When notifications get aggressive

You have been warned

It's always pleasing to find signs in public places with exemplary punctuation and word use. Just as pleasing as having sentences written in a sarcastic way interpreted as being sarcastic.
Else where on this blog you can find examples of chinglish (Chinese-English) and other language mistakes that I have a love/hate relationship with.

I saw this amazing example today by Sydney Harbour and Foreshore Authority.

Sign attached to 5 barriers

Taped to 5 plastic barriers, the sign warns the city's citizens that there is "no parking", which is a reasonable request.

But then it goes on to further advise that "offenders will be infringed". Despite seeing those Copyright Infringement Notices from ISPs where you download something illegally then get notified that you have infringed some copyright, I've not seen the word used in a different way. Especially warning that an "offender will be infringed". Among the dictionary definitions of infringed is the word violated. And adding some punctuation it makes the sign read "No parking, offenders will be violated".

Maybe it's not a language error, just good use of a thesaurus....

Comments

An unusual shopping experience

A few days ago I was in a shopping centre near to Syndey Aquarium. I walked into a clothes shop there and started to look at the sunglasses they had on sale. A female member of sales staff walked past me, smiled and said the obligatory "hi, how are you. Want to try any sunnies on?". Standard reply of "oh,...no,...no thanks, I'm just looking thanks". Nothing unusual. I looked at the sunglasses a bit longer then slowly started to wander round the shop looking at other things. About 5 minutes had elapsed since I had entered the shop and spoken to the girl. I was now looking through their extensive collection of board shorts. Admiring the price, fabric, etc. This girl walked over and started folding clothes or doing something with clothes and hangers. I didn't pay any attention. Suddenly she exclaimed in an overfriendly way "what are you up to tonight?". I almost jumped with surprise, looked up at her, looked around to see if the question was directed ...

The social experiment

I saw this scene on Friday night in Sydney. I was standing at an intersection, a really busy intersection near China Town, waiting to meet some friends,...but they were late. So I had lots of time to stand around and wait for a break in the stream of pedestrians to take this picture. It still came out a little blurry, but I can describe it. On the left, a table of water bottles with a metal tin and a sign saying that the water bottles are $1, and then another sign saying it is unattended and that you should be honest and pay if you take a bottle. On the right of the picture is a guy kneeling on the pavement, possibly homeless, with a sign asking for money. Almost immediately this struck me as some sort of strange social experiment. Embrace your inner philanthropist by giving money to a homeless guy, buy yourself water for $1 and give no money to the homeless guy, steal a bottle of water, steal a bottle of water and give it to the homeless guy, or even buy a bottle for $1 and ...

The Mysterious Bird Death Chronicles

Mysterious Bird Death Chronicles started as a photograph that I took on a beach of a headless bird (probably a pigeon). See the picture below. As we walked along this beach, called Cave Beach , there were quite a few dead birds lying in state on the sand or tangled in decaying marine fauna, in various stages of putrification. All with one thing in common. They were headless. Completely decapitated. No skull stripped to the bone. No keratin beaks. No head whatsoever. Nothing. It was probably even a clean disengagement the head. I didn't poke around the bird carcasses, but I assumed that this was the case. This struck me as being perturbedly interesting. Why would these birds have no head? Did something eat it? Does the entirety of their cranium totally disintegrate into the atmosphere? Is there some wild animal around here that only eats the heads of dead animals? Also extremely and morbidly intriguing was the thought of the paradox of why this beach was a mass ornitholog...

You'll find me about 11,000 miles away.

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