Crepe diet-buster, pean to pea sprouts, English awfulisms

Yes, I know...something about me being on a diet.

I recall mentioning it, and in fact yesterday made a dedicated effort to eat less.

Normally, like Thais, I graze. I could probably do with less grazing, I thought, if I really want to cut weight.

So, out goes afternoon grazing. I allow myself a reasonable meal in the morning. Then I go for exercise. After that, I eat tiny amounts until evening when I leave for work.

At work, I eat two proper meals, and then have another when I get home – but I excuse that eating, as I am using my brain at that hour and need the food for energy.

Boyfriend Maiyuu made the dish you see above for dinner. Being a good dieter, I ate the crepes.

I saved the other portion (which you can't see above), minced pork and basil leaf served on rice, for breakfast this morning.

Okay, now for the crepes: They are home-made, as is the salad stuffing inside. The stuffing was made from pea sprouts, carrot, spicy Chinese sausage, and avocado. Maiyuu drizzled a sauce on top, made of mayonnaise, lemon, sugar, spring onion and olive oil.

In Thai, ‘pea sprouts’ go by the beautiful name tor meiow (โต้วเหมี่ยว). The first time I heard Maiyuu say it, I had to ask him to repeat it, as I had not heard it before. He fished the container from the fridge. In Thai writing, the words look as pretty as they sound.

I looked it up on the net. The Thai author of this (link harvested - it died) illustrated webboard post agrees: it is indeed a snazzy name for a salad vegetable (ผักชื่อเก๋ โต้วเหมี่ยว).

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Dieting plays around with the head. My body knows I am playing tricks, and not feeding it enough.

When I arrived at work last night, I was so hungry I felt frantic. I bought kaow pad naem (ข้าวผัดแหนม – fried rice with fermented sausage) from a corner shop.

It tasted so much better, after hours of eating virtually nothing.

Last night I fancied my appetite was contracting, if not my stomach. How long does it take for the stomach bag to start shrinking, if you regularly deprive it of its usual fill?

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‘I feel annoyed. Very annoyed.’

This is a blog, not a style guide to the English language. However, I would like to sound off about those writers who insist on adopting silly melodramatic tricks such as the one above when they want to create emphasis.

In recent weeks, I have found this device in blogs, in messages at work, even in emails.

No one speaks in this constipated, immature manner, but they do adopt the device when they write. Can they think of no better way to express themselves?

Here’s another Illustration:

‘I feel very bad about this language device. Very bad.’

The writer must think we are stupid. He wants to create emphasis, but the only way he can think to do it is to break off the intransitive verb 'feel', hive it into a separate sentence with its own intensifier ‘very’, then repeat it – as if we were too dim to get it the first time.

What happened in between the first sentence and the second – or did he just forget the ‘very’ part the first time he wrote it?

Why not keep it simple?

‘I feel bad about this English device.’

Or, if you really must:

‘I feel very bad about this English device.’

How do you measure 'very’ anyway?

After that, of course, you can tell us why.