astronaut, cosmonaut, taikonaut, what-not

and it is ‘angkasawan malaysia’ (malaysian astsronaut) for malaysia, so said our defence minister datuk seri najib.

he said:
“The person selected will be promoted as a Malaysian Astronaut and not Astronaut or Cosmonaut,”
(silly, if the person is from malaysia, of course understood s/he will be a malaysian astronaut)

and he further added that astronaut is use by the american, cosmonaut by the russians and taikonaut for china’s astronaut.

if china’s astronaut can come up with ‘taikonaut’ why don’t malaysia come up with something too instead of using ‘malaysian astronaut’? what name do you suggest? what about ‘bolehnaut’? something sound not right there eh. boleh + naut. can + not? hehe.

btw i found conflicting report in the star and bernama. star headline used cosmonaut while bernama used astronaut. methinks the correct one is astronaut. najib was wrong to say america used astronaut as methinks astronaut is just an universal accepted english word for a ‘person who travel in space’. after all he (najib) did said to use ‘malaysian astronaut’. still using the word astronaut.

well have any of you send it your application to become the first malaysian astronaut? you may do so here. notice that there is a quote there from dr m which says anyone in the street can be an astronaut, so you see you do have a chance, so go for it…. and a datukship will await you when you return.