Kata Kunci — Vocabulary with Memory Hooks, Post by Post Posts 1–100 | Series 1–10 | Singapore and Malaysia Each entry: word — meaning / pronunciation / memory hook Hooks use phonetic similarity, vivid scenes, PAO (Person-Action-Object), and absurd exaggeration. Series 9 (Posts 81–90, JB to KL by ETS): vocabulary not yet extracted. Series 1: Kent Ridge, Singapore Post 1 — Seven Seed Sentences and Trail Vocabulary boleh — can / able to / BOH-leh / A BOWL appears and the hawker says “leh” —...

series 1 from 0-10 March 30, 2026•20,824 words Seven Sentences That Go Anywhere: Starting on the Kent Ridge Trail The best way to learn a language is to plant the same sentence in different soil. I started with seven sentences. Nothing fancy — the kind of thing you might say waiting for your food at a kopitiam. But here is the thing about good seed sentences: they are not tied to one place. The patterns inside them travel. Today I took those seven sentences and walked them up a hill. Spec...

Post 21: A Bigger Station Now KL Sentral, where the scale shifts, the signs are in Malay, and everything begins again The last time we were on a train, Ali fell asleep. The MRT from HarbourFront rocked gently all the way home, and by the time it reached his stop he had already dozed off, head against the window, bag on his lap. That was Singapore: one island, ten posts, one circuit done. This series starts somewhere else. KL Sentral is not a station you pass through by accident. It is the ...

Post 11: Step Out, Look Up HarbourFront MRT to the foot of Mt Faber, where the city ends and the hill begins The trail is behind us now. Kent Ridge taught us to slow down, look closely, and trust that the words would come if we stopped trying to memorise and started trying to feel. That series ended at the MRT with damp shirts and the good kind of tired. This one starts at a different MRT, same instinct, new ground. HarbourFront station sits at the southern edge of Singapore’s main island....