Every word, every sentence has 3 possible meanings

Aiya I didn't have time to update my blog during the weekend. Nevertheless, I shall put in 3 entry to make up for it.. haha..

I learnt something amusing last friday. I arranged to meet up some sisters to go SMU for cg gathering. I sms them to meet at Dhoby Ghaut NEL station control at 730pm. To me, I thought I have already make it very clear. (Dhoby Ghaut has 2 station, North-South and NEL. NEL station has a few gantry and there is one next to station control, one in front of Plaza sg entrance and another smaller one nearer to staircase and escalator that will lead to the underpass to North south line station.)

One sister called me to ask me which exit I am referring to. I said NEL station control and she asked me whether it is the Plaza Sg exit. I said "no, it is the NEL station control exit". And it went on for some time and finally she concluded that it is the plaza sg exit. I realised that the exit she meant was not the gantry exit but the exit from MRT platform.

Another sister called me to tell me that she is at the station control and she didn't see anyone. I told her that I was at NEL station control. In the end, she was waiting at the Plaza sg gantry area near top up/ticketing machine. To her, that was also the station control...

Another sister called me and said that she reached the station control and I realise she was at the north south line station control. I think she didn't know that there is another station control at NEL side.

I didn't expect my seemingly clear sms can have so many different interpretations. I read an article by Lee Kuan Yew and I learnt that every word or sentence has 3 possible meanings: What the speaker intend to mean, what the hearer understands it to mean, and what it is commonly understood to mean. I have seen it happened last friday. Haha..

I guess even if all of us seek to look at the words and sentences as it commonly understood to mean, there could be differences already... No wonder alot of conflicts are caused by miscommunication or misinterpretation. I had my fair share of it with my wife too. Whenever we realised that we were angry because of different interpretation, we laughed at ourselves, at how silly we were to get into arguement because of that.