come again?

one of the things you get to do if you work in my organization within company 'i' is work with people from all over the world. well, not really all over the world, but with people from malaysia, the philipines, costa rica, and china at least. while working with people from different countries, it is inevitable that you will learn something about their culture, such as new words or foreign phrases.

one such phrase, "pura vida mae", is used fairly often by my one of my malaysian counterparts/coworkers. he has already used this saying with me several times, but each time i just sort of pretend like i know what the heck he is talking about. it's gotten to the point where i really want to know what it means. in an attempt to learn more about this saying, i slipped the words into conversations with some of my other malaysian friends. unfortunately their responses were along the lines of "what the heck are you talking about?" and i sort of pretended like i never said any such crazy phrase.

after a bit of googling, i was finally able to track down the meaning of "pura vida mae". apparently it is a costa rican term which would be literally translated as: "pure life, dude", or in a more meaningful rendering of: "cool, dude!". now why my malaysian co-worker would use this term when the things we were work on blow up in our face, i really don't know.