Inspired to blog

A word to the wise...

2012-01-20T16:22:00.000Z

I learnt a new word today. It doesn’t enrich my world in any interesting way and it is to do with an area that holds absolutely no interest for me and never has – fashion.

The word is “peplum”.

Frankly, when I read the sentence “Peplums look like they're going to make a bit of a comeback this year”, I thought the word sounded like a particularly disgusting bodily secretion. Or maybe something to do with lactating women, even.

Guess what a peplum is?

It’s a frill. A frill or flounce of fabric that is attached to dresses, blouses and skirts at the waist, so that it comes down over the hips.

Who would've thunk, eh?

Still, I guess I've learnt a new word today - and unfortunately I'm never going to forget it or its meaning. That's the way it is with information I don't need or care about - it never leaves my head. But all the things that I have to remember for certain occasions (like exams)... they make a beeline for the exit without a single glance back.

Oy...

Poor little rich/famous girls

2012-01-18T08:39:00.000Z

Does anyone else find it amazing that practically every other "celebrity" of the female persuasion was "bullied in school" and informed that they were "ugly"? Or is it just cynical ol' me?

And another amazing thing is how 95% of them apparently eat like gluttons and it's their "metabolism" and "good genes" that help them keep their fabulous figures even though they "hate exercise" and "never go to the gym".

It makes you conclude that only bullied girls who eat like horses and hate exercise can ever attain the state of celebrityhood...

Mindboggling.

Guest post from my husband

2012-01-17T19:26:00.003Z

I do not claim to understand much of this (I've dutifully read/watched the Wiki links), so please don't think of quizzing me on it. :) If Pete's post is right up your alley, good for you! If not - don't worry, you're in good company!
What Pete said when he emailed this to me is: "If I had the time to maintain a blog, this is the sort of thing I'd write about."
Yikes...

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I have not been sleeping much lately as I have been preoccupied with something.

What is the world’s smallest bit?
When is a bit a byte?
And what is a nibble between friends?

Apparently the answers are: 12, 96 and 48, respectively - atoms, that is. Uhh?? If we had asked the same question a few weeks ago, the answers would have been totally different but that was way back in 2011!

Actually the real question in my mind has been where do I take our company and its services and... well, basically, what we will be doing in the next 10 years. After all, we should have a 1, 5 and 10 year plan, according to our bankers (I think there a cockney rhyming slang in there somewhere).

If we all take a look at technology now against technology of say 10 years past, ok, so we have faster processors, bigger storage devices, and the computing power we had on our desktops 10 years ago now sits proudly in one hand. We all know there is a finite level of miniaturisation - I mean, just how much storage can you push out of a hard disk? Apple are renowned for thinking out of the box and they are not afraid of starting from scratch... unlike other manufacturers who just take an idea and make it better or cheaper – whichever sells the best.

So – what is outside the box, and who will be there at the forefront of technology in 10 years? Surprisingly, a 10-year road map may have just been rolled out before us – and understanding what is involved is actually a breeze. How to achieve it is another question, but I believe this is where we go next. How many atoms does it take to store 1 byte of information on conventional data storage devices such as a hard drive or a solid state (chip) device? The answer? Around 1 million atoms - roughly the number of atoms per byte contained in a current storage device. Multiply the number of Gigabytes 1,000,000,000 x 1,000,000... yeh ok, my calculator wont handle that either.

IBM have turned their thinking upside down - instead of making things small, you need start small and see where you go from there. So here is the punchline – IBM have announced that their boffins have stored 1 bit of data in 12 atoms! The world’s smallest bit.
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240113949/IBM-creates-worlds-smallest-magnetic-memory-bit

1944 – At Bletchley Park, the world’s first programmable computer (computing as we know it today) sparked into life, with a memory capacity of – well, actually, nothing, but still amazing! (Ok - I'm just flying the British Flag !   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer

Later that year, IBM (And Harvard) are credited with creating the first computer that could store data – 72 decimal numbers to be precise – well, that’s many bytes in anyone’s books. But how many atoms by IBM’s new standard? Who cares and that’s not the point anyway. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_I )

The point is IBM were there at the beginning and it looks like they are there at the new beginning. The 1948 machine was a monster. The equipment used in the lab today to store a number on 12 atoms. IBM is also monstrous – and the direct practical use of this is not what we are looking at; however, the materials that can be used to change the way in which data is stored IS.

Currently there is an accepted finite level of miniaturisation in the current manufacturing methods and materials employed, due to some fuzziness or something interfering with whatever it is that causes the fuzziness. But IBM have redefined the accepted finite level of miniaturisation .

So, when does a bit become a byte? When you rearrange the magnetic poles of 96 atoms. And a nibble? Well, that's 48 atoms.

As for my 10 year plan – Yeh right Mr Wanker – sorry Banker, I will give you a 10 month plan and you will be grateful.

Before anyone asks if I was bored or had nothing better to do... let me just say that I needed to spend 20 mins on something different.

On audio books

2012-01-14T19:56:00.000Z

Do you like listening to books? Apparently Stephen Fry listens to audio books while going for long walks, but sadly they do nothing for me (walks and audio books both!). For people who don't read, I guess audio books are a godsend, but personally, I'd much rather read a book than listen to somebody reading aloud.

And here's the thing - I don't understand the point of adults being read to, unless they're physically unable to read. It's supposed to be a treat, right, if somebody reads a book to you? Not for me. I think it's meant mainly for children, until such time as they can read for themselves.

Pete sometimes plays an audio book in the car when we're driving long distances. I've tried my best to get into the story, but after a while it just becomes a drone in the background. I guess I get tired of listening and simply tune out. My brain can't deal with the plot or characterisation or anything, no matter who the narrator is. Not even Stephen Fry, with his beautifully modulated voice, is interesting enough. I suppose I'm a reader, not a listener.

What about you all out there? Do you enjoy audio books? What do you think of them?

Sunday Scribblings - "Joy"

2011-12-08T16:15:00.001Z

- A pile of unread books by different new authors (recommended by trusted others), all waiting to be devoured.

- Thinking of the pleasure that my little book-loving 1.5-year-old niece is going to get from all the books that I loved as a child (some of which I still re-read) which I'm going to introduce to her.

So much joy to be derived just from those two things...

Limerick-off Monday

2011-11-16T14:55:00.001Z

I like this week's prompt simply because I managed to come up with two limericks fairly easily - the bonus being that I'm pretty satisfied with both of them! At any rate I'm not wishing for quicker wits and funnier ideas... this time around, anyway. No promises about next time, though!

So here they are:

A fellow who went through a phase
Of carrying hankies made of lace
Didn’t care a jot
What anybody thought –
His hi-fashion cred was firmly in place.

~~~~

A woman who went through a phase
Of attending each and every horse race
Found that her honey,
Her friends and her money
Quickly vanished without a trace.

If wishes were parking slots...

2011-11-11T09:29:00.001Z

Any parking slot that I was trying to wedge my Range Rover into would obligingly swivel itself on a turntable until it was at the right angle for me to just drive straight in without having to do any angling manouevres. Also, MY slot would expand sideways to accommodate my car comfortably, should any vehicle on either side be parked too close to the line.

You think that's off-the-wall far-fetched? Well, think about this - apparently one of the Ecclestone daughters has, in her $45 million house, a car turntable so that she does not need to reverse her Ferrari out of the driveway.

I was only expanding on an already existing reality. Not so far-fetched NOW, is it? Hah!

Oh to be a multi-multimillionaire, just to experience the extravagances in that ridiculously rarefied lifestyle...

Sunday Scribblings - "Omen"

2011-11-09T12:47:00.001Z

Would you believe that once upon a time, I thought that the Malayali name “Oommen” was a phonetic Mallu way of spelling “omen”? I know, I was ignorant. Or innocent. I’ve coined a new word to describe the complete lack of worldliness which was my lot at age 20 – “ignocence”. Or possibly “innorance”.

Which brings me, by way of a vague segue, to my first encounter with an authentic Mallu from deepest darkest Kerala. I didn't meet him until the first month or so of my apprenticeship in the Indian Express in Madras. Basheer was a sub-editor with a couple of years’ experience who was assigned to show me the basics of page-making and other editorial duties. He did this cheerfully even at his busiest. And since he was a friendly chap, he took it upon himself to try and draw me out of my shell (I used to be painfully shy).

The problem was that I found Basheer virtually incomprehensible. He must have thought me really slow because there was usually a bit of a gap between him asking me a question and my reply to him – mainly because I was scrambling to decode what he’d said. But I’d say I managed ok, most of the time. A question that completely threw me early on, and I remember it vividly, was “What do you think of God?” - except, of course, Basheer said “God” to rhyme with “goad”.

I must have looked like a total idiot, and I felt like one too, as I blinked at him. I was also panicking, because I had no idea what "goad" was, other than the literal "prod", and that didn't make any sense in the context. It could have been "gode" or something else altogether, it could have been a editorial/journalistic term that I should have known, or something that I’d possibly missed in some previous conversation with Basheer or even, for all I knew, somebody that I'd been introduced to.

I didn’t know how to respond – saying “yes” or “no” could have been the wrong response (as it undoubtedly would have been, with hindsight) and might bring on more disaster in the form of “what do you mean by ‘yes’ (or ‘no’)”. In the end I compromised with a weak smile and non-committal shrug and hoped like hell that it would do. Thankfully, it did – mainly because someone came up to him with a question... and just like that, I was off the hook. I didn't figure out what "goad" was until the next time the topic of religion came up in a conversation Basheer was having with Master - and then the lightbulb finally went on in my head.

I never did get to tell Basheer about my thoughts on God, though.

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-11-07T12:47:00.003Z

Click here for this week's Limerick-Off Monday on Madeleine's blog

Easy-ish prompt this time, I guess. I'm getting fairly handy at writing limericks, but I do know that merely getting them to rhyme in the AA-BB-A format isnt quite enough - a proper limerick in my eyes has to be witty and preferably incorporate a pun or two or funny wordplay in general... kind of like the ones Ogden Nash wrote. Or Phyllis "Granny" Smith, who is truly versatile in her genius - there's nothing she can't write/write about, and how incredibly well she does it all, too - limericks, poetry, essays, you name it. How I wish I could be half as talented.

Anyway, my limerick for this week:

A fellow was famous worldwide

For getting constantly pie-eyed

He visited every Irish bar

Between County Cork and Myanmar -

He didn’t stop even when his brain was fried.

Reviewing my choices...

2011-11-07T11:19:00.000Z

How do you choose to buy something on Amazon when you're not familiar with the item? Me, I've found that I depend completely on reviews from people who've tried and tested it (whatever "it" happens to be - a novel/craft book/cookbook, clothes, games, a new author whose works I'm not familiar with, etc).

I usually read a few comments and reviews, both pro and anti. If there are two or more commenters who have left positive reviews that are thoughtful, coherent and well-written, with minimal spelling mistakes, I normally commit to buying the item. More often than not, my choices are vindicated.

Sure, there have been a few duds over the last few years, but on the whole I'd say that 97% of my purchases that were based on positive reviews by educated reviewers/commenters have been worth it. Is that snobbery or just good sense? If you were to ask me, I'd have to say honestly that the ratio is skewed about 70-30 in favour of snobbery. It might make me a snob, but my instinct is to trust a review from someone who's able to write effectively and briefly about the pros and cons of anything - whether the review is of a book or a saucepan.

PS. When it comes to negative reviews, if there are three or more comments that are pretty much unanimous on the quality of the product (never mind the language/spelling here), I don't buy the item. I'm pretty sure that my choices here are vindicated as well - although, obviously, I'll never really know for absolute certain.

Marvellously insincere marketing

2011-11-02T14:45:00.000Z

A couple of days back, I received an email from a marketing representative of a job-site company, which was sufficiently different enough to make me smile. The writer (called Serge) tried his best to be flattering, sympathetic, honest, intimate and humble by turn - a pretty hard-fought attempt but not quite achieving that note of sincerity he was trying to go for. I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise because, after all, it's an advertising/marketing exercise - and advertising/marketing have nothing to do with sincerity or honesty.

The text of the email is below; comments in italics are, of course, mine.

"Hi there

Nice that he addresses me by name...

I just want to thank you for your wonderful blog srefoodblog.blogspot.com.

I read the post "Spinach & green bean rice" and then I spent another hour on your blog by reading your posts with pleasure :) Every article is interesting and easy to read.

How oleaginously the sincerity oozes through…

I work for Jooble company, we aggregate job adverts around the world.

My job is to persuade bloggers to link to our site.

I really love my job! We have a friendly team and good management, but unfortunately I have no idea how to convince a blogger to link to us…

Which begs the question – what EXACTLY about his job does he love, if he doesn’t know how to do it in the first place? And just how good is the friendly team and good management, if none of the friendly team-members have helped him, and if the management haven’t even trained him in how to actually do his job, or told him how to go about it?

I'm afraid I might lose my job because of it :(

Noooo….. the sheer pathos of it! *sniffing away a cataract of tears*

And that is why, instead of sending letters to thousands of different blogs, I am reading yours.

Er… hang on, he doesn’t know how to do his job (although perhaps he DOES have a clue) and he’s afraid he might lose his job – so what does he do? Does he try to get some information from the web or from his colleagues on how to do his job? Nope - he continues to read my blog... instead of sending out those letters to “thousands of different blogs” (and as opposed to what? Thousands of the same blog?).

Honestly, I am not really sure if the link to our website in United Kingdom - jooble-uk.com, will be appropriate for your blog,

What, after reading my food blog for an hour, he’s still not sure if a link on my blog to his job-aggregating company’s website would be appropriate?

but if you believe it will and it is possible to add it, I would be really grateful to you! Our site is really cool, it can greatly help hundreds of people to find jobs.

Yes - because my food blog is really not about food, I only maintain it in the hope of someday helping hundreds of people to find jobs…

I wish you to have a good day and excellent mood! Thanks again for your nice blog. Write more! Thanks!

P.S. I am a Pisces by zodiac sign too :)

Serge"

And that is the final sealing touch from this marvel of sincerity – his admission that he’s a Pisces by zodiac sign, TOO. I feel such a connection with him, I'm so happy now…

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-10-31T14:23:00.000Z

Click here for this week's Limerick-Off Monday on Madeleine's blog

Coming up, a limerick from the "It Serves Her Right" school of limerickery...

A woman who just let it slip
That she was going on a trip
To the Aloha state
With another woman's mate
Soon found her friends had all jumped ship.

Sunday Scribblings - "The Backyard"

2011-10-28T12:37:00.000+01:00

I prefer to call it “the back”, because that way it is, in a manner of speaking, non-denominational – nobody’s likely to get the impression that “the back” is a structured garden or a neat lawn or even a proper backyard. Because “the back” really is, simply put, a mess. No more, no less. I’m no good at growing things, too squeamish to do any serious gardening in case I encounter any slugs, snails or other creepy crawlies, and don’t know how to maintain a manicured lawn (and don’t particularly care to know – what’s the point? It’s at the BACK! Hardly anyone gets to see it!).

However, nobody who’s not actually a visitor to my house needs to know that, which is why I’m boldly stating this on my blog. What if someone reads this post, you ask? Well, so what? The three people (my guesstimate) who might conceivably stumble upon this post at some point in the future will read about “the back” at my house - but it won’t do them any good because they will not know what it actually looks like.

No, I will not be putting up any photographs.

I may have outed “the back” of my house here like a sleazy insinuating gossip columnist, but I'm going to retain at least a vestige of its dignity (and mine) by not sinking to the level of the shameless paparazzi...

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-10-28T12:01:00.002+01:00

Click here for this week's Limerick-Off Monday on Madeleine's blog

My limerick for this week, after a bit of a gap in taking part.

When I saw the first-line prompt, the first phrase to pop into my head was "tell-tale tail" - and, of course, once it got in, there was no getting it out, so I ended up writing the limerick to accommodate the phrase. Some phrases are just such bullies - they forcibly occupy my brain and then throw their weight around, overcoming other, gentler ideas that are easily cowed into submission...

Anyway:

A woman was telling a tale
Of an experience that turned her pale.
One day she found proof
That a rat lived under her roof –
She knew by its tell-tale tail.

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-10-05T15:55:00.003+01:00

Click here for this week's Limerick-Off Monday.

Forgot to post this on my blog on Monday, but heyho, at least I managed to get it across to Madeleine's blog! Also, it's not exactly the same as what I posted there - I've tweaked it just a teensy bit because I think it sounds better. Is this much too contrived? What do you think?

A guy in the mood for a bite
Went out feeling quite uptight.
He took a gander
At a man called Evander
And took a chunk from his ear in a fight.

Sunday Scribblings - "Plan B"

2011-09-28T11:29:00.001+01:00

Sometimes I wish my life was more organized, more structured than it is.

Actually no, I think what I mean is that I wish I could organize and structure my life a little bit, given that my husband is the sort of person who sets off blithely into the sunrise without knowing how to get where he knows he needs to go (literally and metaphorically). I’m not exactly a worrier myself, but I’ll have to admit that compared to Pete I’m about as relaxed as a bagful of freshly-trapped snakes.

For instance, there was that occasion when he decided to whisk me off to Harrogate (in Yorkshire) where there’s a club called The Blues Bar, which has excellent music all days of the week but especially Saturday. I hadn’t been to Harrogate before, so I’d no idea that the city is wickedly posh and insanely expensive, and that the Blues Bar is located in the city centre right in the middle of a welter of posh hotels and clubs and bars – basically, the most popular hangout area especially on weekends for the wealthy young persons of Harrogate and surrounds. We would be getting there late Friday night, staying Saturday night as well, and leaving Sunday morning.

Me, as we were leaving: Where are we staying?

Pete: Probably at Premier Inn.

Me: Have you booked ahead?

Pete: No, I’ll ring them when we get nearer there. I’m sure we’ll get a room.

Famous last words, as they say. When we were about 30 miles away, Pete rang Premier Inn, but was told they were full up. Then I started ringing around the hotels in Harrogate – but cheap or expensive, they were ALL fully booked for Friday and Saturday although they were free on Sunday (for all the good that did us).

Me, somewhat alarmed: NOW what do we do?

Pete: I guess that rules out Plan B. On to Plan C.

Me: That rules out Plan B? What was Plan A??? And what is Plan C?

Pete: Plan A was tto have a Plan B. I've no idea what Plan C is. I didn't think we'd need it.

*sigh*

So THAT'S what he meant!

2011-09-27T08:00:00.000+01:00

Frank Sinatra, that is. Long long back I heard one of his songs with the refrain "Let's forget about tomorrow, for tomorrow never comes"... followed by "Domani, forget domani" - and I always ended up wondering who Domani was, and if there was a "story" to the song that I wasn't getting.

Then I started studying Italian on my own, and by Lesson 3, all became clear.

Domani = tomorrow.

I hadn't realised that it was Mr Sinatra who set the trend so often seen in Bollywood movies, where the hero/heroine speak a sentence in English and immediately repeat it in Hindi (or vice versa), so that there's absolutely no doubt in anybody's mind of what was said in either language!

Anyway, long-time mystery solved, which is always a good thing.

Oh, the irony of it!

2011-09-26T15:25:00.000+01:00

Doolittle and Dalley - estate agents and surveyors

Wright Hassall - solicitors

What WERE they thinking of when they named their firms? Did it not occur to them to say the name aloud? Perhaps they were economising by choosing a name that also described their workstyle?

Well, whatever. I don't mind, really, as long as the names stay.

And you, gentle readers with the quirky sense of humour (y'awl know who you are, right?), if you know of any other gems to add to the list, please feel free to let me know in a comment. Just the thought that there could be more such descriptively named firms in this world makes me feel more positive and cheerful in general. Do you feel it too?

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-09-12T18:37:00.000+01:00

Click here for this week's Limerick-off Monday on Madeleine's blog

How 'bout that - this week I managed a limerick without thinking too hard about the storyline or the rhyme (the prompt being "A guy/gal who was covered in sweat"). I must be getting cleverer at these (I hope). But next week will tell if this week's limerick is a mere fluke or a sign of easier times to come...

A gal who was covered in sweat

Couldn’t help but fume and fret.

Her high-fashion kit

Just ripped and split,

Laying bare much more than her silhouette.

Whatcha think of this one? Anyone?

Limerick-off Monday

2011-09-07T14:59:00.002+01:00

Click on the headline for this week's Limerick-Off Monday on Madeleine's blog.

Well, technically mine's now a Limerick-Off Wednesday, but this is the first chance I've had all week to try my hand at this week's competition. Unlike previous occasions, I had almost an embarrassment of riches to deal with in terms of rhyming words , which made it difficult to decide on what the "storyline" was going to be. I know, I have a genuis for making anything into whine (and there's another rhyme). :)

PS. I've heard from various sources that this feat was achieved a few thousand years ago by a young man whose name was Jesus Christ. But since I don't have proof of the nature of his feat - that is, whether it came in limerick form or not - I shall continue to hold my talent for limerick whine above anyone else's.

And so on to today's show:

A fellow was trying to dine
On fresh strawberries and aged wine.
The berries were sweet
A perfect fresh fruit treat -
But the alcohol, worryingly, arrived in a stein.

Flashback to 2008

2011-08-24T15:31:00.001+01:00

I found this post as a draft from way back in 2008... I'd even forgotten I'd written it, until I came upon it when I set about deleting posts that were marked "draft" but had no content. Don't ask me why - a virtual tidy-up of my website is the best reason I can offer. Anyway, it seemed a shame to waste a nearly completed post, so I've decided to publish it.
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A couple of days back, Pete and I went to a “Cheese and wine” fund-raising do for a local Royal British Legion branch, of which my boss is an enthusiastic and long-time member. He had invited us to attend and because I’ve been helping him with designing posters and so on, it seemed like it would be quite interesting. (Plus I wanted to match a few faces to the people with whom I’d been corresponding and/or talking on the phone.)

Pretty much to be expected was that most of the members were at least 50-plus, and some well into their 70s and 80s. The meeting/function/party (can't think of the correct word) was held in the rose garden of a large manor house. The sprawling three-storey manor house, the very large formal gardens surrounding and the estate with 1000 acres were all inherited by the nephew of the family whose successive generations had been in unbroken ownership of the mansion for over 300 years.

The gardens were breathtakingly gorgeous, and the rose garden, with its immaculate lawns, was a perfect venue. You could almost see royalty (or the upper crust, anyway) getting married there and having a posh reception with people in fancy clothes wandering around the paths with canes and parasols and hats and bonnets… or hang on, perhaps I’m imagining the wrong century?

Anyway, the members - there were a few of them who probably weren’t seriously posh, and again a few who weren’t seriously loaded, but on the whole, you could tell those few very easily apart from the posh and the loaded. Not that the latter were dressed much differently from the former, but there was a certain something that even I could discern that set the posh ‘uns apart from the hoi polloi. I’m not terribly good at recognising upper class accents as different from a neutral, “clean” one - any regional accent has to be really pronounced (Liverpudlian, Glaswegian, Yorkshire, etc) and either easy or grating on the ear for me to recognise it.

This time it wasnt just the accents that made me realise at once that I was in the company of the Seriously Loaded... it was just a certain style, perhaps. I could NOT stop looking at a lady, probably in her late 50s, slender, with very blonde hair tucked under an Alice band, who, when she sat, sat very erect with a silk shawl wrapped stylishly around her shoulders. You could tell she was Class with a capital C. She was perfectly friendly as far as I could tell, and she took part cheerfully in everything that was going on. The reason I couldnt stop looking at her was because I was trying to work out what it was that set her apart. I dont think I managed to pinpoint it, even with every instinct yelling "posh" "loaded" "wealthy" "classy" and other such adjectives at me.

I wonder if that sort of poise and demeanour is something one can learn, and if so, where I could go to learn it. I bet the Queen could make a mint by giving out a few tips on behaviour and deportment...

Sunday Scribblings – “Shipwreck”

2011-08-23T15:44:00.002+01:00

How would you answer the question “What would you want with you if you were shipwrecked on an island”? There's no way I could take just one thing (or person), so here’s a partial list. The list is not in any particular order – you have to believe me on this. So:
- A shipbuilder
- A navigator/engineer
- A seasoned sailor, preferably the ship's Captain, assuming he/she didnt go down nobly with the ship when it was wrecked
- My Kindle, with as many books downloaded onto it as possible
- Pete’s Kindle, with as many books downloaded onto it as possible
- Kindle charger
- Something with which to generate electricity to run the charger
- Internet connectivity (although I don’t know how I’d manage this)
- All my spices and cookery books
- My husband
- My mum, sister, brother, sister-in-law and baby niece
- A good pediatrician (for my niece, and any other babies that might be caught up in my list)
- Assorted cousins and friends
- Scrabble, Balderdash, Taboo, Ticket To Ride (all board/card/multiplayer games)
- Paints and things to paint (clothes, etc)
- My beading stuff
- My beading instructor
- Beading instructor’s family and friends, because otherwise she might not want to come with me at all
- 64Gig iPod and fancy noise-cancelling headphones from Sennheiser or Sony
- Johnny Depp
- Pierce Brosnan from his Remington Steele days
- The guy who plays Thor in the movie Thor.
- Amitabh Bachchan from the 1970s/early 1980s.
- Don Cheadle

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-08-23T12:01:00.001+01:00

Click on the headline for this week's Limerick-Off on Madeleine's blog.

I wonder if everybody does as much second-guessing of their work as I do of mine. I keep getting the nagging feeling that I should be able to do better, and yet these limericks (and previous ones) have come about only after an awful lot of forehead-wrinkling. The best limericks of the week usually make me laugh out loud, and I very much fear that mine can at best only raise a weak smile. Even from me.

Oh well... I console myself with the thought that I might not be the best, but I DO at least have the ability to recognise the best. (Granny Smith is one of the latter - whatever she writes - stories, anecdotes, sad poems, happy poems, limericks, her laundry list - they're all SO good! Even her blog's web address is a very clever pun that I love.)

Here are mine for this week:

A fellow who tended to brag
About the clients he got to sh*g
Was called in by his boss
Who put her point across
By calling him a right old sl*g.

A woman who tended to brag
That she’d never look like a hag
Was sadly forced to repent
When south her boobs went
And her butt developed a sag.

Limerick-off Monday

2011-08-17T12:38:00.000+01:00

Click the headline for this week's Limerick-off on Madeleine's blog

The prompt was "A fellow who always seemed game". It wasn't a problem coming up with rhyming words... but to wrestle those words into something resembling a logical "story" - that wasn't quite as simple as it seemed at first. Still, because I wasn't satisfied with the first one, I thought I'd try my hand at another and choose the better of the two to publish. Sadly that plan, although I'd thought it cunning, didn't work like it was supposed to. I couldn't choose one limerick over the other, because I felt both were equally meh. So here they both are. Get one, take the other free.

A fellow who always seemed game
Ended up taking all the blame -
From cheating to assault
Ev’rything was his fault…
And yet no one felt it was a shame.

A fellow who always seemed game
Other people to hurt and maim
Soon found it was painful
More than it was gainful
When the Mafia came into the frame.

Sunday Scribblings - "Pleasure"

2011-08-09T15:37:00.001+01:00

Click on the headline for the Sunday Scribblings website

A shortlist of things that give me pleasure – and if ~~all~~ ~~some~~ any of them come across as petty and/or childish, please be advised that there is a very good reason for this... that is to say, I AM petty and childish (no “or” about it).

Typing with my eyes closed (or without looking at screen or keyboard) and knowing automatically when I get something wrong.
Bonus: After backtracking, erasing and re-typing the word correctly with my eyes still closed, and then, a few sentences down the line, to find that I have done all of that perfectly without causing more errors… oh the satisfaction!
Getting my boss to realise that he cocked up, not me.
Bonus: When it dawns on him that he’s got to ring the enraged client, not me… oh joy oh joy oh joy! Or to put it another way – OH JOY! (no, not the Joy in your office.)
Accidentally stumbling on a rivetingly fantastic novel, racing through it in a breathless sitting and stumbling around in a daze for the next few hours because reality isn’t real yet. (My latest “find” – “The Good Son” by Michael Gruber.)
Bonus: Finding out that the writer has other best-selling books that you can now hunt down and devour… that anticipatory pleasure cannot be duplicated.
Recommending your newest favourite author to your book-crazy friends.
Bonus: If they haven’t come across the book/author either and they love it too – and they let you know… the feeling is akin to Doing a Good Deed For Nothing.
Lying in a hot tub and looking out at the Niagara Falls literally across the road from you.
Bonus: A punch-bowl-sized goblet of strawberry margarita in hand.
Double bonus: You’re with your husband.
Unbeatable: Your husband has his own goblet so you don’t have to share yours.

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-08-08T14:55:00.004+01:00

Click on the headline for this week's Limerick-Off Monday at Madeleine's blog.

The prompt was "A man/gal who was lacking in wit". I can't say I had much trouble coming up with these limericks, but by the same token I can't say I was particularly thrilled with either. My feeling is that they're adequate, but - oh dear - perhaps somewhat lacking in true wit.

I sincerely hope that my sub-conscious self didn't have me in mind when my conscious self came up with the second limerick! It would be just too much irony to cope with, if this turned out to be autobiographical...

A man who was lacking in wit
Bought a D-I-Y humour kit.
Being a hopeful sort of bloke
He thought he could amuse folk
With his one-size-fits-all joke - the poor twit.

A gal who was lacking in wit
Had just no idea when to quit.
She told her very lame joke
Without fail to the very same folk,
And wondered why they threw a fit.

Lyrics I love from a song I love

2011-08-03T19:44:00.002+01:00

"Dekha machal ke jidhar bijli gira di udhar
Kiska jala aashiyaan bijli ko yeh kya khabar"

What beautiful lyrics, and what a fantastic song by Asha Bhonsale.

*For non-Hindi speakers, this translates (more or less) to "(His) every glance is like a bolt of lightning that has no clue about the devastation it causes." (Forgive the clumsy prosaic translation - I'm no good at poetry.)

Updated to add: The lyrics I quote above are from the song "Aaiye meherban". The movie is Howrah Bridge.

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-08-01T12:38:00.000+01:00

Click on the headline for this week's Limerick-off on Madeleine's blog.
The prompt was "A love-smitten guy was irate". I knew pretty much what my limerick was going to be about, because my rhymes for "irate" were in place... but I spent ages trying to re-word "His attempt at wooing Was the reason for his undoing" so that it scanned right - until it finally occurred to me to reverse the order of the two sentences. That was certainly a BINGO moment while still being DUH (for taking so long to reach such a simple solution).

A love smitten guy was irate
At being dumped on a "date".
The reason for his undoing,
Was his attempt at wooing -
His mate, unfortunately, was straight.

Knock knock

2011-07-21T21:13:00.001+01:00

I haven't seen/read/heard this knock-knock joke before, so I'm going to take the credit for it until someone says different. Although, coming to think of it, it's really rather obvious, so perhaps someone else has invented it. However, here it is:

Knock knock
Who's there?
Zoe
Zoe who?
Zoe Wanamaker
Wanamaker do what?

And that's how it goes :) By the way, Zoe Wanamaker is the star of the British sitcom "My Family". For the non-Brits, she's in the Harry Potter movies as Madame Hooch.

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-07-18T13:02:00.004+01:00

Click on the headline for this week's Limerick-Off at Madeleine's blog.

I really enjoyed doing this one! And I definitely had a few guys in mind when composing the limerick :)

The prompt was: "A fellow I tried to ignore".

A fellow I tried to ignore
Because he was a colossal bore
Refused to go away
(Too stupid, I daresay)
In men, traits I very much deplore.

Updated to add: I thought of a better version! Here's the new improved (or so I imagine):

A fellow I tried to ignore
Because he was a colossal bore
Didn't take the hint
(Too stupid to, I think)...
In men, traits I very much deplore.

"Hint" and "Think" don't quite rhyme, I know... but which version do you think sounds better? (My choice is pretty clear.)

~~I'm going to try writing~~ Here's one for "A woman I tried to ignore":
A woman I tried to ignore
Kept on carping about my décor.
Did she have any right
To get quite so uptight
When I finally showed her the door?

Sunday Scribblings - "Woods"

2011-07-13T14:35:00.004+01:00

Click on the headline to go to the Sunday Scribblings website

Have you ever changed the name of a song inadvertently (either by mishearing or through simple ignorance), and even if it later you found out the actual title, you felt that your version was far more descriptive?

Well, I think I should have had the opportunity to let the Beatles know that “Norwegian Wood” should really have been “Norwegian Girl”. I mean, it was more about a girl than it was about wood – Norwegian or otherwise! He wasn’t having an affair with any wood, was he?

I may not have got the chance to say this to John Lennon, but I did say it a few years ago – in rather huffy self-defence, admittedly – to my friend Jason, a fanatical Beatles admirer, when he wouldn’t stop teasing me about my perfectly innocent mistake. Not that it got me out of the woods…

Another such occasion was a few years back further still, when I was in school. For some reason I'd got it into my head that the Def Leppard song "Pour some sugar on me" was actually "Throw some sugar on me". It didnt make much sense to me either way at the time... throw, pour - big difference!

Again, not that my mumbled explanation cut any ice with my friend S, whose amusement at the time I found to be both unwarranted and excessive. I guess he was easily amused, or there was nothing better going on in his life at that point... did I mention that he got an awful lot of entertainment from one simple mistake?

Or maybe he was high on something, come to think of it...

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-07-11T14:35:00.002+01:00

Click on the headline for this week's Limerick-Off on Madeleine Kane's blog

Last week's limerick-off pretty much impossible to do, mainly because I found it really difficult but also because I didn't have enough time to think... but this one for the prompt "A gal who was lovely and fair" practically wrote itself.

A gal who was lovely and fair
Always wore dresses that were “barely there”;
Said she, when asked why:
“It's true, I'm shy,
- but I like to make the men stare.”

Google are at it again

2011-06-30T16:44:00.000+01:00

It’s a clever advertising/marketing ploy, one that Google have used before with great success when they were introducing Gmail. Basically, they made Gmail “exclusive” at the start, with new members having to be “invited” – and for a while they even rationed the number of invites that each new member could issue.

It worked tremendously well, you have to admit - especially as Gmail was the first (as far as I’m aware) to offer practically unlimited “storage” as one of the main advantages. And to be fair, it WAS a big draw for me because I’d lost some emails (that I didn’t really want to lose) by not clearing the rubbish emails from my inbox.

Anyway, Google is doing it again with Google Plus. I’ve got an invite, but I haven’t checked it out yet – and I might not get the chance to do so as I understand that Google are saying even to invited “members” that there’s no room in the inn at the moment.

I won’t feel desperately out of it if I don’t get “admittance”, but I AM curious to see what Google Plus is like, to see if it’s better than Facebook. Even if it is, I might not change over to it if everybody that I want to keep in touch with continues to use FB. If they stop using FB – well, I’ll have to move, too.

Random thought: If FB stops being the flavour of the month, will Mark whatsisname become a pauper? Yeah I know... not bloody likely, although FB investors might lose out.

Mainly, I'm just tickled at how obvious Google’s marketing is, and yet people are drawn in by it – even those who can see the “exclusivity” for what it is. Me included.

Sunday Scribblings - "Gift"

2011-06-27T14:48:00.002+01:00

Click on the headline to go to the Sunday Scribblings site

Of all the unwanted bequests that come our way, the ones that are the least welcome are those which are passed down in our genes as dangerous inheritances for unwilling recipients - sometimes from birth, like haemophilia, cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease and so on; sometimes later in life, like diabetes, heart problems, cancer, etc.

Genetic inheritance - the gift that keeps on giving down the generations...

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-06-27T13:19:00.001+01:00

Click on the headline to go directly to this week's Limerick-Off on Mad Kane's blog.

My rather feeble effort using the prompt "A fellow was playing with fire". Dunno why but I had some trouble trying to get words to rhyme with "fire" - and still more trouble trying to come up with a limerick that made sense. Anyway...

A fellow was playing with fire
When he called his wife a liar.
She sulked, shouted, saw red,
Banned him from the marital bed,
Making him realise the extent of her ire.

Medecin sans English?

2011-06-24T11:50:00.001+01:00

I guess everybody in the UK must know of the surgeon who shouted at CamerClegg and their TV crew for not following hospital procedures as regards good hygiene practice. That surgeon is now on “indefinite leave” – suspicious, suspicious. I also read somewhere that the surgeon had "created a controversy" a few years ago when he complained about foreign nurses who could not understand him. Nobody mentioned the word “racist”, as far as I’m aware, but the suggestion was very much there in the way the word “controversy” was bandied about.

I don’t understand what was so controversial about what he said. If you ask me, he was making a perfectly valid point. He did not question their professionalism or basic competence – his complaint was about the very wide gap in communication. What’s the point having foreign nurses, however qualified or sympathetic they are, if they are unable to communicate competently in English, unable to understand what the doctors/surgeons/patients want of them, and unable to ask or answer questions? At the very least, they should be able to speak/understand the local language. Do the racism-mongers honestly not see any potential for disaster during an operation, say, if the surgeon’s instructions are misunderstood by the nurses, or patients are unable to get across to them the specifics of any discomfort/pain they feel?

Any foreign staff – doctors and nurses both – should have to be competent in spoken and written English if they are to work in this country. Knowing other languages would definitely be a bonus, but I personally think English is an absolute must. I just can’t imagine any logical objections to this. Can you?

A confession

2011-06-23T16:46:00.000+01:00

Limericks aren’t easy to write
Apparently one needs to be bright;
Finding words that rhyme
Is a challenging pastime -
But sometimes, it’s an absolute delight.

Workplace woes

2011-06-23T15:25:00.002+01:00

A gal who hated to sit
When bored, would chafe at the bit.
To her dismay, her job
Was to assist a foolish nob –
It aint no joke working with a half-wit.

Here is what you may or may not know about me…

2011-06-22T14:23:00.002+01:00

Click on the headline for a direct link to Umm's post.

Thanks to Umm for giving me the chance to do a post that isn't a limerick!

I am an introvert. I chose editing over reporting (when I started out in journalism) because I very quickly discovered that I didn’t want to talk to strangers, ask intrusive questions or do any schmoozing at all whatsoever.
I have one very good friend from school, one very good friend from college, and a handful from the Hindu Business Line (my 2nd job). Since then, I’ve maybe made 2-3 new real-life friends, at most. What can I say, I prefer quality over quantity.
I like people who are outgoing and friendly. They make it easier for me to be friends with them because they take the pressure off me to be entertaining.
I’ve always thought I disliked the colour pink, but I find I’ve had so many pink clothes over the years – and still do - that I’m forced to conclude that I DO like pink. But my most favourite colour of all is still orange.
I'd love to wear high heels but my feet aren't up to it.
I very rarely wear lipstick but that doesn't stop me from buying them... and I always end up with the same two or three colours even though I think I've made a radical choice at the point of purchase.
I love different coloured writing inks - upgraded from colour pencils, which I loved till my early teens. My most favourite possession was a 60-shade colour-pencil set from Caran D’ache which I kept for many, many years after I stopped using them.
I still have no idea how to pronounce Caran D’ache (pronounce correctly, I mean).
I am always taken aback when I see my photos. Because I truly believe I look better than what the Kodak moment gives me credit for (borrowed verbatim from Umm). Mirrors deceive the eye but candid photos don’t lie.
I would like to be in a much better financial position than I’m in currently. Sure, money can’t make you happy or buy you love, but – at the risk of sounding smug – I AM already happy and loved. Now I’d like some money, please.
I have no illusions about myself or my abilities. Because the truth is that for every person that I'm better than (at anything), there are at least double that number of people who're at least twice as good as me with only half the effort.
I hate - really, really hate - the thought of people being sorry for me, or worrying about me, so I find it very, very difficult to confide any real problems to anyone. I can't stop anyone from thinking what they like, but I don't like to provide personal fodder for any potential discussion.
I’m constantly amazed at how shallow some people are but yet think they’re deep/intelligent/funny/name your illusion. Especially funny. And constantly tempted to disabuse them of their illusions.

So, Umm... have I surprised you at all? :)

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-06-20T12:51:00.001+01:00

Click on the headline for this week's Limerick-Off Monday at Mad Kane's blog

My limericks for the prompt: "A man/gal who could never say 'no'"

A man who could never say “no”
Wanted to stage a one-man show.
Asked by the director: “Can you sing?”
He coolly lied, “Why, sure thing!”
~~Sang a note~~ One note, tho' - and he got the ol’ heave-ho.

A gal who could never say “no”
Was upset at being called a “ho".
Said she: “It’s not nice
To be asked my price
By all my potential beaux.”

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-06-12T18:21:00.006+01:00

Click on the headline for this week's Limerick-Off Monday at Mad Kane's.

My limerick for the prompt "A man who was proud of his clout". I have to say this one came pretty easy :) I'm going to see if I can come up with more. Possibly with a gal who was proud of her clout, too.

A man who was proud of his clout
Did challenge Mohd Ali to a quick bout;
Alas for him, Cassius Clay
(As he was known in his day)
With one punch knocked him clean out.

And another (the gal didn't quite make it!):

A man who was proud of his clout
Thought he needed to standout;
He giggled and preened,
And boasted and queened -
But ev’ryone thought he’d at last come out.

And yet again - the gal made it! (I'm on a roll!):

A gal who was proud of her clout
When ignored, was inclined to pout.
At every party she’d complain,
Drinking far too much champagne -
Until, irritated, they threw her out.

Somebody stop me!:

A man who was proud of his clout
Was honestly a bit of a lout.
He would bully and tease
Imagining he was the bee’s knees -
But socially he was a washout.

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-06-07T13:28:00.000+01:00

Click on the headline to access Mad Kane's Limerick-off Monday

My slightly risque effort of the week, using the starting line "A fellow who loved fine cuisine":

A fellow who loved fine cuisine
Always cleaned his teeth with fluorine,
And every girl that he fed
Spent the night in his bed.
His secret? “Good oral hygiene”.

Sunday Scribblings - "Flock"

2011-05-30T11:45:00.001+01:00

These are some of my favourite ways to say "Get lost" that are also funny:

Make like the wind and blow.
Make like a tree and leaf.
Make like a hockey stick and get the puck out of here.
Make like an egg and beat it.
Make like a banana and split.
Make like a drum and beat it.
Make like a green light and go.

My personal favourite, though (and thanks due to my husband):

Make like Jesus and get the flock outta here.

PS. If you're religious and don't wish to blaspheme while being rude, the variant is:

Make like a shepherd and... etc.

Humour ALWAYS works for me! :)

Currently reading...

2011-05-26T14:24:00.004+01:00

THIS blog - Whoopee - and giving myself an asphyxiated hernia by trying not to laugh out loud for fear of alerting people to the fact that I'm enjoying it.

And by "it" I mean the blog, not my asphyxiating hernia. You would be right in thinking that strangulating a hernia in eye-watering silence is not pleasant, unless you're doing something so fun that the unpleasantness doesn't matter. Which is what I am currently doing.

Over and out.

Oh, and note that I can spell "asphyxiating" any number of times - correctly. Every. Single. Time.

Impressed much? Thought so.

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-05-23T14:46:00.001+01:00

(Click on the headline to access Mad Kane's Limerick-Off Monday.)

My attempts using the starting line: "A fellow/woman went out on a date"

A fellow went out on a date
With a pretty young lady called Kate
He thought she was sweet
Polite, funny, and p’tite -
All in all, just right as his latest Playmate.

And:

A woman went out on a date
Thinking they were going to ice-skate
When they got to the rink
She found that he did stink.
So she went home really irate.

A somewhat dismal epiphany

2011-05-18T16:21:00.000+01:00

The pretty, slim, small, vivacious girl inside me is not going to see light of day in this lifetime.

Better luck next time around, I guess.

PS. I dont think I belive in reincarnation. But I'm not entirely sure.

Limerick-Off Monday

2011-04-11T10:08:00.003+01:00

(Click on the headline to access Mad Kane's Limerick-Off Monday.)

My attempts, using the line "A gal who seemed guileless and sweet" as the start:

A gal who seemed guileless and sweet
Opted for a kooky sort of treat
Instead of coffee -
Or chocolate, or toffee
She preferred to eat – ugh – boiled sugar beet.

Or a slight variation thereof:

A gal who seemed guileless and sweet
Would find the weirdest things to eat
When it was time for dessert
She’d eschew cookies and sherbert.
Oddly, boiled sugar beet was her favourite treat.

I can't say I'm particularly pleased with either of these. I might add one or two more if I can manage to shift my brain away from boiled sugar beets.

Update: The first version, improved 100% with Madeleine's tweaks (and comments) reads thus:

"Shammy your first version is much better meter-wise, but could use some meter tinkering. Here’s one possibility:

A gal who seemed guileless and sweet
Did opt for a kooky type treat.
Not ice cream or coffee
Or chocolate, or toffee –
Her preference - ugh – boiled sugar beet."

Thanks for your help, Madeleine!

My first limerick

2011-04-07T13:58:00.002+01:00

I love limericks - my first introduction to them was through Edward Lear's nonsense rhymes, but soon I tracked down lots of others, some innocuous, others tongue-in-cheek naughty and still others quite X-rated. I liked them all... that is to say, I liked all the genuinely good ones that made me smile or laugh and/or admire the word-play - Ogden Nash being favourite for this!

I came across Mad Kane's Humor Blog quite by chance, and since it's pretty brilliant and she writes some damn good limericks besides, I added the site to my links. On a whim I also tried my hand at writing a limerick for one of her prompts where she gives the first line as a starting point - and here it is:

A fellow was fit to be tied
When he found that his lovely bride
Declared she was off
Because he was not a toff –
What? You think this tale isn’t bona fide?

And ere ye judge me harshly, gentle reader, please to bear in mind that it's my first (public) effort at limerickery. The way to encourage is to not laugh - that is, to not laugh unkindly. Do feel free to laugh at the humour.

Addendum: Just had a thought - what if you think it best to NOT encourage any more limerickery-buffoonery on my part? Oh the horror...

Sunday Scribblings - "Messenger"

2011-04-05T15:00:00.000+01:00

I’ve been a Stephen King fan for as long as I remember, although that said, I can’t actually remember which of his books I read first, or at what age, or even how I latched on to him first. All I know is that apart from a few blips here and there (“Rose Madder”, “Gerald’s Game”), I’ve read and enjoyed every one of his books, fiction and non-fiction. Some books, of course, are way ahead of the others, but on the whole I think he’s an amazing writer. I might have said this before, but I’ve frequently found his imagery and descriptions almost poetic in their lyricism... and how I’ve wished that I had just a wee fraction of his ability to paint word-pictures! (I haven’t really stopped wishing it, actually.) Considering he’s a “horror” writer, it speaks volumes for his genius that poetry is what comes to my mind even in the midst of gore – and let’s make no bones about it, there is usually plenty of gore.

But futile wishing and hours of breathless reading aside, I’ve also gained unexpected knowledge from his books. For instance, I learnt that sparrows - those tiny, drab, nondescript, cheerfully chirpy little birds once so common in Madras - are considered to be messengers of death, sent to escort newly deceased souls to the afterlife. The novel from which I gleaned this information was “The Dark Half”, which is replete with hundreds of sparrows swooping and swirling innocuously – and yet menacingly - throughout the novel, finally taking away the evil alter ego, George Stark, to his well-deserved ending.

I love Stephen King. Long may he write.

Sunday Scribblings - "Nearly"

2011-03-31T12:11:00.003+01:00

What I have discovered over the years is that “nearly” doesn’t really cut it at any point, at any time, at any age - not as an excuse, not as an achievement, and not even as reassurance.

- Me, somewhat proudly: “I nearly passed my maths exam, you know”. Yeah, 38/100 may be have been a personal high (with 40 being the minimum pass mark), but “nearly” still didn’t get me a rank.

- English teacher: “Have you finished your assignment?” Me, cautiously: “Nearly.” She, incandescent: “What do you mean, nearly? Either you have, or you haven’t. Which is it?” Me: “Um… nearly have.” And that’s how I got detention on a Friday afternoon.

- “Did you win the quiz competition?” “Nearly.” “Nearly?” “Yes, we would have except for the teams in first and second place.” Riiiiight...

- Pete, reassuringly to me: “I’m nearly done”... and 3 hours later, he’s not moved so much as an inch from his workdesk, it’s past midnight, and we’re still at his office where we were only “going to stop briefly to pick up a document”.

Sunday Scribblings - "Free"

2011-03-22T16:44:00.003Z

Every single day that I was in school, no matter which school, I can’t remember the final bell ever going without the exhilarating feeling of “FREE! FREE AT LAST!” coursing through my blood, fizzing away like nitrogen bubbles and lifting my spirits. Not even the knowledge that I would be back in school the next day could take away from that joy.

Equally, I can’t remember ever imagining that adults would feel that way – because adults didn’t have exams or teachers or Zero Period, did they? (Not to worry, "Zero Period" was not anything to do with misbehaving female hormones – it was merely the school’s denomination for the unofficial but still compulsory “catch-up” class of 45-minute duration that was taken by teachers who were behind on their syllabus, before First Period officially began at 9 a.m).

Anyway, I thought of adulthood as release from the prison of schooldom, the poor deluded innocent idiot that I was. Who knew that at the age of 42, every single day come 5 p.m, I would still feel the same exhilarating feeling of “FREE! FREE AT LAST!” zip through my blood! Allright, so there is no “final bell” rung to announce the onset of freedom, and granted that there are no teachers or exams or Zero Period... but that rush of relief is very much the same.

There is one difference, though – the pure joy of “FREE! FREE AT LAST!” is tempered four days out of five by the knowledge that the next morning would see me back at my workdesk. I'm an adult, after all, and therefore unable to put off tomorrow's worries today.

On Friday evenings, though, all bets are off.

Sunday Scribblings - "Fire"

2011-03-04T14:48:00.001Z

I don’t like the idea of dying by fire. Not that I find any other painful way of dying the tiniest bit acceptable, but I really, REALLY hate the very thought of fire. Maybe it has to do with our less-than-admirable history of women dying, voluntarily or otherwise, on their husband’s funeral pyre, or the even more reprehensible contemporary penchant of making funeral pyres out of women - aka “dowry deaths”. Or maybe I just think it's one of the most horrible ways of dying there is. Just think of the pain that even an minor, accidental burn (while cooking, say) can cause - and tell me that burning to death isn't one of the worst ways of dying. So, when I hear the word "fire", this is always what comes to mind first.

And then, because it's not at all a pleasant topic on which to dwell, I try to think of something else to do with fire that has a happier connotation, and my mind comes up with... no, not the story of Prometheus. Nor how Early Man might have come up with the concept of fire as a cooking medium. Nor even how Mowgli set Shere Khan's tail on fire (specifically, in the animated movie "The Jungle Book"). (I'd say things are beginning to look better on the pleasant-association front, aren't they?)

But the number one pleasant memory of fire is the song by Billy Joel - "We Didnt Start The Fire" - vintage 80s stuff and a song that I loved. The tune was catchy, but what I liked best was that the lyrics were basically just a string of words linked together to sort of encapsulate history - NOT history as from Early Man onwards but the more recent events and people. (Well, the events and people were "more recent" in the 1980s. For that matter, so was I.) It just seemed so cool. Put it down to the uncool teenage years.

And now I really have run outa steam.

Note: The reason for this disjointed post was to test what would happen if I forced myself to write when I didn't feel like it even given a prompt. Plenty of famous writers have advised that the only way to break through writer's block is to force oneself to write, even if the outcome is rubbish, until the flow is back. Alas, sometimes the outcome starts out and stays rubbish, the flow isn't even worthy of being called a trickle, and the block remains unbroken - as evident from this post. If you're wondering why I've published this post, it's because I want the world (or my three readers, at any rate) to read this and know what happens when one tampers with nature. It's a harsh lesson, but it had to be taught.

Sunday Scribblings - "Food"

2011-02-22T14:46:00.001Z

You'd think that this week's prompt would be really easy to do, given the fact that I maintain a food blog - but no, I'm just as constipated as ever (creatively speaking, thank you very much). All I can say on the topic of food is that I love it... especially Indian food. And, apparently, my love for it is inversely proportional to how good it is for me. The worse it is, the more I love it, in other words. Breakfast smoothies involving raw pureed super-healthy vegetables (broccoli and karela juice, anyone?) just don't cut it... but give me hot aloo parathas and cold lassi, or idlis with four types of chutney and sambar, and I'm in hog heaven.

About the only thing that saves my reputation from total infamy is that aloo parathas are very unlikely to grace my breakfast table of a morning - mainly because I would have to make them myself. (Ditto idlis and chutneys.)

Laziness, very occasionally, has the happy - if unintentional - side-effect of conferring virtue upon one. One, believe me, is all for it!

I love my Kindle, but...

2011-02-12T00:00:00.004Z

I had a chilling thought while reading this article in The Guardian: What if there was some terrible disaster, man-made or natural, that knocked out all power stations worldwide, making all mod-cons useless because there would be no electricity for the majority of the earth's population?

If the Kindle and other e-readers really do end up making the printed word obsolete, what would we do in the situation outlined above? What would we (meaning, selfishly, I) DO without books to read?

To continue on the "selfish" note, I can only pray that no such catastrophe happens in my lifetime.

Or, on a less selfish note, let's all hope that there will always be books, old and new, as long as human life exists on this planet.

On Japanese: Great beauty, great difficulty

2011-02-11T11:37:00.001Z

The closest I’ve come to learning Japanese is the few classes that I managed to attend when I was working in Madras, over 10 years ago. That’s also pretty much the closest I’ve come to Japanese culture, unless you count the few days spent in the company of my friend and a few of his Japanese friends when we all travelled to a small town in Rajasthan to attend a third friend’s wedding.

Since my lack of Japanese was total, and their lack of English was nearly total, the only way to communicate was through my friend with whom we went to the wedding. (Okay, the groom spoke good Japanese too, and he might have assisted by interpreting/translating, but he was just too preoccupied with his wedding to manage more than a few minutes here and there – understandably enough, I suppose, if I must be charitable.) In other words, I would not be exaggerating if I said that I didn’t really manage to have deep and meaningful conversations with them about the intricacies and nuances of their cuisine and culture.

Anyhow, I've never eaten anything authentically Japanese, although I have a Japanese cookbook for beginners which was a wedding present from a dear friend who’d spent a lot of time teaching in Japan. I’ve read that book from cover to cover more than once, but not worked up the courage to try a single recipe in 9 years of owning the book. Not even the (very few) vegetarian recipes in it. And not even this blog-pal’s simply-described, knowledgeable and funny posts on home-made Japanese vegetarian dishes are likely to overcome my cowardice (check out her latest post here).

I’ve heard that Japanese cuisine is about freshness and simplicity - and lots and lots of fish. Raw. Maybe that’s why it frightens me so much. Or maybe it's the fear that comes from complete ignorance of the food and the culture... but if I’m honest, apart from inexperience, the main reason I'm intimidated is the Japanese focus on beauty and perfection in everything. Not only does the food have to be beautiful to the palate, it also has to be beautiful to the eye, with balance in texture and flavour and colour and looks. (I'd find that pretty worrying even without the stress of trying a completely unknown recipe – especially knowing that it would be eaten by others!)

Talking about beauty with edibility, have you seen Japanese bento boxes? (And read about the fierce competition between Japanese housewives and mothers to give their kids the most beautiful lunch box contents/arrangements possible, every single school day? I’m SO GLAD I’m not a Japanese housewife/mother. I’d be the human equivalent of what a belly flop would be to an Olympic diver!) If you haven’t, check out this link, and despair – and also admire: Beautiful bento.

I know first-hand that the Japanese are aesthetically oriented. I had got into a three-way conversation with my friend and one of the Japanese guys mentioned earlier, and Hamachan was showing me how to combine symbols to make a compound word in a third script (called kanji). The same symbols could be combined in two or three ways to mean the same thing, but what got me was when he pointed to a particular combination he’d written/drawn, and said “This is a more beautiful word, but that is not”.

I couldn’t at first get his drift, because after all both kanji had the same meaning. Hamachan tried to explain further, and finally it dawned on me – the first kanji was “more beautiful” in the sense of being more aesthetically pleasing in the way the symbols were combined. The others were more awkward, in his eyes, and therefore not perfect in their beauty. Right there, right then, I felt a huge despondence within me – what hope did I have of learning to read and write this incredibly complicated language? I would have considered it an achievement just to put the correct syllables together... but they were looking for “beautifully put together” as well??? What chance did a semi-creative non-perfectionist like me have? That was a humbling moment, allright.

I should explain that it wasn't cowardice that made me discontinue my nascent Japanese lessons... it was because I kept missing classes on account of work commitments, and found it impossible to catch up. Have I said it is NOT an easy language to learn, especially reading and writing? Still, I have always regretted it.

Taking Mother Nature to task

2011-02-03T14:38:00.002Z

What were you THINKING, Ma Nature, when you designed coriander leaves? Were they never meant to be stored? Did you never imagine that would one day they would be kept in bunches in the fridge in a bid to keep them reasonably fresh? Do you have an explanation - ANY explanation at all! - for why the leaves and stems wilt and rot randomly from the inside of the bunch out? Why only SOME leaves/stems in the middle of the bunch? Why not ALL of them in the middle? Why not the ones in the outermost layer? Do you not REALISE how insanely annoying this is to people like me who loathe having to separate the slimy rotten bits from the healthy green bits and yet are forced to do it because they don't wish to waste the entire bunch?

I ask you, why? Why this rotten design flaw?

On friends

2011-01-25T10:48:00.003Z

I received this in an email from a dear friend, and rather than email it forward, I thought I'd put it on my blog - especially as it ties in with what I was trying to say (but didn't succeed well enough) in a previous post on best-friendship.

So this is for all my female bestbuddies, the women in my life who make a difference to me, to everybody who knows them, and to the world:

When I was little,
I used to believe in the concept of one best friend,
And then I started to become a woman
And I found out that if you allow your heart to open up,
you can see the best in many friends.

One friend is needed when you're going through things with your man.
Another friend is needed when you're going through things with your mom.
Another will sit beside you in the bleachers as you delight in your children and their activities.
Another when you want to shop, share, heal, hurt, joke, or just be.
One friend will say : 'Let's cry together',
Another : 'Let's fight together',
Another : 'Let's walk away together'.

One friend will meet your spiritual need,
Another your shoe fetish,
Another your love for movies,
Another will be with you in your season of confusion,
Another will be your clarifier,
Another the wind beneath your wings.

But whatever their assignment in your life,
On whatever the occasion,
On whatever the day,
Or wherever you need them to meet you with their gym shoes on and hair pulled back,
Or to hold you back from making a complete fool of yourself.
Those are your best friends....

It may all be wrapped up in one woman, But for many it's wrapped up in several..
One from 7th grade,
One from high school,
Several from the college years,
A couple from old jobs,
On some days your mother,
On some days your neighbor,
On others your sisters,
And on some days your daughters.

Figure this one out

2011-01-22T09:06:00.002Z

"Never the less the benefits out way the taste"

This extract is the beginning of a much longer sentence, and I had to read the whole thing four times before it began to make sense to me. Didn't want to post the entire sentence, nor say where it's from - the point isn't to embarrass the blogger, I'm just showcasing the sentence which, technically speaking, is complete in itself and doesn't need the rest of the content to help with figuring it out.

Isn't it breathtaking, though?

Sunday Scribblings - "Invisible"

2011-01-19T08:00:00.003Z

Older women (especially in the West) say that they become “invisible” (to service personnel like waiters, doormen, etc, I’m guessing, as well as men in general) once they cross the magic age of 40. My take on that is that no matter what your age, you’re invisible if you’re the quiet, shy type who doesn’t like drawing attention to herself by a raised voice – witness me.

The moral of this is - if you want attention, be the vessel that makes the most noise.

Being an empty vessel, of course, is optional.

On best-friendship

2011-01-18T11:38:00.001Z

I’ve read various articles – written by women – saying that women can be each other’s worst enemies (this I believe); but there are also those who say that women can never truly be best friends. And by “best friends” what do they mean? To never feel a moment’s jealousy, envy or irritation, to always provide support no matter if the best friend is in the wrong, to never grudge them any success, to always tell the truth no matter how hurtful, and so on? Are these some of the criteria for women-as-best-friends? If yes, I have to concede truthfully that I’m probably the worst best friend a woman could ever have.

Not that I’ve ever wished any of my friends, best or second-best (to coin a term), ill. But I cannot deny that I’ve felt/thought, even if fleetingly, things like “Why can’t I be that lucky/talented/beautiful/rich/interesting/flirty/loved/(insert-envy-of-the-moment)”. I’m assuming that the various negative emotions which one experiences as a human with other humans are not magically bypassed by everyone else merely by dint of being a best friend. If that is NOT the case, I'm not just a bad best friend, I'm also a bad human being. I don't mind being one or the other, but not both at the same time. So, I prefer to believe that anybody who denies those negative feelings – no matter what gives rise to those feelings – is telling big fat porky-pies. Call me cynical, if you like. It’s no less than what I call myself.

There’s another assumption I’ve taken as universal – irritation or annoyance, at some point, for however short a time, even with the most beloved of people, even by the saintliest and gentlest of people. Since I am not saintly or gentle by a long chalk, and have a hair-trigger temper at times, these moments of annoyance and/or irritation are very much more frequent than, I imagine, they would be in persons with higher patience and tolerance levels.

Whatever. The point is, despite what I’ve said, I don’t get irritated ALL the time with everybody – it depends on the circumstances and my mood. And simply because I feel a moment of envy or despondence or annoyance with even my best friend doesn’t make me a bad best friend, in my books. I fully expect that other people find things in me that irritate them. I defy my best friends to deny this, up to and including my husband.

I figure that if you continue to want to be friends with the friends with whom you're annoyed in passing, that's a best-friendship, right there. Luckily, there are lots of people about whom I feel that way, and hopefully they feel the same about me. Again, up to and including my husband. (And those people with whom I don't feel like pursuing a friendship-after-irritation - well, they might not know who they are, but I sure do!)

Baby babble

2011-01-04T16:36:00.006Z

As the proud and adoring athai (paternal aunt) of an unbelievably cute, doe-eyed, intelligent, nearly 6-month-old niece, I am beginning to understand the compulsion that drives parents - especially new ones - to gush about their offspring and said offspring's day-to-day "achievements".

Because, believe me, it's only with the greatest difficulty that I'm stopping myself from burbling about my niece and her daily achievements (those that I noticed in the two weeks I was in Boston in the run-up to Christmas 2010, I mean) to anybody I meet. Not to mention, thrust her photo in their face and force them to admit that she's cuter than a bunch of buttons.

Understanding the compulsion of new parents doesn't mean that I tolerate adult babble, though... *EXCEPT when I'M doing the babbling about MY beautiful niece. But of course.

*Were you concerned that I had become a better, more saintly person for being an aunt? Not to worry, still the same old me in this new year!

Teenagers are stupid

2010-12-07T10:22:00.000Z

I should know, I was one. When I read about teenage girls who get into strangers’ cars without giving a thought to who those men might be, attracted by flashy clothes and loud music, I can't help but think “Stupid, stupid, stupid girls” – but I also know that they wouldn’t have given a single thought to anything bad happening to them until it actually happened.

I don’t mean that I was ever dumb enough to be attracted by strangers in flashy cars (when I was a teen, there weren’t many flashy cars around where I lived - or expensively dressed men, for that matter), or that anything bad happened to me. But there was an instance when I COULD have got into trouble and probably nobody would have noticed until it was far too late.

This was when I was 14 or 15, during a School Day entertainment night which was held at a big auditorium – I think it was the erstwhile Rajarathnam Stadium in Madras, but I can’t be entirely sure. My memory is a bit hazy there.

Anyway, we students had prepared skits and songs and dances etc for the evening programme, to be followed by the prize giving ceremonies. I didn’t concern myself with the prize-giving (obviously because I wasn’t one of the top rankers). But I was involved with a longish musical skit – backstage (I’d helped paint the background scenery and props) and on stage (I was singing along with a couple of other girls between “scenes” in the skit). It had been good fun all along because I’d ended up missing lessons (along with everybody else to do with the play) while we prepared the backdrops and costumes and practiced the song, and so on.

So, on the day of the programme, all of us who were involved with the entertainment programmes were bundled into hired buses and taken from school - still wearing our uniforms - to the stadium a few hours before the start. Some of the students were to be picked up from the stadium by their parents after the programme, and those who didn't have private transport arranged would be taken home in the hired vans. I was one of the latter, because I was living with my grandparents and they certainly couldn’t have come to the stadium to fetch me.

The evening went by quickly. Our skit was much appreciated and for once I didn’t mind standing on stage singing, because I was part of a group of three girls plus a boy from my class who sang the male part. (Why three girls for the heroine and just one boy for the hero? I’m guessing it’s because Sujith was the only boy who WANTED to sing! And to be frank, we three girls – from different classes – were the English teacher’s favourites.)

Anyway, while the prize giving ceremony was coming to an end, we were busy in the changing rooms, dismantling everything, checking our lists to make sure that the props and stage clothes were accounted for, and looking for misplaced items, etc. I was among the three students who ferried the various things from the changing room to where the vans were waiting.

By the time we were close to finishing, the prize distribution had been done with, the Vote of Thanks had been given and the evening had come to an end - it would have been around 10 p.m, I guess. The audience had dispersed surprisingly quickly, with parents scouting out their kids and ferrying them off home. One school van had already left with the first batch of performers/helpers who had packed up early (because their turn on stage had been earlier than ours).

One of the teachers had told me earlier that I would probably be in the last batch of students to be taken home. This was okay with me because I was enjoying doing something different, being out late (officially! oh the thrill!) with my schoolmates and generally scurrying around self-importantly with this or that clutched in my arms. We had nearly finished, the van was being loaded with our things when a teacher asked me to take a last look around the rooms to make sure nothing had been left behind. She then got into the second van that was just leaving.

Now, the main doors to the auditoriun had already been shut and locked; in any case, we had been using a side entrance to get backstage and to the changing rooms. I duly peeked into the rooms and made sure that nothing had been left behind. Then I went back to the exit that I had used to get in - except, when I stepped out, it was into near darkness. There was no van or anything, so I knew it had to be the wrong exit.

I should have gone back inside, I suppose, and tried to find the correct exit, but no - I decided that I would just walk around the building to get to the van. After all, I was already outside, and I wouldn't lose my way if I circled the building on the outside.

In theory that was not a bad idea - at some point in the perambulation I would get to where I needed to be. In practice, though, it was really dark and lonely, and the building was a lot bigger than I'd envisaged. There was nobody about as I stumbled along, trying to see in the partial darkness. The grounds looked very big, very deserted and very quiet. At first I didn't register these things as potentially sinister, I was concentrating so hard on where I was putting my feet. In fact, I was actually relieved when I saw a group of lungi-clad men standing near the boundary of the stadium, smoking in the light of a streetlamp - and yes, you can call me stupid for feeling relief rather than fear. They all stared at me as I hurried along; one of them shouted something at me although I didn't really hear what he said, and the others laughed.

But it was then - and only then - that I realised that it was not exactly advisable for me to be where I was with nobody else in sight. Also, it struck me only then that if the last van had left without me, I could actually be in danger; with that thought, I picked up my pace, no longer worried about tripping, not daring to look behind me to see if any of those men were coming after me. I was very lucky, as it turned out, because the van was just leaving. I ran up shouting and waving my arms, hoping the driver would hear/see me. Evidently somebody DID see me, and thankfully I got in when the van stopped.

There was not a single student I recognised in the van; and although I recognised the teacher from having seen him in school, I didn't know his name and he certainly had no idea who I was. Had I not been in uniform, he probably would not even have known me as a student from the school.

To be fair, this wasn't totally his fault - the exodus of students had not exactly been organised. Nobody really knew who had left and in which van; nobody was keeping track of the students. The teachers who had been working with us on the skit had been picked up by their husbands immediately afterwards, or had left in the earlier vans. The teachers who were assigned to accompany us in the vans were unfamiliar with the students taking part in the programmes - they were there merely as escorts, being male.

All in all, although the evening had been a success, the organisation was utterly shambolic. So, between that and my own stupidity, I could have been in physical danger. But I was lucky - unlike those teenagers in Darby, who paid for their stupidity very much more horribly and drastically - because I got the chance to continue with my life as before... other than gaining a little more common sense.

I guess somebody Up There must look out for SOME fools, if not all of them.

Book meme No. Umptyfive.

2010-11-30T14:45:00.001Z

May have done this, maybe not... but on the balance of probabilities, I think not (hopefully). So what if I'm happy to do endless numbers of book tags? At least it gets me posting and keeps this blog alive!

1. Favorite childhood book?
The Water Babies, by Charles Kingsley

2. What are you reading right now?
The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

3. Bad book habit?
Reading while on the phone with someone and not concentrating on the conversation.

4. Do you have an e-reader?
Yep.

5. Do you prefer to read one book at a time or several at once?
Several at once.

6. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?
Not really, other than including lots of blogs in my reading.

7. Least favorite book you read this year (so far)?
The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson

8. Favorite book you’ve read this year?
The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness. It’s supposedly teen fiction but oh boy, was it a riveting read or what! It’s actually the first of a trilogy (didn’t know that till I’d finished the book) so now I’m desperate to know how the story ends! Gotta get the other two…

9. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?
Reasonably often, especially with recommendations.

10. What is your reading comfort zone?
Fiction (bar M&B/Harlequin type romances and most chick-lit), some non-fiction (autobiographies, travel writing, biographies, etc)

11. Can you read on the bus?
Anywhere, any time.

12. Favorite place to read?
Anywhere, any time but best of all, curled up on the sofa at home.

13. What is your policy on book lending?
No.

14. Do you ever dog-ear books?
Never.

15. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?
No.

16. Not even with text books?
No.

17. What is your favorite language to read in?
English is the only language I read in. Unless you include very slow German (and slow AND poorly comprehended) Hindi and Tamil.

18. What makes you love a book?
Plot, humour, writing style.

19. What inspires you to recommend a book?
When it’s so good that I regret finishing it.

20. Favorite genre?
Humourous fantasy (I’m thinking of you, Sir Terry…)

21. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did?)
Hard-core science fiction.

22. Favorite biography?
Keeping Mum, by Brian Thompson

23. Have you ever read a self-help book?
Yep.

24. Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?
Push, by Sapphire (made into the movie “Precious”, which I haven’t seen nor very likely to see).

25. Favorite reading snack?
Indian snacks (spicy, crunchy, savoury).

26. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience
A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth. Hype plus the fact that it was written with the West in mind.

27. How often do you agree with critics about a book?
Depends on whether or not they agree with my opinion. :)

28. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
Regretful, but firm. If it’s bad, it’s bad.

29. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you chose?
Japanese. WHAT an achievement that would be!

30. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?
A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking.

31. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?
Not nervous, exactly, just unwilling – Why Evolution is True, by Jerry Coyne.

32. Favorite poet?
John Keats.

33. Favorite fictional character?
Nanny Ogg.

34. Favorite fictional villain?
Ravana.

35. Books I’m most likely to bring on vacation?
Anything that I would normally read.

36. The longest I’ve gone without reading.
I dunno… a few hours, perhaps.

37. Name a book that you could/would not finish.
War & Peace – Leo Tolstoy

38. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
Easily? Nothing. With difficulty – people yelling at me to stop and get some work done.

39. Favorite film adaptation of a novel?
I guess it would have to be Gone With The Wind, now that I’ve finally kinda sorta come to terms with Rhett Butler played by that jug-eared chap.

40. Most disappointing film adaptation?
To Kill a Mockingbird, but only because it left out such large chunks of the book. No complaints at all whatsoever against Gregory Peck playing Atticus Finch. He was perfect.

41. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
Ack. Don’t want to think about it.

42. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
I skim books before borrowing them from the library.

43. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
Bad writing. It would probably stop me after a few pages, though. I doubt I would get as far as halfway.

44. Do you like to keep your books organized?
I’d LIKE to, but my organizational skills are somewhat pathetic.

45. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
Keep ‘em, mostly, especially those I buy new. Once in a while I cull the trashy ones (bought at charity shops) and donate them back to where they came from.

46. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding?
Nothing in particular within the genres I normally read.

47. Name a book that made you angry.
Push, by Sapphire.

48. A book you didn’t expect to like but did?
(Years and years ago when I was 12 or something) – Kim, by Rudyard Kipling

49. A book that you expected to like but didn’t?
The Imperial Agent, by Timeri Murari. He’s a good enough writer (going by his newspaper columns) but nowhere near Kipling by light years.

50. Favorite guilt-free, pleasure reading?
All my reading is guilt-free and done for pleasure.

(Umm Oviya, you are tagged!)

Anybody else interested in doing the meme, please feel free to hijack it!

Don't count on me when it comes to Italian numbers

2010-11-19T15:38:00.003Z

I’ve got to counting in Italian now, and I can’t really imagine ever wanting to say numbers over 100 in Italian - or write them out in words, for that matter. There’s a very good reason for this reluctance – they become super-long goods-trainish compound words that you can’t break up because them’s the Italian rules, miei amici (my friends)! (I hope!)

A random three-digit number, say, 555 – cinquecentocinquantacinque (phonetic pronunciation - "chinkweh-chento chinkwanta chinkweh".

A random 4-digit number – 3257 – tremiladuecentocinquantasette ("thray-meela dooeh-chento chinkwanta-setteh")

I derive a childish satisfaction out of saying the numbers out loud, simply because it's fun to do so - as long as I'm never verbally tested on them without due warning. I'd hate to take dictation on these, I can tell you! If I was learning Italian in a proper classroom, I have no doubt that I’d be blinking like an owl if I was ever asked to translate random numbers out loud without writing them down first.

I’ve no idea what 10,000 is in Italian (maybe diecimila? literally ten-thousand, but I'm not sure), and I’m not certain I want to find out. But I guess I will, eventually, like it or not.

And they think German has long compound words...

Can anyone explain a mac?

2010-11-12T22:39:00.000Z

What is the point of a mac (short for macintosh)? I mean the garment, not the computer. I understand it is something like a raincoat but more formal looking, single or double-breasted, usually with a belt. It might be "shower proof", but if the mac doesnt have a hood to keep the rain off one's head, what is the point in wearing it at all? A hood-free mac will not do much to keep clothes dry, because the rain will most certainly drip down your hair and face and neck and wet whatever you're wearing. So why bother with a mac? Is it just a meaningless fashion statement? Or is it some kind of a British tradition, for who knows what arcane reason?

Io amo la lingua italiana

2010-11-10T11:56:00.000Z

There is something about the cadence and flow of the Italian language - the "feel" of the words on my tongue when I speak, the musicality of the words that I hear, the rrrrrrolling of the rrrrs that is so much fun - that pleases my heart and soul and vocal cords...

For loving or for fighting, Italian is so very much sweeter than that supposedly "most romantic" language, French.

Here's to the Johnny Knoxville and the Jackasses!

2010-11-08T16:46:00.001Z

Saw “Jackass - 3D” yesterday and I can’t remember the last time I laughed hard enough for my stomach to hurt. That said, while I had to fight off cramps caused by laughing, there were also moments when I got the dry-heaves at the thought of what was happening on screen. (I couldn’t watch – I would definitely have yarked up dinner if I’d so much as peeked.)

For those of you who (sensibly?) have never seen Jackass the TV series and don’t know what it’s about - basically, it’s a bunch of guys (including a dwarf and a grossly overweight man) behaving like... well, like jackasses. There’s no storyline at all, either to the TV show or to the “movies” – it’s just a series of ridiculous, horrifying, stomach-churning, gut-wrenchingly OTT pranks and practical jokes. So much of it is about testing the limits of physical pain and endurance, not to mention taking bad taste to unprecedented depths (sometimes literally). There are no women in this show, but that’s no surprise if you ask me. I cannot imagine any woman subjecting herself willingly to such pointless physical pain and tomfoolery.

I say pointless, but there IS a point – entertainment. While the show is all that I’ve described and more in the way of nauseating antics, it’s also hilarious. Sometimes I find myself wanting not to laugh, but I end up laughing anyway, from sheer shock. Why is it funny to watch men deliberately put themselves in the way of pain and bruises? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fact that most of the time they choose to do what they do despite knowing that they’ll end up hurt. Sometimes they don’t know what hits them (literally), sometimes they know what’s coming.

There’s a lot of laddish yuckiness – farting, vomiting, pissing, violence which involves being hit in the privates, testing the boundaries of the most revolting things one can experience (being covered in dog shit, anybody?) and so on. But 99% of the time, whether they’ve been ambushed by the others, or been through the wringer by choice, the Jackasses end up laughing – no matter how painful the experience they’ve just been through. If they can laugh at themselves and see the joke in pretty much everything, why should we not laugh at them?

I must confess that I did not think I had it in myself to enjoy Jackass. It's so diametrically opposite to good taste and cultured pursuits. I would have considered it beneath my dignity, thought it compromising of my good taste, and other such prissy sentiments. It’s really not like me to enjoy such crude humour as Jackass provides. At least, that is what I would have said, had I been able to do so without knowing myself for a hypocrite. The fact is, I DO like it; therefore, it stands to reason that crude humour MUST be like me. My only saving grace is that subtle, witty, intelligent humour is also very much to my taste.

There is one other major reason I like Jackass – the lead Jackass, Johnny Knoxville. He’s good looking the way Jim Carrey is good looking. (I’m a big fan of Jim Carrey.) And oh man, is he in superb physical shape or what. Then again, he has to be fit to withstand the sort of physical trauma he puts himself through.

Note: Click on the link in the first paragraph to read the Guardian interview with Johnny Knoxville.

And the correct answer is...?

2010-11-04T15:14:00.000Z

I have a small problem when people greet me with a perfunctory “You orright?” (or just “Orright?”) - I don't know what to say. "You orright" does not really give me a chance to enquire after them, instead forcing me to merely smile or reply with an inane “Yes thanks”.

How DO you respond to “Orright” (suggestions pls)?

Also: How do YOU respond to “Orright” (answers pls) - assuming you get asked the question. It probably doesn't happen outside of the UK.

*Orright = “all right” spelt phonetically

Drifting eyes (and empty sockets?)

2010-11-03T09:17:00.002Z

Is it just me, or is the sentence "Her eyes drifted slowly to my pocket" touched with just the teensiest shade of the macabre? Personally - and this is just my opinion - I'd much have preferred her gaze to drift, rather than her eyes. (Were the scene set in Zero Gravity circumstances, my preference would still remain the same.)

Just sayin'...

Sunday Scribblings – “Intense”

2010-11-02T15:06:00.001Z

Ever since I mentioned to Pete that I wanted to visit the US around mid-to-late October - preferably the New England states - to see the Fall colours because they’re more beautiful there, he’s been on a personal mission to convert me to the glories of autumn in the UK. Basically, every time we pass a tree with any hint of colour other than brown, he makes sure to point it out to me. Mostly, he does it to annoy me (it works) because he knows perfectly well that he’s preaching to the converted on this issue. I love autumn in the UK, because I think the countryside – especially in Shropshire - looks beautiful this time of year. The autumn colours have been especially pretty this year, the colours more intense and a bit more varied than I remember from last year or the year before that.

That said, my mind has been set on seeing the Fall colours in the States ever since I laid eyes on the spectacular photographs that my sister sent when she first moved to the USA. The trees were absolutely glowing with jewel-coloured leaves and the ground was carpeted in them too - red, pink, orange, yellow, scarlet, rust, brown and every variation on those hues.

Apart from the glorious colours, the sheer novelty of trees clad in such intense colours was stunning, because I’d only ever seen trees in the tropics (all variations of green, and in Madras, all variations of green with an overcoat of dingy brown dust) at that point.

In the UK, as my mother-in-law pointed out recently, the different varieties of trees in the countryside mean that they do not turn colour uniformly or at the same time. Also, there are lots more evergreens (at least in Shropshire) which don't turn any sort of colour. (In spring, though, the dark green older branches are tipped with the most tenderly bright green new leaves - how I love that!)

The predominant colour in the trees here is yellow. They range from mustard to golden to lemon with shades of brown - all lovely, I admit. There are of course some trees (but never in concentrated numbers) which sport glorious shades of orange, rust and red. Pete NEVER tires of pointing them out and saying "See? We too have trees that turn red and orange".

And me, I never tire of saying to him "Yes, I see a single tree and yes it is gorgeous. Now show me a hillside or a wood full of trees just like this and I will concede that the Fall colours US trip is unnecessary."

He hasn't been able to, yet.

Anthems for perverts?

2010-10-29T16:33:00.006+01:00

Odd how two of Sting’s most famous songs are what I consider anthems to the less savoury type of human beings in this world.

The Stalker’s Anthem – “Every Breath You Take”

The Pedophile’s Anthem – “Don't Stand So Close To Me"

Time to call The Police, do you think? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA*!

(*If you're wondering why I'm haha-ing, it can only be because you didn't know that Sting belonged to a band called "The Police". NOW you can laugh at the pun!)

The 10-years-together anniversary meme

2010-10-28T13:13:00.003+01:00

I read an article recently which said that the longer a couple are married, the less they know about each other’s doings and thoughts. Which - because Pete and I have been married for 8 years, with the 10th anniversary of the day we met being 26th Oct - led me to reflect on us as a couple.

I probably know more about Pete and his family than he does about mine – but it’s easy for me because he has only one brother and no cousins to speak of, and nobody he really meets on his dad’s side. I know more about my MIL’s family, partly because she has more family than my FIL, but mainly because I’ve been told about them and met some of them... whereas I have two siblings and more uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces on both sides of the family to populate a small town in the UK. This, coupled with the difficult-for-Pete-to-remember names as well as the multiple Kumars and Radhas and Sujathas and Hemas (to mention just a few names) who are part of the extended family, makes it pretty hard for Pete to keep track of them. I do catechise him on the main members of the family off and on, just to keep him on his toes, and I have to say he does pretty creditably, considering.

The list of questions which were posed to the couples (in the article) was given at the end of the piece, so I decided to hijack them and answer them – and I got Pete to do so as well.

What is your partner’s favourite way to eat an egg?
My answer: Poached, on toast (Correct)
Pete’s answer: With me (Correct).

What is your partner’s favourite city?
My answer: Dublin (Correct)
Pete’s answer: New York (Correct).

Who, given the sole choice, would your partner invite round to dinner?
My answer: My mother (Correct).
Pete’s answer: Me. (hmmm.... oh ok, Correct) :)

What part of your partner is she/he most embarrassed about?
My answer: Stubby fingers (Unconfirmed, unless "hmmm" means something)
Pete's answer: Smelly armpits (Wrong!) (No further clarifications, sorry) (His explanation: IF your armpits were smelly, which they are not, you would be embarrassed.)

Your partner wins a sizeable sum – how would they spend it?
My answer: Buying enough speakers, amps, and other such items to wire every Glastonbury concert for sound and light. (Wrong! Correct answer: Travelling with me. Pete's explanation: I have enough stuff to keep me knackered!)
Pete's answer: On me. (Hmmm.....)

What animal is your partner most scared of?
My answer: Spiders. (Correct.)
Pete's answer: Spiders - not animals, but still. (Correct)

What would be your partner’s favourite job, other than the one they are doing now?
My answer: Being a sound engineer for large music festivals. (Wrong! Again! Arrrgh! Pete's clarification: Would not want to do it as a job … Fantasy job yes but not for real)
Pete's answer: Looking after me. (Correct. Perhaps I should have said Wrong. Is he beginning to sound just a teeeeeeeeeeny bit complacent?)

Reality TV and me

2010-10-27T15:47:00.003+01:00

Although I’m not a fan of “reality TV” shows, especially the completely inane ones like Big Brother, Pleasure Island, Fear Factor and so on and so on, I have to confess that I do watch and actively enjoy shows like America’s Next Top Model (note that I do not include Australia’s/Canada’s/Britain’s or any other country’s spin-off series), Runway, Catwalk etc.

While I don’t consider any reality shows to be high-brow - because reality TV doesn’t lend itself to intellect either on the part of the makers or on the part of the partakers - I certainly do think that the shows I like tend to require more in the way of talent and creativity from the participants. I also believe that one can actually learn something from America’s Next Top Model, if one is of a mind to, and if one has the ability to.

I hasten to add that I believe it’s only from Tyra Banks that one can learn; yes, she is ridiculously twee sometimes (for example, coining the word “smise”, which apparently means “to smile with the eyes”), but she is the only person I can think of who can also actually DO what she describes, which is to convey emotions through her eyes and with her body language. And yes, that includes “smise”. I think she’s totally professional and competent when it comes to anything to do with modelling - and a hugely intelligent person if it comes to that – and that her flagship show is the slickest of slick productions. Anyway, those are the reasons I watch America’s Next Top Model - not because I want to learn to “smise”.

As for Catwalk and Runway, they’re interesting mainly because I’m deeply in awe of the talent that the wannabe designers display in coming up with amazing designs and actually stitching them without any help in the limited time available to them. But also, I’m always curious about testing my idea of beautiful, whether it’s to do with clothes or people, against the decisions of the “judges” of those shows.

I know that I’m not good at “thinking out of the box” in terms of creativity. I couldn’t come up with original creative ideas or designs to save my life. But because I know of that shortcoming in myself, I’m always looking for validation of the choices I make when I watch such shows. Do I have good taste or don't I? I do know that there’s no such thing as the “right” choice, that tastes differ and so do opinions, but what I try to do is learn to appreciate other people’s point of view and see the clothes through their eyes. Basically, to see beauty in the unconventional.

Sometimes the judges and I come to the same conclusion, but for different reasons, and that’s what I try to learn from. More often than not, especially when it comes to clothes designs, my “winner” turns out to be the loser because, as the judges put it, the designer “played it too safe” in designing the outfit. And that is when I know that I too had probably played it safe in making my choice.

Then again, sometimes the winning outfit is so outlandishly ugly that it’s the clinching factor in proving, entirely to my satisfaction, that the judges have just displayed neither good taste nor discernment.

Call this news?

2010-10-11T12:05:00.001+01:00

“Shopping sprees could include splashing out on a £12 million Ferrari 250 GTO, a week in a private villa on Mustique for a cool £85,000, or a couple of private jets - a Boeing 767 costs around £56 million.
Alternatively, the ticket-holder may decide to put it all in the bank.”

You’d be forgiven for thinking this extract is from a tabloid, but you’d be wrong. VERY wrong. This is from a “news” item in The Telegraph, one of the more respected – and supposedly respectable – newspapers in the UK.

Since when was speculation considered “news”? Is the alternative proposed by the writer the ONLY other alternative? Why would the winner buy just one £12 million Ferrari? Why not 8 such Ferraris, with the remaining £5 million on a garage to house them? Why just a week in a private villa? Why not a year? Why not 113 separate houses costing £1 million each? Or maybe 226 houses for £500,000 each?

And while the reporter is writing such “news”, why not speculate that the winner could also well give every last penny of the lottery winnings to charity or – as likely as any of the other possibilities – to the reporter himself/herself?

Also, what makes the newspaper think that it is a “Briton” who’s won all this money? Why can’t it be an immigrant who’s not a British citizen? Wouldn't that just be a poke in the eye for every tabloid including The Telegraph!

Why Stephen King is like God

2010-10-08T22:34:00.003+01:00

Let me explain.

I'm currently three-fourths of the way through the expanded version of Stephen King's novel "The Stand". I've read it before but it's well worth another read. It's a marathon of a book at a total of 1325 pages, but it is also, to me, one of the most riveting reads ever. It's an epic. It's a classic. It will also NEVER be a textbook - I hope. That way, no dunce of a Literature student or a hack of a Literature teacher will get the opportunity to pick it to pieces in a bid to explain the magic of this amazing writer's genius ability to draw his reader deep, deeper and deeper still into the story...

But I digress. I was going to tell you why Stephen King is like God.

Okay, this is why. You can pray as much as you like for the hero/heroines, wish as hard as you want that they will not die, scream yourself hoarse begging him not to kill off the good guys, the interesting guys, the guys he gets you to admire and love... you could have a titanic conniption right at his feet for all the good it does. The good ones still get killed off, just as if you'd never said a word. If that sort of monumental indifference isn't godlike, I don't know what is.

Out of this world stupid

2010-10-05T14:30:00.000+01:00

If you saw an advertisement where a snake crawls suggestively over a naked woman’s body, would you think of:

a. Perfume

b. Fruit juice

c. Body lotion

If your answer is b, purely on the basis of this question, you’re obviously the moron who came up with the idea for the advt in the first place. Did you ask to be taken to our leader when you first arrived on Planet Earth?

Guess who's William Shatner's newest fan? (psst... he was Capt Kirk in Star Trek)

2010-10-03T22:39:00.002+01:00

I wasn’t a fan of William Shatner until fairly recently, when I saw a comedy roast where he was the guest of honour. The roasters outdid one another in filthy language and tasteless references to Shatner, but there was nothing even remotely funny for nearly the whole of the programme – until the end, when Shatner rose to “defend” himself. He was absolutely hilarious and every shot of his zinged home unerringly. His sense of humour and timing were impeccable, and that was the day he gained himself another fan. I’d not seen him in anything other than the original Star Trek as Capt James T Kirk, most famous for shagging anything vaguely reminiscent of the female of the species, so he was pretty much a one-dimensional character to me. I thought he’d be a monumental bore as a person – but now that I’ve read his memoirs, I’m pretty sure that “boring” is not a word that would ever describe him. In fact, I’m wishing I could meet him!

The reason for this total makeover of my opinion of Shatner is his autobiography entitled “Up Till Now”. He is side-splittingly funny, with the sort of deadpan humour I adore. I was reading the book at work and from time to time I had to put it away and remove myself to the bathroom so that I could work off the fits of the giggles that came over me. I loved his wry reminiscences and his ability to poke fun at himself, and I was hugely impressed by all the things that he’s done in his lifetime – for instance, I didn’t know that he was a stage actor for a long time, that he did most of his stunts himself, that he wrote successful novels and screenplays, that he did so much for charity… and so on and so on. But then again, I knew literally nothing about Shatner and his life inside and outside of movies - other than he was the hero of Star Trek. So everything he wrote about himself was new information to me.

Getting back to his memoirs, what I love above all is that he does not seem to have succumbed to the pressures of fame and become an alcoholic or drug addict or both, like practically every Hollywood actor seems to have done at some point. At least, the impression I get from his book is that Shatner was too involved with his work to ever bother with those vices – even at his lowest points when he thought he would never make any money. Sure, he did by his own admission not shy away from women when he was between marriages, but compared to celebrities today, he was practically celibate. AND he seems to have a genuinely loving relationship with his three daughters, which is even more awesome

Yep, it’s definite. I admire William Shatner intensely, and I’m not embarrassed to admit it. I also wholeheartedly recommend “Up Till Now”. You won’t regret reading it, and you’ll definitely get a lot of laughs out of it.

Why I love Sir Terry

2010-09-28T15:00:00.000+01:00

Vintage Terry Pratchett - the man has not lost his touch. Still giggling every time I think of this:

"There is a lot of folklore about equestrian statues, especially the ones with riders on. There is said to be a code in the number and placement of the horse’s hooves: if one of the horse’s hooves is in the air, the rider was wounded in battle; two legs in the air means that the rider was killed in battle; three legs in the air indicates that the rider got lost on the way to the battle; and four legs in the air means that the sculptor was very, very clever. Five legs in the air means that there’s probably at least one other horse standing behind the horse you’re looking at; and the rider lying on the ground with his horse lying on top of him with all four legs in the air means that the rider was either a very incompetent horseman or owned a very bad-tempered horse."

- Footnote from "I Shall Wear Midnight", Terry Pratchett's latest novel starring Tiffany Aching and the Nac Mac Feegles and, here and there and now and then, the city of Ankh Morpork.

Politicians and their games

2010-09-24T11:55:00.003+01:00

While I’m embarrassed about the corruption and political machinations that have led to Delhi and India being humiliated in the world’s eyes, and unhappy about those poor workers who were injured in the bridge collapse, I somehow hold out the hope that the Commonwealth Games will still be held and maybe even be a success despite the dismal lead-up to them. I can’t help thinking that somehow India WILL come up with the goods, even though it doesn’t seem that way right now. Not logical, I know.

But even if things go swingingly well from this moment on, and the various teams all decide that they will not pull out of the Games, and the athletes’ quarters are made hygienic and clean, and the roads and bridges and buildings are safely rebuilt/completed, every politician and top bureaucrat who allowed the situation to get into the shocking state we see now should be called to account for it. Perhaps they could be fined heavily – hit ‘em where it hurts most – if not actually sent to prison. It’s the least that should happen.

I bet, though, that the politicians will deflect attention from this by using the Babri Masjid as an excuse, no matter what the Supreme Court’s verdict turns out to be. Its decision will disappoint the practitioners of one or the other religion, after all. Reason enough – or unreason enough, actually – to incite riots.

Perhaps there was indeed a temple at the spot in Ayodhya before Babar pulled it down, but shouldn’t it be enough that the masjid also has been pulled down? Isn’t that tit for tat? I wish the Supreme Court could decide that if anything should be built on that spot, it should be a building that is half-mosque, half-temple. Wouldn't that be the most perfect, the most elegant solution? But that's just a pipe-dream... so, in real terms, the only thing to do is provide justice for the families of all those who were killed in the riots that followed, and get all the known killers – of both faiths – punished.

And a new era begins...

2010-09-14T10:52:00.004+01:00

I would like to present a momentous moment of more than merely momentary mportance. (Note: I DO know how to spell the word right, but I wanted to continue the alliterative theme.) It’s taken nearly 6 years and much moaning and groaning interspersed with temper tantrums and unsolicited sarcasm to get here, but my blog and I are at that point at long last. It’s kind of a thrilling moment, so bear with me while I thrill away for a minute or two.

Okay.

This, dear reader or two, is my 500th post – a more than usually significant milestone because I’ve not been the most consistent of bloggers. There are those who manage 1000 words in one post, or 1000 posts in a year, or 10000 posts in 5 years (kindly ignore any mathematical discrepancies) but I’ve not been among them, although I’d like to be. But I think that you (dear reader), and you (dear other reader) and I can be pretty certain that’s never going to happen. So if you’re happy to sing “For she’s a jolly good pom-pom*, for she’s a jolly good tum-ti-tum*, for she’s a jolly good blankety-blaaaaannnnnnnnk*, and so say both of us”, I’m happy to listen.

Thank you.

*pom-pom, tum-ti-tum, blankety-blaaaaannnnnnnnk = generic terms to replace “fellow” because I don’t know the female term for “fellow”. If you do, please to sub it.

Dear Diary...

2010-09-07T22:26:00.001+01:00

I used to keep a daily diary when I was younger – I probably started the habit when I was in the 8th standard and continued, increasingly sporadically, over the next few years until it petered out completely by the time I was 25 or so. I still have those diaries, safely stored right at the bottom of a box full of books. I haven’t seen them in years; I think the last time I had a look at them was when I was unpacking the big box of my books that had been sent over from India.

The reason they’re at the bottom of the box and untouched in several years is that I’d really rather that nobody ever got to read them – me included. The entries were by turn embarrassing, pathetic, maudlin, overenthusiastic, usually happy, sometimes angsty, sometimes angry... but mostly they were mystifying. There were lots of references to people by their initials or by private nicknames that I’d coined. Who were JT and MS, among others, and who were the unfortunately named Fish Face and Aruvai Rani (Queen Bore)? Or Anju Paisa (Five Paise) or the 5H Guy?

You’d think I would at least remember Fish Face and Aruvai Rani given that their names were so evocative... but no. I didn’t have a clue as I re-read my diaries. I literally could not put a single name or face against those initials and references. And yet they featured so much in my life then – they must have, to crop up in my diary so regularly and cause me so much joy and heartache. I suppose I must have expected to remember them – possibly for ever - which is one reason why I didn’t feel the need to maintain a de-coder for those initials and nicknames. The other reason, of course, was the small matter of keeping the identities secret from any accidental reader. Secrecy is, after all, the hallmark of every teenager. But I really do wish I’d known that the 40-year-old me would desperately require a key to the shorthand devised by the 14-year-old me... I would have taken the trouble to write all names in full along with descriptions of who they were and why what they said or did had mattered so much.

The worst thing about re-reading my own diaries as a grown-up was how incredibly embarrassing I found the pre-teen and then the teenager that I had been - how practically every reaction I'd had seemed really quite over-the-top. About the only thing that I didn't embarrass myself with was my writing... although the emotions were all over the place, I still managed to write coherently and mostly with humour - no matter how angry or sad or happy I was. You'll just have to take my word for this, though, because nobody's EVER going to read my diaries while I draw breath. (Once I've stopped drawing breath, I'm pretty certain I won't care... but if I'm wrong, the curious diary reader had better be wary of some radical hauntings with me in the starring role.) You have been warned.

Sunday Scribblings – “Wait”

2010-09-06T16:42:00.003+01:00

Of all my positive character traits – FAR too numerous to start listing, my pretties - the one that has caused me the most grief over the years is the compulsion to be on time for appointments. Usually I’m not just on time, I actually get to my appointments early. If I'm late it's usually for reasons beyond my control, not because I started out with no time to spare.

When I was younger and possessed of less patience, I would start getting antsy about 10 minutes before the agreed time, and get progressively hotter under the collar for every minute past that time - so that if the person I was meeting was late by just 5 minutes, I’d still be seething. (Eventually it struck me that getting mad at the other person for not being early was a pretty irrational thing to do.)
After many instances where I’d waited at least 15 minutes past the appointed time, and a few where I’d been kicking my heels for a good half an hour, I decided that I too would show up late and make THEM wait for a change. Which was a very good plan of tit-for-tat revenge – or would have been, if only I could have followed through on it.

The problem was that I found it absolutely impossible to force myself to be late. For one thing, I always worried that the other person would end up having to wait – and yes, I know how idiotic it sounds, considering that was the exact situation I wanted to engineer. For another, I was terminally optimistic, telling myself that perhaps on THIS occasion they would be there on time... despite having never experienced any such thing. It was a shining example of is called the triumph of hope over experience.

Finally, after one too many occasions of waiting endlessly, I decided that I would from then on only wait 10 minutes past the agreed time – for anybody, for anything – after which I would either go back or go on, whichever option took my fancy. That worked a lot better, because it gave both me and my friends/family/acquaintances a firm cutoff time... plus, in those far-off days of the dinosaurs, when there were no mobile phones for instant information exchange or real-time updates, at least they would know to ring home and see if I’d gone back there or not.

When I met Pete, I was all optimistic once again, hoping that my luck had changed with regard to the waiting game. Sadly, that was not to be. He is possibly the least time-conscious person I’ve met – I mean, not even in the heady days of first acquaintance did he manage to meet me on time. At first I was inclined to take it personally, accusing him of being late because he didn’t care. But later, when I met his friends, they all reassured me that Pete being late for anything was a given – he was an equal opportunities latecomer, not discriminating against anybody by arriving on time.

That pretty much set the seal on my fate - always a waiter, never a waitee.

Sunday Scribblings - "Faith"

2010-09-01T15:42:00.003+01:00

Does anybody still like George Michael (formerly of Wham! fame, more latterly of driving-under-the-influence-of-drugs-and-crashing-into-a-shop fame)? He shot straight to the top of my Most Favourite Pop Stars list when I first saw him in the video for “Careless Whisper”, and has remained there pretty much since – as a singer/musician, that is.

I remember me and my cousin both sighing “HOW could she be so hard-hearted as to not forgive him?” when he begs her to “Please stay!” even as she rushes away to her waiting private aircraft – “she” being his girlfriend in the video who caught him cheating on her. (In our defence, it was his beautiful brown eyes, thick blond hair, slightly protruding teeth and the squeaky-clean image he had then, that made our pretensions to feminism vanish in a flurry of besotted heartbeats!)

Of course we were broken hearted when he outed himself as gay, because it meant that we stood no chance of ever capturing his heart – because naturally there would have been every chance of one of us (mainly me, natch) becoming Mrs George Michael if only he’d been straight. (What? I had ambitions, dammit!)

Anyway, over the years I have loved loads of his songs right from the Wham! days. His songs, but never Andrew Ridgeley's, not even in Wham!'s most popular period. I don’t really remember any of Andrew Ridgeley’s songs because he was a wishy-washy singer and also didn’t look as macho as ol’ George – in fact, he looked downright campy and gay. Yes yes, I know, the irony...

So, as I was saying about George Michael, songs like “Faith”, “Father Figure”, “Freedom” and many others (but NOT, EVER EVER EVER and let me say that again EVER EVER EVER EVER, “Last Christmas” - EVER!) are just as good to listen now as when I first heard them.

I’d been wanting to see George Michael live in concert, but that particular ambition was struck off my “wanna do” list after I watched a recording of his most recent concert on Sky (a while back). It was such a disappointment, with George Michael (I can’t seem to refer to him as just “George” or just “Michael” – it’s GOT to be “George Michael”) completely lacklustre and devoid of any kind of enthusiasm. He didn’t look like he wanted to involve the audience in the music or interact with them in any way. Frankly, it was like he was just going through the motions because he had to.

Had I paid good money to watch him sing live and got the sort of performance I saw, I would have been extremely pissed off – and heartbroken too. I guess I don’t have faith any more in him as a performer, although he was – and will always be – a fantastic musician and singer.

From the Department of "Swallow this, and you wouldn't notice an elephant sliding down your gullet"

2010-08-24T09:37:00.004+01:00

Devriendt says he protects his cast "as far as I can", but adds "so what if we show teenagers misbehaving or being sexy? Teenagers are sexy. For me, it's necessary to make Once and for All and Teenage Riot so that we hear their voice. We toured all over the world with Once and for All, and I never felt that adults came to see it in a voyeuristic way. They came because they wanted to know what it is like to be a teenager." (emphasis mine)

Of course they did. There's obviously NO truth to the rumour that adults were once teenagers themselves.

What an ajeeb editing style, sir!

2010-08-23T13:02:00.016+01:00

It’s been a while since I read the Ramayana – any version. The last re-reading I did was years ago, and that was Rajaji’s abridged version. And before that, it was the Amar Chitra Kathas, which was even MORE years ago. My mother got me Ashok Banker’s version, on request, the last time she came back from India (a good year and a half back), after a couple of friends recommended the books highly. I hadn’t read them thus far as I’d been saving them up for a “dry” spell (where I’d be stuck with 2-3 books that were non-fiction) – which is what’s happening now.

Anyway, I’ve just finished Book 2 – The Siege of Mithila. The books have been good reading so far, all things considered, although the editing is somewhat quirky. I understand that the language has been more or less updated for the modern reader, but since the books have presumably been written in English by the author and not translated into English by anyone else, I don’t see why the conversations between the various characters couldn’t have been entirely in English.

I don’t have a problem with the occasional entire sentence being in Hindi, and certainly think it’s right for the few Sanskrit verses quoted in it to have been transcribed verbatim, with the English translations provided alongside in both cases. But why intersperse shuddh English speech with random Hindi/Sanskrit words?

For instance, Brahmarishi Vishwamitra saying to Rama: “The sands of samay are running out, rajkumar.” WHY do that? What’s with the “samay” in the middle of the sentence? How would it sound if Vishwamitra had said “Time nikal ja raha hai, Prince”? Ridiculous, right?

Bad enough that it's ridiculous, but worse still is the fact that such linguistic randomness breaks the flow of the speech and intrudes upon the reader’s consciousness as it’s so awkward. Why could the editor not have had Vishwamitra say "The sands of time are running out", leaving the “rajkumar” intact at the end, if necessary. That Hindi word at the end of the sentence would not have been as intrusive as the “samay” in the middle.

I’m not being nit-picky here. (If I was being nit-picky, I would have made a fuss about the many inconsistencies in spelling and the few misspelt words that I came across in both Book 1 and Book 2.) I’ve written about this as a genuine grievance, because the odd language intruded upon my consciousness more than once while I was engrossed in reading the story, putting me off my stride. The first such instance made me laugh, but when I kept coming across this weird editing, it became quite quickly a real irritant. It’s possible that this hasn’t been picked up as an annoying feature by other readers/reviewers, in which case I guess it’s just me.

The grievance is still genuine, though.

*ajeeb = odd

The contents of my handbag

2010-08-20T13:36:00.005+01:00

Like a lot of women, I like bags. In fact, I don’t just like bags, I love ‘em. I simply can’t pass up a shop that sells bags without spending at least a few minutes window-shopping no matter how rushed I am for time. And if I have the time, I can while away an hour or so looking at all the bags – the colours, the shapes, the sizes, the textures, the *gulp* prices – and wondering what it would be like to buy them all. Out of necessity, naturally, not out of greed - although non-bag-lovers might see it as greed. But, as they say, one person’s necessity is another person’s greed. (Or the other way round.)

Unlike a lot of women, however, I only own one handbag. I don’t need or want more than one, and if I find one I like, I tend to use it everywhere all the time until it’s threadbare or worn down to near transparency. At that point, with a heavy heart, I am forced to go to a bag emporium as an unhappy buyer instead of just as a happy wanderer.

The problem with having to buy a bag is that a lot of them look nice, but most of them don’t have the qualities I desire - low price, good looks, medium size but with optimum-storage-and-plenty-of-compartments. Or rather, these qualities do exist, but not as applicable to any one bag. This problem is further compounded by the fact that any bag I buy, no matter how perfect before I buy it, immediately loses all lovability the moment the sale is final. At that point, any sort of bag carried by any random woman – short of an actual bag lady – takes on all the desirability that my bag had possessed just micro seconds before.

However, these reasons, although important, only partially explain why I only own one handbag. The most important reason of all is that I cannot afford to own more than one handbag. It’s not the handbags themselves that are ruinously expensive, it’s their contents. I will explain in a moment.

I’ve always wondered how other women manage as the owners of multiple handbags. How do they manage to take a different bag each day? How do they have the patience and the will to transfer the contents of one handbag to another that matches their outfit/is appropriate to where they're going/whatever other reason they change bags? What if the bag being transferred from is bigger than the one being transferred to? How do they manage to get all the things in the smaller bag? If they don’t, how do they manage without the things that didn’t get into the smaller bag, given that the same things were necessary in the bigger bag? Is the importance of the handbag’s contents in inverse proportion to the size of the handbag? If this is so, why do these women lug around things of lesser importance – and, I assume, lesser necessity - merely because the handbag is bigger? Do the less important things gain more importance just by the fact that there’s more handbag room to carry them? I just don’t get it.

When I have one (medium-sized) bag, I carry in it all the things that are important and necessary to me on a daily basis. (If my single handbag is bigger than medium, things tend to collect in it, making me lose track of the contents after a while, in turn making it difficult to find the few things that I might actually require.) If I have two bags, I tend to duplicate the contents of the first bag for the second bag as well, so that no matter which bag I choose to use, I would still have all my important items. But if you’re forced to do this for every single bag you buy, the process begins to get extremely expensive, not to mention inconvenient.

Transferring the contents from Bag 1 to Bag 2 (or 3 or 4 or 5 or 10, limited only by the number of bags you own) is a possibility, yes, but in the past I’ve tended to overlook certain items by mistake, to discover their absence in Bag 2 only at the psychological moment – for instance, searching fruitlessly for the keys to get into my house when they (the keys) were inside Bag 1 which was inside said house. On one such occasion I was forced to walk miles to find a public phone from which to call Pete and ask him to come home ASAP – why a public phone? Because my mobile phone also happened to be in Bag 1.

So you see why I own only one handbag.

The contents of said bag:
- Cheque book
- Pen
- Another pen (in case I can’t find the first one)
- Address book
- Spare passport size photographs (I don’t need those any more but they’re a habit left over from the days when every official form I had to submit to anybody required at least one photo)
- Glue stick (ditto as above, to be able to stick the photo onto whichever form)
- Purse (containing debit card, credit card, library card and Boots Advantage card, and postage stamps, plus cash and assorted coins plus emergency cash and spare house key)
- Contact lens case (with lens liquid)
- Glasses + case
- Cell phone (when I remember)
- Headache pills
- Inhaler (as a precaution for me and Pete)
- Lip gloss
- Lip balm (roller type)
- Another lip balm (in a tube)
- Yet another lip balm (medicated) (A girl can never have too many lip balms!)
- Eye liner (in case I might need it to glam up – HAHAHAHA!)
- Little Post-It pad for writing reminders to myself
- An emergency tampon (for me)
- Another emergency tampon (on the off chance that someone in dire straits might ask if I have a spare)
- Fluff (this collects by itself, it’s not something I choose to put in my bag)

And there you have it. The list of contents of my one and only handbag.

What’s in yours?

IF (NB: not to be confused with Rudyard Kipling's poem)

2010-08-18T13:32:00.003+01:00

If:

a. You’re unwilling to hang yourself (or your family or friends) out to dry by writing bare-all emotional posts

b. You can’t think of any insightful/clever/informative things to say about the news of the day

c. You’re not campaigning for yourself in some online contest or other

d. You’re not announcing/holding some online contest or other

e. You’re not talented enough to con anybody into thinking that your life is finteresting enough to read about (or *sigh* yourself into believing that your life is interesting enough to write about)...

...what DO you write about?

Not much, that’s what. (This should explain why there haven’t been many posts on this blog of late.)

Should anybody know of any do-able tags or memes going around, do me a favour and let me know. There’s always the slight chance that I might not already have done it in some earlier desperate attempt to keep the blogging spirit from evaporating entirely...

Maybe it's Maybelline, maybe it's someone else entirely...

2010-08-13T16:29:00.003+01:00

My memory seems to be getting worse as I get older. Yes, ok, that’s not news and it’s not like I’m bucking the general trend or anything. I just wanted to mention it, in case I forget to mention it because – have I been here before? - my memory’s getting worse. Basically, I'm not sure that I haven't already written about this in some earlier post - but perhaps it won't have been in these very words!

Anyway, enough said about that, as I’m sure y’awl will agree. My grouse today is all the ads on TV from Maybelline ending with the tag “Maybe it’s Maybelline”. Well, IS it or isn’t it? With the entire ad promoting the product as being from Maybelline, where’s the sense in then saying “Maybe it’s Maybelline”?

I know that the tag is a continuation of the catchphrase that made the Maybelline products famous in all the years (decades?) gone by: “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline”, the idea being that Maybelline products look so natural when applied that nobody will know for sure whether or not the wearer's blemish-free skin or thick long lashes are thanks to Nature or Maybelline.

The point is, Maybelline’s colourful array of products now certainly can’t be marketed using the original tagline – not unless women are born with turquoise eyelids and magenta lips – so they’ve merely removed the first line of the original tag and left it at “Maybe it’s Maybelline”, because possibly that was the phrase that built their fortune and they wanted it to remain in public memory.

Pretty stupid, though, wouldn’t you agree? I think the promoters of Maybelline should ensure that whatever top advertising firm they employ, for whose services they undoubtedly pay huge amounts, is made to use some amount of the money and all of their creativity to actually come up with a whole new catchphrase that will capture the imagination of the people. That will also have the incidental benefit of stopping me frothing gently at the mouth every time I see or hear “Maybe it’s Maybelline”.

2010-08-09T16:00:00.000+01:00

Ten hows:

1. How did you get one of your scars?
Got knocked down by an auto-rickshaw when I was on my Kinetic Honda.
2. How did you celebrate your last birthday?
It wasn't my last birthday! I hope to have many more birthdays! Wait, do YOU know something I don't???
3. How are you feeling at this moment?
Quite well, thank you.
4. How did your night go last night?
Too quickly.
5. How did you do in high school?
That's secret information which will not be unleashed on the world until 100 years after never.
6. How did you get the shirt you’re wearing?
It came home with me in a bag.
7. How often do you see your best friend(s)?
A LOT less often than I'd like to.
8. How much money did you spend last month?
All of it.
9. How old do you want to be when you get married?
Old enough.
10. How old will you be at your next birthday?
-er.

Nine whats:

1. Your mother's name?
Aatha.
2. What did you do last weekend?
Bought a new washing machine. And a Wii. Set 'em up and played tennis and Sports Resort games and washed clothes.
3. What is the most important part of your life?
The reading part. The talking part. The sleeping part. And the bits in between.
4. What would you rather be doing?
Getting paid lots of money to not work or do any housework. Ever.
5. What did you last cry over?
The onions.
6. What always makes you feel better when you’re upset? Pete. (Especially if he's the one upsetting me.)
7. What’s the most important thing you look for in a significant other?
A significant smile.
8. What are you worried about?
Not worrying enough.
9. What did you have for breakfast?
Dosas dunked in Greek yogurt.

Eight yous:

1. Have you ever liked someone who had a girlfriend/boyfriend?
Sure, what's not to like?
2. Have you ever had your heart broken?
Yes, but it was mended with superglue so the cracks dont show.
3. Have you ever been out of the country?
I believe so. But pls check with the Home Office to see if I'm back.
4. Have you ever done something outrageously dumb?
Not telling.
5. Have you ever been back stabbed by a friend?
My friends are nice people.
6. Have you ever had sex on the beach?
A few times. Nice cocktail, that.
7. Have you ever dated someone younger than you?
In my head.
8. Have you ever read an entire book in one day?
Is there some other way to read a book?

Seven whos:

1. Who was the last person you saw?
Don’t know his name.
2. Who was the last person you texted?
Dan.
3. Who was the last person you hung out with?
Pete
4. Who was the last person to call you?
To call me what?
5. Who did you last hug?
My MIL.
6. Who is the last person who texted you?
Anon from T-Mob.
7. Who was the last person you said “I love you” to?
They know.

Six wheres:

1. Where does your best friend(s) live?
School BFF in San Francisco; college BFF in Wellington NZ.
2. Where did you last go?
Away.
3. Where did you last hang out?
Hang out what?
4. Where do you go to school?
I dont.
5. Where is your favorite place to be?
With family and friends.
6. Where did you sleep last night?
Left side of the bed.

Five dos:

1. Do you think anyone likes you?
No :-(
2. Do you ever wish you were someone else?
Depends on who's talking to me.
3. Do you know the muffin man?
Just enough that I make my own muffins.
4. Does the future scare you?
Not so much. I plan to remain in the present.
5. Do your parents know about your blog?
Yup. All my blogs. All my parents.

Four whys:

1. Why are you best friends with your best friend?
She's like a magic mirror, she reflects what I am not (but should be).
2. Why did you get into Blogging?
To air my views. They had become musty from lack of sunlight.
3. Why did your parents give you the name you have?
That's a question even I havent asked.
4. Why are you doing this survey?
I have no life. (And I like surveys.)

Three ifs:

1. If you could have one super power what would it be?
To make people forget.
2. If you could go back in time and change one thing, would you?
Yes. Me.
3. If you were stranded on a deserted island and could bring 1 thing, what would you bring?
A Mallu tea-kadai.

Two would you evers:

1. Would you ever get back together with any of your ex’s if they asked you?
There's a reason they're ex.
2. Would you ever shave your head to save someone you love?
In a flash. But they'd have to pay for my wig.

One last question:

1. Are you happy with your life right now?
Yep.

Slow day, was it?

2010-08-06T12:43:00.002+01:00

Click this link

Sunday Scribblings - "I'd like to thank..."

2010-08-02T22:14:00.002+01:00

My father, first and foremost for engendering in me a love of books, reading and the English language.

My mother, for everything she is and always has been, and for her unquestioning love.

My sister, for being the strong-willed, stubborn, brave, independent, loyal, funny weirdo she is :)

My brother, for providing oodles of entertainment (whether I wanted it or not!) over the years, and for growing up to be a brother in a million. Oh, and for providing a much-needed niece and grand-daughter - although credit for this is to be shared 30-70with...

My sister-in-law, for the aforementioned niece/grand-daughter, and for taming the untameable brother with such ease.

My best male friend forever from my schooldays, Rags, for being such a brilliant, quirky, fun pal and my closest rival in everything English. And also for making me honorary aunt (I might have demanded this privilege, but still...) to his beautiful baby daughter.

My best friend forever from college, Lakshmi, for being my soul-mate despite our completely different natures, and for showing me how to extract the maximum from life no matter what the circumstances.

My truest rakhi brother, Shiv, for WAY too much teasing and helpless giggles.

Another beloved friend, Sanjay, for the same as above, except even more of it.

All my dearest cousins on my mother’s side, for a whole lot of fun, games, fighting and laughter while we were growing up.

My youngest cousin, Hema (who is now a not-THAT-young 21) for being such a delight from the day she was born.

My cousins Hema and Sujata (dad’s side) – Hema for being just a month older than me and therefore both best friend and bitter rival as children, and a dear friend now :) And Suj for being SOOOO much fun and so funny, always.

The friends I made at the Indian Express and in the Hindu Business Line – they are no longer my colleagues but they’ll always be the friends who made life SO much fun for so many years... and still do.

The three amazing, multi-talented, simply awesome ladies - Ammani, Shoefiend and Swarna - who were cyber-pals first but became real-life friends so very seamlessly, for letting me be part of their lives.

My Scrabbling friends, some of whom I know personally and some only through their blogs. Thank you for many, many interesting and hard-fought games that stimulated my brain and made me think harder than I would have considered possible. Long may it continue!

Last but definitely not the least, my husband Pete for his boundless love for me and my family, his warmth and loyalty, his common sense, practical nature and optimism (all of which I lack somewhat when the chips are down), his gentleness and crazy sense of humour, and most of all, because he doesn’t see anything wrong with spoiling me silly. Who could ask for more?

Death becomes perfection

2010-06-25T13:47:00.002+01:00

Have you noticed how everybody who dies – by accident, by suicide, by murder, by illness, by an Act of God – turns out to have been the ideal daughter/son/friend/sister/brother/parent/grandparent/aunt/uncle/human-being, full of sweetness and light and the milk of human kindness while being the life and soul of the party at the same time as worrying about kittens and puppies and abandoned children and the environment. Makes you glad you’re not the ideal anything, doesn’t it? Because if you were, you’d be dead and people would be reading about perfect li’l you in the newspaper.

Ok, that’s not my own original observation. I came across it, or something like it, somewhere and it struck a chord very loudly. I’ve merely embellished the original here (could you tell?).

I acknowledge that I’m uncharitable and un-empathetic and nasty, but I have to say that it's really irritating to read news items where the tearful friends and relatives of the deceased warble on about the latter’s all-round wonderfulness and lovableness for the first four paragraphs... and then, a paragraph from the bottom, you realise that the deceased in question had died in a drunken brawl started by him on the way back from the pub and this was something he had done many times before. (Started a brawl, that is. Not died.) Or else he had a criminal record for robbery with violence, or for abusing women, or for abandoning children and family, or was in a gang. Or lots of other things, none of which could be considered compatible with the glowing character description in the first few paragraphs.

I do realise that the news content is down to the reporter, and the order of paragraphs is down to the editor who passes that report for publication. So I guess my annoyance is 99% directed at them, not at the relatives of the deceased. (I hope that this mitigating factor in my otherwise mean and nasty character will be well publicised on my demise, and the rest omitted.) After all, there’s every chance that even despicable people have someone who loves them and isn't ashamed to admit it.

Why does being dead automatically add a halo to the character of the deceased even if in life they were anything but deserving of it? And if the glitter on the halo after death is directly proportional to evilness that went before, then shouldn't we be worshipping people like Hitler or Saddam Hussein?

Sunday Scribblings – “Birth”

2010-06-24T14:19:00.003+01:00

Giving birth is a difficult, difficult thing. Since I’ve chosen to avoid the physical process of birth, my only connection with birth is mental – in other words, the birth of ideas. I don’t mean that I’ve given birth to lots of brilliant, life-changing, fantastic, original ideas. Or even A single brilliant, life-changing, fantastic, original idea. Not even that. Just the fact that I’ve had any ideas is good enough for me. A naturally creative writer I’m not.

Anyway, as I see it, there’s a HUGE difference between the conception/birth of a child and the conception/birth of an idea - the latter being the worse experience. That’s only my opinion, of course. But I like to justify my opinion by pointing out that at least the process of conceiving a child is enjoyable, even if the birthing process is not – whereas conceiving an idea (even if only something to write about informally on a blog) is most certainly, most definitely not enjoyable in any way. Even surrogate conception (where an idea is conceived by someone else somewhere else, like the topic for this post) doesn't make the birthing process any easier.

For those of you who would like to disagree, I can only suggest that you try this experience – from conception to eventual expulsion - from inside MY head.

What if...?

2010-06-23T10:05:00.001+01:00

I woke from a dream yesterday singing (in my mind, not aloud) the National Anthem – not “God save the Queen”, but the original one from when I was originally an Indian. I still think it’s the most melodious anthem, whether sung or played.

Anyway, fragments of the dream stayed with me, leaving me with a somewhat dismaying question: What if some pathetic partisan politician from a newly created “State”, in a quest for publicity and popularity and the public’s votes, starts demanding that the National Anthem should name ALL the Indian States? Or that each State should have its own Anthem?

I can’t begin to describe just how much I hate that idea. I wish it had not popped up in my dream. I hope it never occurs to anybody else.

What colour is YOUR hair?

2010-06-15T18:29:00.002+01:00

Recently noticed on a shampoo bottle (I think it was l’Oreal, but I’m not 100% sure), this description: “Prone to dandruff coloured hair”.

Dunno about you, but I have to say I'm pretty happy not to be prone to dandruff-coloured hair. What shade of disgusting would that be, I wonder...

Really, could not ONE person in the company’s ad agency have thought about what the wording implied, and changed it to “For coloured hair prone to dandruff”? That would have made sense and been grammatically correct.

Right, a question for y'all: How much should I worry about noticing something like this, how much more for letting it bother me, and how very much more for actually pointing it out in print?

Sunday Scribblings - "Superhero/heroine"

2010-06-14T16:14:00.003+01:00

I think the Superman comics were the first ones about a superhero that I ever read, but I'm not actually certain. It’s not like I used to read comics serially... it was more a case of “Grab everything within reach and read it all”, so Superman, Spiderman, Green Lantern, The Phantom, Batman, Flash Gordon, The Hulk and others I can't even remember, were all grist for my mill.

So let’s say that Superman was the first alien superhero whose exploits took hold of my imagination well and truly. I think I was also reading Phantom comics (he of the “Ghost who Walks” fame) and Mandrake the Magician at the time... they were superheroes too, I guess, but they didn’t originate on another planet like Superman. They had extraordinary qualities, not extraterrestrial ones.

I guess the reason for liking Superman more than most was that I started at the beginning with him – that is to say, I had a big fat book of collected Superman comics starting with the very first ones. It was kind of strange to read those early comics because Superman’s features – and those of other characters - hadn’t quite evolved. To me the characters (all of them, not just Supe) appeared unfocused and a bit fuzzy, a bit like trying to read without my glasses. But as the years passed and the dialogue and drawings and colours and styles improved, Superman grew to look like the superhero epitomised (is this a valid usage?) by Christopher Reeves. As far as I’m concerned, he WAS Supe. Nobody else can be Superman, and anyone who’s seen Reeves as Supe will not be able to accept anyone else in his place - which is why there have been no super-duper HIT remakes of the classic Superman movies.

What struck me as totally inexplicable, undemanding though I was of my reading material, was the “Bizarro Superman” creation. I mean, why? It's not like they'd exhausted all other story/adventure avenues for Supe. Bizarro was the opposite of Superman – a sort of mirror-image, I guess. An anti-superhero. Ugly (with cracks? in his face) where Supe was good-looking, stupid where Supe was intelligent, irrational where Supe was anything but... and so on. Perhaps he was based on Frankenstein’s monster, but I’m not sure.

The weirdest part was how, in being the opposite of Superman, Bizarro’s speech was also “opposite” – meaning, if he said something was “good”, he really meant it was “bad”, and so on. I felt a bit sorry for Bizarro at one point, mainly because of a particular episode where he hates himself for being so... well, so bizarre, I suppose. “Me not human... me unhappy”, in his own words. But then the illogic of that pathetic statement occurred to me – if Bizarro said the opposite of what he meant, what he was actually saying was “Me human... me happy”. Why was his speech acceptable as a direct statement for that bit alone? I found that stupid AND irritating. Supe's encounters with Bizarro weren't really riveting after that particular discovery of illogic.

It’s been a long time since I last read a Superman comic. I tried to relive the magic a few years back, but alas, I’d moved on from Supe, much to my regret. I’m just relieved to have the memories of my fascination with Superman to fall back on... it makes me happy to think that he made me happy once. My first superhero.

Sunday Scribblings - "Mess"

2010-06-10T13:55:00.007+01:00

“Our House

Although you’ll find our house a mess
Come in, sit down, converse.
It doesn’t always look like this –
Some days it’s even worse.”

That was the ditty on the pretty little wall ornament that used to hang in our house in Songea, Tanzania. Let me describe the ornament as best I can - it was made of black-painted porcelain, with a little house surrounded by colourful flowers on the top triangular bit, and each line of the verse on separate "strips" of porcelain connected by little vertical chains in the middle, so that the whole thing was loosely in the shape of a house.

I don’t know when my parents bought it, or if it was a gift from somebody. All I know is that I loved the thing because to me it epitomised the very pinnacle of classy humour. (Yeah I know, I know... but at the time I was young and less sophisticated than I am now – no sniggering, please - and Calvin & Hobbes were a couple of decades away from being conceived). It was, in hindsight, probably a cheap mass-made trinket, but the point was, I loved it.

One evening, my dad brought a colleague for dinner. Being vegetarian, and a kind-hearted man to boot, my dad didn’t make his colleague the main course for our evening meal. Instead, he and my mother fed the man to within an inch of his life while we kids impressed him by being polite and helpful and entertaining. (To anybody who wishes to demur: Look, this is MY memory of the occasion and anyway you weren’t there.)

At the end of the evening, the colleague remarked to my dad that he really liked the “Our House” wall ornament and that he wanted it. Ok, maybe he was not quite as openly covetous as that, but he might as well have said it because my dad, spontaneously generous as always, immediately offered it to him, much to my horror (which stayed verbally unexpressed because of me being polite and well-brought-up. I don’t know what expression was on my face, though). Of course the man said he couldn’t possibly take it, giving me a moment of relief before my dad insisted that of course he SHOULD take it if he liked it. (What if the colleague had said he liked me? Not that I asked my dad that, but I might have mentioned it later, with the merest trace of bitterness, to my mom. Ok, maybe I didn’t mention it to her either, but maybe I wish I had.)

Anyway, the colleague went away well satisfied, having repaid our hospitality with what I considered the basest treachery. I missed the ornament so much that I determined to make my own replica of it. Which I did, thin poster cardboard being my material of choice, but it had a less than satisfactory outcome because it just didn’t look the same or feel the same as the original porcelain version. It didn’t even hang right on the wall - which would not have come as a surprise to anybody but me, being as the hole I’d made at the top to thread the string through wasn’t even centred properly.

I don’t know what happened to this second-rate copy of “My House” – perhaps I lost interest in it and it went the way of all the other things in which I’d lost interest. But every time I have a guest at home, I mentally repeat the little verse. Sometimes I say it aloud, just to see if it’s still amusing.

It is.

Doing my bit for the Red Marker blogathon

2010-06-09T15:19:00.003+01:00

A blogger friend of mine, Ummon, pointed me towards the Red Marker Blogathon hosted by Sunayana Roy. I’m glad she did because I’m always happy to rant on about my pet peeves, most of which are to do with misused idioms and incorrectly spelt words and poor grammar.

Ok, here goes, and this is only a tiny sample because I couldn’t possibly list ‘em all at one go!

- Wich (or “witch”) when what they (any and all misspellers) mean “which”. (So what do they call those ladies with pointy hats and black flowing robes who are reputed to fly about on broomsticks? Which witch is which? deary deary me...)

- “I damn care” – for “I don’t damned well care” or “I don’t care/give a damn” .

- “Where is your native” – meaning “Where do you come from?” A lot of Indians also say "I went to my native during my trip to India", and by that they mean the village or small town where they grew up. It's an expression that I dislike intensely. How much more effort would it take to add "place" after "native" and thus make it sound better?

- “He’s always loosing his things” – for “He’s always losing his things”.

Following on from that, using “loosed” (He loosed his pajamas) instead of “loosened” (as in made looser, or less tight).

And following on from THAT, calling someone a “looser” instead of a “loser”.

- This one’s way more common than it should be, sadly – random insertion of apostrophes where not required, and NOT adding an apostrophe where it IS required. Eg 1: “Your’s” - as in “this bag is your’s”, or “Your’s sincerely”, where it should be “yours”. “Yours” is a possessive pronoun, indicating something that belongs to you. No apostrophe required.

Eg 2. “Potato’s sold here”. An apostrophe followed by the “s” usually denotes a contraction. For example. “It’s” is a contraction of “It is”, “don’t” is a contraction of “do not”. So writing “Her’s” is wrong, because “her is” makes no sense. “Hers” is, again, a possessive pronoun.

Just “expanding” the word with the apostrophe will tell you whether or not it (the apostrophe) is in the correct place. It's so simple... and yet thousands and thousands of people get it wrong!

- I come across this ALL THE TIME in food blogs. “Palette” instead of “palate”, as in “This recipe will tempt your palette”. (How, exactly?) A palette is a flat board on which an artist might mix colours while painting. A “palette” can also refer to the range of colours that the selfsame artist might have used in his finished painting. “Palate”, on the other hand, is the sense of taste in humans (sometimes refined, sometimes not), and it also refers to the roof of the mouth.

- Using “pour” where the correct usage is “pore”. "He poured over his textbook". NO! It POURS with rain. He PORES over his textbook. If he POURED (anything) over his bloody book, it would do him no good at exam time, especially in the English exam!

I’m going to stop now, because I’m beginning to froth at the mouth. But if anybody wants more, I can do it again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. And the day after the day after that...
Just don’t tempt me.

Five best compliments ever received

2010-05-28T16:38:00.003+01:00

1. From a class of 7-year-olds to whom I gave a small, informal presentation about Hinduism and life in India. I wore a saree and took a couple more to show them along with my jewellery, some pictures of gods & goddesses and a few trinkets and photographs. The kids sent me individual thank-you letters, and one little girl wrote “My friends said you look like a beautiful princess and I think so too”.

2. “You write so well” – from various people over the years. A compliment I’m still learning to accept gracefully.

3. “You’ve got a beautiful smile” – heard a few times from strangers, colleagues and my husband. Most recently from the owner of a local Chinese take-away.

4. “You make me laugh/I love your sense of humour” – a compliment ALWAYS treasured no matter how many times I hear it, no matter who from.

5. “You’re an accomplished cook” – nice to hear even if not entirely accurate.

(Feel free to take this up as a tag, people)

Not exactly a book review, but a Bloody Good Read

2010-05-23T14:10:00.002+01:00

I've just finished one of the most inventively written, gripping novels I've read in a long time - it's part dark fantasy, part horror, part tender love story, part mystery, 100 per cent blasphemy (from a Christian's point of view - not from mine)... and a compulsive read as far as I'm concerned. A lot of things are topsy-turvy - a good man who turns into the Devil yet is still a good Devil, leaving God to come off very much an unlikable second-best... if indeed God can be said to BE likable at all in the first place. Let me hasten to add that the aforementioned is MY opinion. The novel certainly isn't an in-your-face theological argument pitting Good against Evil or implying that God is Good against the Devil is Evil.

Anyway, I'm not going to bother with a formal review other than saying that I swallowed this book in one unbroken gulp, no pause for breath or loo breaks. If you want reviews, you can always google them... but here's the NYTimes Book Review link anyway. I just wanted to highlight a quote from the book which I love love love! Here goes:

"I do not claim that God is dead. I tell you He is alive and well but in no position to offer salvation, being damned Himself for His criminal indifference. He was lost the moment He demanded fealty and worship before He would offer His protection. The unmistakable bargain of a gangster. Whereas the devil is anything but indifferent. The devil is always there to help those who are ready to sin, which is another word for "live"."

How true is that?

Oh, and one other thing - Joe Hill is Stephen King's son. That I discovered by chance, thanks to Google. All I can say is that good writing MUST be in the genes...