of cash crops

posted this as a comment in weetz's post. but thought it's a good recollection to keep here too. heh heh...

during my uni 3rd year, i signed up for a botany module on cash crops. the lecturer that took that module was a taiwanese prof. as he was taiwanese, his english was heavy accented and we had lots of laughs during his lecture. yup, it was not very nice, but we couldn't help it.

there was this particular lecture where he went on and on about this cash crop call 'on eye on' (well, he pronounced it as such). and we were kinda trying very hard to double guess what was 'on eye on'. at the end of the 1-hr lecture, one of my classmate stood up and sheepishly asked :" eh, prof, when is 'on eye on'?"... (frankly, we were all glad he asked for we were worried we might come across as really stupid to ask such a question) anyway, the question took him by surprise and he exclaimed :" wah, how come you all donno what is "on eye on"? ok, who do not know what is 'on eye on', raise your hand" and of cos, the whole class of close to 200 raised our hands. and he shook his head, mumbled something about us urban kids not knowing what cash crops were anymore and hurriedly walked to the blackboard, and spelt it out. and he did it so so so slowly, reading it out, very deliberately, letter by letter, with each letter in capital too. and he went...

......O ......N ......I ......O ......N

of cos, we had a good laugh after that... heh heh...

:-)

also, for the record, we had problems with his other cash crop lectures too. for example, he would pronounce `winged beans' as weeeeen-ged-ded bing and `french beans' as flaeng bing. so, you can imagine how confused we were during his class... hmmmph! but of cos, we had lotsa fun and laughters, much to his displeasure!