What a sparkle to my morning dose of this paper

"Kerfuffle" is a funny Scottish word used to describe a fuss over something that is not very important. One would never use the word to describe any kind of violence. So a funny word is, I think, the perfect word to use to describe all the fuss and feathers over the recent "humorous" column by Huang Hung (see China Daily, p18, Jan 5).

I read it and laughed out loud. I loved it for two reasons. One, I love satire, sarcasm, irony, a play on words and a bit of morbid humor. The second is that it is rarely found in my morning reading of the China Daily. Now we see why.

I used to teach advanced adult students without a textbook. It was up to me to design classes that would bring them past the type of information and English they found in textbooks.