Idiot’s Guide to Civil Service English

Since everyone’s looking / has a job now, let me share this useful information with you.

I swear it’s telling the truth… for my level at least, especially for “please advise, FYI, for your approval, hope this is helpful, please do not hesitate to contact me, thank you for bringing this to my attention, immediate and WE SPOKE.” HAHAHA.

I think the ‘brief, review and policy consultation’ are true too.

x x x x x

Please advise.
I don’t have a clue what to do with this.

Please draft.
Draft for hours producing a coherent and impressive letter so that I can fulfil my teacher-fantasy by needlessly amending it.

Please deal.
Do all the work on this yourself.

For your information, please.
Don’t even think of commenting on this but if anything goes wrong I’ll remind everyone you knew what was going on.

For your concurrence, please.
Preparation is at an advanced stage, or it’s already happening. If you have any concerns, no-one wants to hear them.

For your approval, please.
Always a great way to pass the buck.

Concerned (as in “I was concerned to hear…”)
A senior official is about to explode.

Surprised (as in “I was surprised to learn of…”)
Another classic senior official understatement. Signifies utter horror, disgust and fury.

Up To Speed (as in “Are you up to speed?)
Have you got a brain?

I have reservations…
“If you do this then you’re an even bigger fool than I thought.”

As appropriate (as in “please deal with this as you consider appropriate”)
You may bin this, but don’t blame me if you are found out.

Happy To Discuss
There’s a whole lot more here than meets the eye and that I haven’t told you. Should ring alarm bells.

Hope this is helpful
I’m well aware that it is not helpful at all. Please don’t contact me again.

Please do not hesitate to contact me
Please do not ever contact me ever again. If you really insist, try in two weeks time when I am on leave.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention
“Damn, I hoped nobody was going to mention that/find out about that.”

I would welcome your views on this
Does anyone have any ideas – cos I don’t – although I want to appear very consultative.

We Spoke.
Lets other people know that we have spoken and have a plan, but not what that plan is. Always followed by a full stop.

You may recall
You will if you’re any good.

You may wish to note that…
No you won’t, it’s bad news I’m afraid.

You should be aware that
Even worse news – not my fault, honest.

You may wish to consider doing this…
Do this or else!

In due course
In a very long time …… if I remember.

On The Back Burner
Let’s just shelve it and pretend we will attend to it later.

Immediate
Desperately overdue and should have been answered a week ago.

Policy Consultation
The authorities have already decided what it’s going to do. The document will contain one policy dressed up to look like several options, to give the impression that the authorities are open to suggestions. It will also have a few ridiculous ideas, so officials can claim to be “thinking outside the box”.

Interim Report
A short document explaining why the full report will be late, how complex the issues are and how hard you are working on it. With luck, people will forget about the whole thing until you’ve moved to another post.

Resource Implications
This will cost money/need some manpower. So either the department won’t do it or it will be done badly using existing resources.

Initiative
A totally impractical and over-expensive idea that skirts around a problem but makes it look as though we are doing something about it.

Toolkit
A mystical set of solutions that will somehow launch us towards public sector nirvana.

Brief
A very misleading word as briefs are anything but.

Media Handling Strategy
How on earth can we bury this?

Review
This policy is going wrong but we cannot admit it. Instead, in order to defuse the controversy, we will get someone who knows nothing about the issues to examine them for 3 months, following which they will provide a helpful synopsis of everything we already knew.

Workgroup
5 or more people sitting in a room failing to achieve anything.

Strategic Coordination Unit
There’re too many coordination units. Nobody knows what the hell is going on or who is supposed to be doing what. A new unit to co-ordinate the coordinators is therefore required.

Change Management
Finding ever new ways of saying “Like it or lump it”.

Empowerment
I’m not delegating this boring task to you because I can’t be bothered to do it. I am empowering you.

Information Management
Posh term for “filing”.

Milestones
A form of signage still used in the civil service although they ceased to be fashionable on highways about 150 years ago. Sometimes imply strenuous exertions as in “deliver milestones”.

If Harry Potter were written in Civil Service English it would go something like this:
Harry, along with other key stakeholders such as English Partnerships, the RDAs and Gandalf, and in the light of a wide-ranging consultation exercise, thought that, subject to appropriate consideration of the options, he would head, in an integrated and holistic way, respecting the four key principles of public service reform, for the cottage built on greenfield land situated close to major transport infrastructure interchanges by the end of April 2004.

(day: I have no idea what the above story is about. I think my eyes just skipped over that whole chunk of useless words. hah.)

Here’s my 4 cents (based on current experience):

You seemed puzzled.
Were you listening to what I have been telling you for the last 10 minutes?
Or what’s so difficult to understand, just follow my instructions, throw out your common sense.
(day: Damn you, it’s my usual facial expression – i.e. without expression)

Let me get back to you.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Lemme google the answer. And hopefully if you’re smart enough, you would google it too, so we don’t need to call each other again.
(day: my favourite. Or else, please call my colleague at xxxx)

Please enlighten me.
Talk all you want, but let me tell you this, “I’m as stubborn as a mule”.
(day: I swear, the higher you climb, the… mule-r you become)

What is your work load like for the week?
I need your help in dealing with my workload.

 

Spaghetti

Everyone needs a laugh at times… or maybe an eyeball-rolling moment, just to prevent your eyeballs from getting stuck in their sockets, facing the computer all day and night.

It can also tell how innocent you are… if you seriously don’t get the second last part of the joke *coughibetahpeksureunderstandcough*.

Kudos to Chieh En for sending a chirpy email while everyone is half dead and bored to death with their work… and the one who is innocent. Hah!

x x x

For several years, a man was having an affair with an Italian woman.
One night, she confided in him that she was pregnant. Not wanting to ruin his reputation or his marriage, He paid her a large sum of money if she would go to Italy to secretly have the child. If she stayed in Italy to raise the child, he would also provide child support until t he child turned 18.
She agreed, but asked how he would know when the baby was born.

To keep it discrete, he told her to simply mail him a post card, and write ‘Spaghetti’ on the back. He would then arrange for the child support payments to begin.

One day, about 9 months later, he came home to his confused wife.

‘Honey, ’she said, ‘You received a very strange post card today.’

‘Oh, just give it to me and I’ll explain it later,’ he said. The wife obeyed and watched as her husband read the card, turned white, and fainted.

On the card was written:

‘Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti.

Three with meatballs, two without.

Send extra sauce.

 

 

 

no title

Ho-hum. I need to get back into connecting with people outside my working world.

Let’s take a baby step.

First step - blogging.

Look at it this way, if I can’t even get the motivation to type out what I feel, think, felt and thought, how am I able to communicate with all you mysterious beings?

Over the days  weeks months, I have been promising myself to blog. Like when I’m in the midst of showering, I would have a great idea about what to blog (but, sadly, by the time I came out, I would have usually forgotten about 80% of it). Or like the times when I’m on the train to work, while eyeing other ladies’ clothes, I would ’type’ out a blog entry in my mind…

So after all the long period of silence, I was actually actively blogging! … mentally.

So there!

 

There!

 

and There!

 

Okay, back to work. Yeah, it is still work time. Hsst!

 

of Day, the entry spammer

to Troy, the comment spammer.

*Hugs!*

 

of our Trip to Melaka – Day 1, part 1.

It’s been more than a month and I think I should blog this before it drags on any longer and I forget about it. Anyway, there’s nothing much for me to blog about other than the usual thoughts of  ’Chefs are smexy‘ and ‘I want to have my name in the high scores (in Amber’s wii)’.

 

8 January 2009

It was a normal working day for some, but to us, we were about to go on a holiday! Is it me being evil or was it just too good a chance to not gloat over those poor chaps who could be spending their day in some stuffy old office, answering calls, bitchin’ and such? Or is it me just being me.

It was slightly more than 4 hours worth of bus ride journey to our neighbouring country. Though with our own personal TV and the beautiful scenery (well, there were lots of trees. It is beginning to be a rare sight in Singapore), we were more interested in catching up with our beauty sleep.

Dropped off at Hotel Equatorial; which I quoted from the brochure – A 5-Star international business class hotel that is within walking distance to the main historical, shopping and entertainment districts. The building was awesome. There might be many more other majestic hotels out there, but nothing beats “The Moment Of Comparatively“.

First thing first, put down our luggage before anything else – especially sightseeing. Unfortunately, we did sightseeing more than expected… because we lost our way. Now, you could hardly expect much from a couple of girls who could get lost in a shopping mall, right? And you thought having a guy along would be better. After all, they say “Girls can’t read maps”. 

If we take Hotel Equatorial as Spot X and we came from south of X, we followed the road sign “Jonker Walk” and went North. That was when we first came upon MY PARADISE – Jaywalking.

(My paradise – other than knocking down jaywalkers if I’m the driver; is jaywalking when I am not the driver.)

After 10 minutes of walking (maybe more, maybe less), we were tired of walking endlessly. While they pondered over the map under the sun, I stood in the cool shade not more than a couple of steps away from them, and an uncle sat in his car by the roadside staring and secretly laughing at the 2 half baked human potatoes. In the end, we asked him for directions and were told that we were going the wrong direction or something – it’s hard to catch what was said while standing in the shade.

So we went back to X.

And followed what the uncle said/ the map, we went east of X. We saw their orange school buses, their schools, parents picking up their kids, run down hostel houses, empty lots, stalls by the streets, rusty old cars -that to our amazement, still able to move… anything but Jonker Walk. Why?! Because we read the map wrongly.

So we went back to X.

Hi, X, we’re back again. There was only one direction left – west. We got smarter (at long last), Amber went to re-confirm the hotel’s staff if west was the right direction. Friendly people.

Hey ho, we finally got to Jonker Walk, where our Hostel awaits. Obviously nothing comes so easily. We got lost on Jonker Walk itself. From the start of the street, we wandered to the end of the street. Of course, we can’t get enough of the sun, we went to the next street and got lost there.

And lose ourselves again.

And again. Until Amber called our Hostel.

Number 20 (our hostel) was extremely near the start of Jonker Walk. Well done us!

I had never welcome the cool interior of a building more. Anyway, the interior of Number 20 impressed me. Not that I have not seen it before, I did, online, while looking through the places Amber found suitable. The photos there and reality didn’t differ much.

1. The registration counter and hallway to the dining area and room 1 to 4. Front staircase going up to room 5 to 9.
2. Computer area.
3. TV area. Where we usually see John lying on the black couch. Only that’s Amber in the picture instead of John (if that is his name).
4. Sitting area. Books and Magazines! There’s even Monopoly. (You can see the hallway clearer here.)

While John was recording Amber’s personal details, another guy carried a spare mattress up to our room (7). The 3 of us were sharing a room due to various reasons, but well, it was more fun that way. While the guy was tucking in the clean bed sheet and us looking on, he spotted a yellow stain in the middle which we didn’t see.

“This yellow stain here, it is from the detergent. The detergent is yellow. Don’t worry, it is not… sperm.” (Or something along these lines.)

*SNICKER* That thought has never crossed our innocent minds (I am assuming this is the case for FJ too). Maybe because of what the guy said that made us rolled on the bed in stitches when we found that they provided 3 condoms with 3 sets of towels.

Can you spot it? It’s in blue. The condoms, that is. 

x x x x x

All in all, we like Number 20. Let us show our enthusiasm in the following picture.

x x x x x

We had our lunch at Fomosa Chicken Rice Ball restaurant opposite us. The balls (of rice, you dork!) were smaller than what I had expected. It was like half the size of my fist, while the ones I had in Singapore was the size of my fist.

FJ : I want more rice.
Waitress: How much more?
FJ : … 1 ball?
Amber & day: *snigger*
Waitress : . . . how about the 3 of you share this set – 1/3 chicken and 15 balls of rice?

The meal, with drink, cost 6.20 ringgit.

The food, to me, is only average when the novelty wears off (Amber and FJ might beg to differ – probably both in opposite direction). Well, at least the restaurant looks good (inside).

“There’s a temple opposite you?” – my mum

x x x x x

Pretty much rejuvenated with food in our stomach, we went to Carrefour to buy some bottled water in case we get thirsty in the hostel. In the end, we bought chips, chewing gum, snacks, cookies, cookies and more cookies.

 

I was charmed by their shopping basket, the evil creatures above won’t let me pull it for long. They didn’t like the fact that I was so happy whilst pulling the trolley-like basket along and narrowly miss banging into shelves, people and stuff; they’re jealous!  

x x x x x

TBC