her Singaporean colleague, a Malay man, who did the copying of the documents.

'But, ma'am, you said 'two each',' he protested.

'No, I said...' and then she paused for a while and continued, much more slowy, '.... 'satu each'!' ('satu' means one in Malay), and apologised profusely.

One confusion can, of course, lead to another.

I get worried when I see the shorthand used by the wait staff on the order chit to the kitchen. Recently, I ordered barley water in a restaurant and on the chit the waiter had written 'bali'. I know we import water from neighbouring countries but Bali? That seems a bit far-fetched.

On another occasion, in the United States, my family and I were having breakfast and my wife ordered her favourite 'two eggs, sunnyside up'. The waitress wrote '2 up' on the slip she handed to the kitchen.

That taught me a lesson. I will never ever order 7-Up (the soft drink) for breakfast.

I prefer my eggs over-easy anyway.

An American farmer had high hopes in his daughter, who was an only child. Poor as he was, he decided that she should get a proper education. So he sold his farm -- lock, stock and barrel, including some cows and a prized stud bull -- to raise funds so she could go to a good university in another state.

A few years later, she graduated but he did not have the resources to attend her graduation. Soon, she came back home. The first thing she told her father upon meeting him, after the obligatory hugs and maybe some high-fives, was: “Daddy, I ain’t a virgin anymore.” She actually said “I ain’t a virgin no more” but let’s not make it sound worse than it really was.

Anyway, as expected, the father was fuming mad. He nearly had a heart attack.

“What?” he asked her, angrily. “I sold all my property, sacrificed everything to send you to a good university so that you could get a proper education... and you still say ain’t?”

Well, ain’t that a touching story?

What do we do about valedictorian Ms Trinetta Chong, who used the F-word at the end of her arousing -- I mean rousing -- speech on behalf of her Nanyang Technological University (NTU) cohort that had the auditorium cheering?

Many people agree that it is not offensive to use the word among your peers. Well, she was certainly among her peers. Except that there were otherwise proud parents and possibly some younger, impressionable siblings in attendance, who we just hope were bored by the long speech and did not hear the last few words.

If she was the farmer’s daughter, her father might have just told her: “Looks like after so many years in the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, your vocabulary still hasn’t improved.”

I am very sure that her vocabulary is much wider than mine. It was just a case of an unfortunate choice of word. She has apologised and if all of you unforgiving people don’t accept her apology, I do.

There is another story. I don’t make these things up. This is a real one. I mean, someone in an authoritative position told me the story.

Again it happened during my schooldays. My Secondary 4 class was doing a project on the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and I was the team leader for the group that met, was briefed by and tried our best to understand the workings of the Anti-Vice Squad.

The class project is in a bound volume in the school library ... provided it didn’t go AWOL somewhere between Bras Basah Road and Grange Road or Bishan.

An Inspector in the Anti-Vice Squad was telling stories -- scaring us innocent schoolboys (long, long before Youtube) -- about sexual offences, brothels, pimps and prostitutes, and showing us gory pictures of private parts mutilated by venereal diseases and so on.

But, to his credit, he did balance it with some humorous tales. And what better tale to spin than one about the Bard -- the great story-teller -- himself.

The story goes that William Shakespeare was sitting in the park, probably seeking inspiration to compose yet another sonnet to compare his beloved to a summer’s day, when a couple nearby started to strip themselves and then made passionate love.

A policeman came along and arrested the couple for an indecent act in a public place. Shakespeare, besides lending his cloak to cover up what was left of the modesty of the duo, was also taken to the police station to have his statement recorded, perhaps in iambic pentameter, as a witness.

Presently (which, during Shakespeare’s time meant “soon” or “in due course” and not “at present”), the case came up to the courts and it was the Bard’s turn in the witness stand.

The judge asked: “Mr Shakespeare, please tell the court exactly what the accused couple were doing on such and such a date at such and such a place.”

The Bard thought for a while and then said: “Your Honour, forsooth, yea, verily. They were ... they were ...!” and he had to use the F-word, in the present participle, like the gerund form used by the NTU valedictorian in a slighlty different part of speech, if you care about such details.

The judge was shocked. Not sure if he had a heart attack. Maybe not yet as the proceedings had to continue and justice had to be done and seen to be done.

“How can you,” he inquired, “a writer of such renown, composing countless sonnets and plays, often conjuring up such colourful dialogue as ‘whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed’ (King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1), obviously a man to whom words droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven, always intoxicating us with the exuberance of your verbosity... how can you use such a word?"

Shakespeare thought long and hard again. He felt like telling the court: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." But he decided to save that line for a play that he was working on, about a pair of star-crossed young lovers from the feuding Montague and Capulet families.

He finally composed and recited an impromptu poem (warning: euphemisms used):

“Her skirt was up; his posterior bare,
Family jewels hanging in the air;
If they were not (insert part of famous last words by valedictorian hereinbefore mentioned)..., then I was not there.”

So, maybe, said speaker heard of this fake Shakespeare story before and was, well, just quoting the Bard in an exhibition of her erudition.

By the way, I left out this Shakespeare snippet from the report on the Anti-Vice Squad so it cannot be found in the bound volume.

The opportunity finally came when Shin Min Daily News reported in its April 8th evening edition yesterday that he was just spotted in Taipei, shopping at the Shilin night market with his wife, and was apparently in that city for business purposes as well.

I was holidaying with my family in Taiwan a few months ago and we were, coincidentally, taking a taxi from Shilin back to our hotel and chatting among ourselves when the cabby turned around to ask us in his Hokkien-accented Mandarin: "You all are Singaporeans, right?"

"Yes," we replied. We did not bother to give him the obvious "how did you know?" response, expecting that he would fill us in anyway.

"I can tell by the way you all speak," he said, referring to the Singlish mixed with bits of Hokkien and the occasional contribution from "one of the other official languages" that I and members of my family travelling with me were using.

"I've watched movies from Singapore like Money No Enough and I Not Stupid," he added.

Well, thank you, Mr Jack Neo, we thought to ourselves. Mr Cabby, though, might eventually not thank you because we were prepared to give him a generous tip of a hundred bucks (NT) until his less-than-flattering remark. 

We did wonder if the cabby had actually seen the movies in cinemas in Taiwan. We were aware of Mr Neo's fame in that part of the world as his movies had been nominated for and even won Golden Horse awards.

There was always the possibility that the taxi-driver could have watched the VCD/DVD versions over and over again, to have become such an expert in "the way Singaporeans speak" - something we can't say we are really proud of.

Anyway, if nothing else, the incident reminded me of another event that I had witnessed involving Taiwanese and Singaporeans some years ago.

This was the wedding of my niece in November 2001. The groom's folks and the rest of their clan were Taiwanese and part of the wedding was held in Taipei, attended by an entourage of more than a dozen of us Singaporeans.

Our hosts, ever aware that our travelling party was more comfortable with English, ensured that their master-of-ceremonies would speak both in English, for our benefit, and guoyu (Taiwan's national language, i.e. Mandarin) for the benefit of their relatives and local guests.

The MC, the groom's maternal uncle, spoke perfect English and he made his announcements and main speech on behalf of the family - in both languages.

Towards the later part of the evening, he sat at our table to chat with us. Then he discovered something that would have made his job a lot easier. He heard us speaking among ourselves in Hokkien.

"Oh!" He exclaimed. "I could have just spoken in min nan hua (Taiwanese Hokkien) and everybody, both our Taiwan and Singapore families, would have understood!"

He might have even exclaimed "alamak" if he had watched some of Jack Neo's movies.

Going through international airports in the United States, you somehow get the feeling that someone is waiting to pounce on you, wrestle you to the ground, handcuff you or even shoot you and that seemingly polite "hi, how are you today?" has a hidden agenda.

Yet, despite the ostensibly thorough checks, there are times -- rare as they may be -- when you seem to be able to "smuggle" something through, unwittingly, of course. I confess that this happened to me once.

Fluids in a container of a certain capacity are not allowed on the plane and my family knows that only too well. My son once had his contact lens solution confiscated even though it was almost empty and we have had to give up an expensive bottle of cosmetics that my wife forgot to check in with our luggage when those items showed up in the X-ray machines.

But on that one occasion, flying back to Singapore from Los Angeles via Tokyo, we really did not know we had a "forbidden" item in our hand luggage that apparently went through undetected at LAX and was with us on board the aircraft all the way to Narita.

Picture this. Los Angeles International Airport. Or LAX. X-ray man sees a bottle in the bag. Second person goes through the bag and finds a bottle ... of some dried, salted Chinese fruit. Happy to have found that harmless item, said second person then puts it back into the bag, hands it over to you, thanks you and tells you to have a nice day. And you get on the plane that takes you to Narita, where you get off to wait for the connecting flight back to Singapore.

In transit at Narita, you have to go through another round of the beep test, take out your laptop and have it screened separately, put your cellphone, coins and other metal objects on another tray, and have all your carry-ons X-rayed again. You feel more at ease here since you already went through this, and the Japanese airport security people are oh-so friendly and courteous that you feel like bowing and saying arigato gozaimas several times.

At the other end, you are met by a smiling lady holding on to the same bag that was singled out at LAX and, after ascertaining that the bag belongs you, she tells you -- in pretty good English -- that the X-ray showed a bottle of liquid in the bag. You are very sure that she meant the bottle of kiam kim cho and even tells her exactly where it is. Japanese security lady takes out that bottle and hands it you, but does not return the bag to you.

She runs the bag through the X-ray a second time ... and "a" bottle is still in there. She comes back to where you are waiting, opens the bag, goes through another compartment and .... hey presto, there is that other bottle. Of liquid.

Oh, we weren't scared that we were "found out". We were more amused by the whole episode.

At LAX, one person watched the X-ray monitors but another person checked the bag that showed up with the suspicious object, took out an item that fitted the description, found it to be harmless, put it back and then returned the bag to us and we were on our way.

At Narita, the same person who saw the bottle on the screen went through the bag, found and took out the item, X-rayed the bag a second time for any other objects that might have been missed earlier. And lo and behold, there was that second bottle ... which contained a liquid and was of a capacity that was not allowed on board the aircraft.

If you ever wondered how certain things can get through stringent security checks, this is an example of one of the rare lapses and, hopefully, a very rare example of LAX security procedures. Fortunately, in this case, the "culprit" wasn't carrying a vial of nitroglycerine.

So the logical thing to do was to look at what SingTel had to offer besides the football.

I have not arrived at a decision. There is no hurry as StarHub will still telecast BPL matches until the end of the season in May 2010. As for the Champions League, the matches are shown at such ungodly hours — and it gets worse in a few more weeks with kickoff times an hour later — that I am not enough of a football fanatic to sacrifice sleep and get annoyed when my favourite team loses.

What I am going to say here has nothing to do with the Champions League or the BPL. Rather, while looking at the various packages on mio TV, I noticed one thing similar with both pay-TV providers: Channels are grouped like racial segregation.

StarHub revised my plan some time ago. I was on the Ultimate Pack, which gave me most of the channels. I was told that the plan would be revised to let me keep the channels it thinks I would want to watch, take away those it thinks I am not likely to watch anyway and give me a few more. The revised plan would cost about the same, after throwing in a discount to match the previous price plan.

In the exact words (more or less) of the StarHub representative: "You get all your current Chinese channels, we add one more Chinese movie channel, and we take away all the Indian and Malay channels." Even the Japanese and French were not spared because I also lost NHK and TV5 Monde Asie.

Checking up on Singtel's mio TV price plans, I could not help noticing that the main packages were named SuperSaver English Pack, SuperSaver Chinese Pack and SuperSaver Indian Pack.

It made me imagine the day the $110 TV licence fee we pay annually to watch "free" channels is revised such that Chinese Singaporeans pay a certain amount for Channel 8 and Channel U, Malay Singaporeans are charged a different amount for Suria and Indian Singaporeans have their rate for Vasantham.

I remember in 1963 when television made its debut in Singapore and there was only one channel. All Singaporeans were united in watching programmes in all languages.

Chinese viewers got to enjoy Bollywood movies and sandiwara, while the Malays and Indians joined in the fun to watch the Chinese movies.

Those old enough would remember sitting or standing in front of the TV set from Majulah Singapura in the early evening to Majulah Singapura around midnight when transmission ended. In between, we were all united in enjoying whatever show was on, in any language.

One show even gave all of us a chance to learn each other's languages. That was the programme to promote the national language, Malay. Every word or phrase was translated into English, Chinese and Tamil — the other three official languages.

For instance, if our mother tongue was Chinese, this national language lesson would teach us what a certain word or phrase was in Malay or Tamil.

Then we started getting more channels, including Malaysian TV, and family members at home and fellow constituents at the community centre would quarrel over who got to watch what.

These days, one thing that might unite viewers regardless or race, language or religion is sports, especially football.

But, again, I am seeing a link between the distant past, when we had just one channel and very few homes had a TV set, and the present day in which many homes have a few TV sets each but may not have Champions League and BPL channels.

When very few homes had a TV set, the privileged ones would invite neighbours into their homes to watch some shows. For free, of course.

These days, though, some people might instead think of charging others to watch football and other sports on their pay-TV.