A Padre in Partibus (notes and impressions of a brief holiday tour through Java, the Eastern Archipelago and Siam) by Rev George M Reith (presb), Reprinted from SFP. Kelly and Walsh, Singapore, 1897:

"...Dutch has... the reputation of being the harshest of modern languages. As spoken in Netherlands-India, it seems to me harsher than any known tongue, with the possible exception of Chinese, and as its unmusical guttural, rasping, hissing, spluttering sounds assailed my ears, I felt that I now knew the reason why Holland alone, of all the nations in Europe, has not produced a musician of the first magnitude. No human ear, I thought, could retain its musical sense after being accustomed to the Dutch language." (pp. 173-4)

"Voltaire used to say that English was only French badly pronounced, and one might say that Dutch is only Scotch badly spelled, with equal truth." (pp. 177)

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Someone: "superstitious people believe that if u dream someone dies, it means smthg good is gonna happen to that person"

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First-grader suspended for sexual harassment - "The first-grader was suspended for three days for sexual harassment after he put two fingers inside a classmate's waistband, school officials told his mother, Berthena Dorinvil. The boy told her he only touched the girl's shirt after the girl touched him."

Funeral Protests: Implementing time, place restrictions necessary - "Constitutionally and historically, U.S. law has protected all speech, no matter how irrational, disrespectful or controversial it is... a fundamentalist Kansas church whose members have made a name for themselves protesting the funerals of fallen U.S. soldiers and gays since the 1990s. Politicians are especially paying attention now because the group -- which holds signs proclaiming "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "America is Doomed" -- is showing up at the funerals of soldiers killed in action in Iraq."

Absolute Idiocy, or The Benefits of the Singaporean Education System - "Today I accompanied my brother to collect his O-level results. At the foyer of his alma mater, Bowen Secondary School, a crowd was gathered... the crowd consisted of students who had been prevented from entering school premises, for unsalubrious reasons such as 'inappropriate dress (e.g. spaghetti straps and short skirts)', having 'dyed or punkish hair', or (get behind me Satan!) wearing slippers... Imagine the prospect of, after almost three months, returning to your old school, wanting to enjoy a small chat with your teacher, celebrate the achievements of the school with your classmates, mourn your losses - only to be stopped rudely at the foyer and be denied entry. Imagine now that 60 or 70 of your peers are also denied entry: in a class of 400, that's about 15%."