GMM-TV announced their new line-up of Thai shows for next year, including a remake of the Japanese “My Love Mix-Up.” Some netizens worry that the actor in the Thai trailer doesn’t get the Japanese “ehhh?” right. This may seem minor, but it’s not.
If you search online, the Japanese “eh?” is equated to the English, “huh?”. Not so in the Japanese tv series I’ve watched. There, the elongated “ehhh?” means: really! or WTF. This difference between a simple, “huh?,” and the incredulous, “what?,” finds a parallel in public policy and management.
How so? There’s something of the German komish in the Japanese “ehhh?”: funny, but now responding to something also strange; even weird. I think a good number of us respond this way to today’s many formal policy pronouncements: “Ehhh?” “Ehhh?!”
Think: The New Weirder as a policy regime.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 