1 = One = O

Since the election fever is on in Ijok and one of the main issue appears to be racial politics (again... so, what's new?), I would just like to raise an interesting "racial" issue here for your consideration.

I just discovered to my amusement last night during a birthday dinner for my colleague that there are different ways of referring to the shortform name for 1Utama (that monstrous shopping mall). My whole life I've referred to it as "1U", pronounced "Wun-Yew". But apparently, the Malay folks have been calling it "OU", pronounced "Oh-Yew". A quick survey around the dinner table confirmed that all the 3 Malays call it OU, while the 3 Chinese and 1 half-Chinese call it 1U. I guess the term "OU" is equivalent to "1U", as "One" is the written form for the number "1" and "O" is the first letter of the word "One", so 1U = OneU = OU. So I learn something new everyday.

BTW, if I were a registered voter at Ijok, I would know by now which guy to vote for. :)