Lasi One

Here is my fine hound Lasi, rocking the look with a handmade collar from Ciao Puppy. When I named her Lasi, it was meant as a knowing pun. In Cantonese, La Si (拉士) comes from English and means ‘last card’. When I adopted her I also thought she would be my last dog. Oh well.

But my plan backfired! Everyone thinks I’ve actually named her after another dog, the film star Lassie! Ahhrghhhh, like I would name anything or anybody after anything else. I’ve only had three dogs so far but only one of them has been successfully named: Piles. (A pain in the arse.)

Talking of backfire, taxis and buses. So English or other foreign words with the letter s in them inevitably become something 士 si or 斯 si in Cantonese. So bus becomes ba si （巴士) and taxi becomes dek si （的士). Fair enough. But for ages I wondered why HK people, when speaking English, called them “bas” and “tess”. Bus, bas, right? But how did ‘taxi’ become “tess”? Then it dawned on me. The logic was that if a word ended in ‘士 (si) in Chinese, it must end in -s in English, like ‘bus’!

Thus super well pleased with my powers of reasoning, I took Lasi for a walk.