Of bon bon and eucalyptus

I must have sent people frantically googling for "pom pom" in my "Onoj - Part 2" entry.

Walking past some Christmas deco shelves at KMart today doing my last minute Chrissy shopping (or rather just starting), the red and green crackers caught my eye. As I picked up the colourful package, I glanced at the white price tag located on the edge of the shelf. The description read "Christmas Bon Bons". At that point, I realised I had exposed myself to total embarassment on cyberspace for mispelling bon bons. I could not believe how I could get it so wrong - bon bon versus pom pom. They so do not sound alike. Okay, I admit. I didn't know how to spell it, only that I overheard people excitedly exclaiming its name and I thought it was pom pom.

It is true that if you do not know the meaning of a word, you are certainly going to mispell it. I remember in my second year of high school when there was only a guy and myself left in the last round of an interschool Spelling Bee competition. Given the word "eucalyptus", I did not know what it was and totally mispelt it, giving the nerdy looking guy the champions title. Since that time, I hated the word with a mighty passion and avoided any association with it.

Ten years have passed since then, and I repeated my mistake.