To us south indians, anyone coming from north of andhra pradesh is a North Indian, and any language he speaks is Hindi. And to the 'north indians', anyone south of bombay is a south indian and any language he speaks is Tamil!! Yet, ask the Malayalee, and he will say how much he feels out of place when people speak Tamil around him, and vice versa.
India has more than a hundred languages including dialects. We still survive because there is at least one in a thousand who can speak hindi. Hey, thats a large number of people considering the population of India. Most of our political transactions are done in hindi. But even there, the hindi spoken by various people can take different forms. Just try to compare Lallu and Vajpayee! Or Venkaiyaa Naidu and Advani, or even Sonia & Manmohan. In fact one of our prime ministers once said "Bhaiyon aur Bhaiyon" in the Independence Day address ... to think how much of a male chauvinist he should have been!
When I listen to something, and ask a chinese friend of yours... " is this chinese? ", he will never agree to it. He will always say " Zis is not chinesu. Zis izu one ofu dialecthu from ____ part of China. Have you heardu of ze guanxouzi province??" And the only reply that I have is "O yes, is it the one with the big river flowing through it?" because to me, all chinese names sound the same! In fact for us Indians, its always a nightmare trying to remember the names of our colleagues. You change one syllable in his name and your talking about food! You change 2 and you either love his wife or you're swearing at your boss real bad!!
These are times when I thank God for English. But then English also has a million dialects. No, Im not referring to Shakespearean English or Biblical English. I am referring to the following, which are non-exaggerated adaptations from talks by representatives of two of the largest populations in the world:
" Plees welcome to thi Hyderabad, the Bill Clinton, United States of Amerika Precident. Dear Sir, I would like to introduce to you, the Ramalinga Raju and also the Narayanamoorthy. As the Chief Minister Andhra Pardes, I am the Chandrababu Naidu would like to present .... "
" When you substitoottu the yikkuzakkutu (exact) valoo ofu 'aenn' (n) into the ikuashing (equation) you will do the differenshiashing and the intigrashing to obtain the sulooshing (solution)... "
But the interesting fact is that English still rules! Despite those people who say "fly lice" for 'fried rice', and those who say the same thing whether they want to say 'fox' or 'focus'; despite those who use an article before adjectives and verbs and some who dont use verbs at all; and despite those people who need English subtitles on BBC & CNN when they are actually talking in English, the world still works in English!!
So the next time someone asks you "Is this English?" say "NO. Thats just a dialect!!"
The Anglicized Tamilian
Monday, June 19, 2006
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
The Lazy Workaholic
Hi everyone,
After a short break, here I go again. You have seen the 'hungry-ghost' face of me. Here comes another one...
Getting back to normal shift from the 4-day-week-day-shift was more difficult than I expected. It was because our team of 6 was short of a senior engineer as he was on vacation in China. So that made us 5. There was quite a bit of responsibility entrusted upon me. I felt important, but it was only a matter of time before the feeling gave way to the feeling of being over-worked.
I was working 8-7, 5 days a week. Things went on smoothly, until I started getting commitments outside work. I joined the local orchestra. This basically made sure my weekends were tight too. I ended up running around the city everyday, work, practice, weddings, swimming, etc, etc. I have always been this person who likes to be busy. My friends used to make fun of me that I have always wanted to handle more things than I can.
My daily fortune even once read - You have a great week ahead, but handle one thing at a time. Sometimes I wonder which guy who meets you daily is the one writing these daily fortunes, that they so vividly describe your current state of mind. Only when I read the fortunes for other zodiacs, I realized that these descriptions would fit any individual, because all of us often suffer from the same problems - stress, lack of motivation, handling too many issues, relationships, etc. So the work of a starscope writer is quite simple. All he has to do is choose 12 problems, and allot one to each zodiac!
A sudden weather change made sure I started bringing out my umbrella to work. But being the absent-minded-professor-aspirant, I left my umbrella at work one day. As fate would have it, it rained that very day and I got wet. That night, my throat started throwing tantrums. Luckily it was still weekend, and I thought I could recoup within a day and be ready for work the next day.
Soon my entire body was on strike. I could hear every organ - "down with all the running around" - "we refuse to budge". And being a nice boss, or rather having no other choice, I had to submit to the pleas of my employees.The last couple of days have been funny. I feel like a bird who's wings have been cut off. My doctor had specified... "No exercise, no running, no walking, no activities, no work..." I thought "well, that does not leave too many things that I can do!!"
Your body wants to rest when you want to run. But it wants to run when you want to rest. To explain that better, its as if your employees want to strike when they have to work. But they want to work when you've granted them their leave!! The world is full of such funny morons who always want to do things they are not doing. Err... why do I feel Iv just described myself!
Moral of the story: If a boss is too busy to notice his employees' problems, his employees have to go on strike, and so badly that the boss has no option but to submit.
The Lazy Workaholic
After a short break, here I go again. You have seen the 'hungry-ghost' face of me. Here comes another one...
Getting back to normal shift from the 4-day-week-day-shift was more difficult than I expected. It was because our team of 6 was short of a senior engineer as he was on vacation in China. So that made us 5. There was quite a bit of responsibility entrusted upon me. I felt important, but it was only a matter of time before the feeling gave way to the feeling of being over-worked.
I was working 8-7, 5 days a week. Things went on smoothly, until I started getting commitments outside work. I joined the local orchestra. This basically made sure my weekends were tight too. I ended up running around the city everyday, work, practice, weddings, swimming, etc, etc. I have always been this person who likes to be busy. My friends used to make fun of me that I have always wanted to handle more things than I can.
My daily fortune even once read - You have a great week ahead, but handle one thing at a time. Sometimes I wonder which guy who meets you daily is the one writing these daily fortunes, that they so vividly describe your current state of mind. Only when I read the fortunes for other zodiacs, I realized that these descriptions would fit any individual, because all of us often suffer from the same problems - stress, lack of motivation, handling too many issues, relationships, etc. So the work of a starscope writer is quite simple. All he has to do is choose 12 problems, and allot one to each zodiac!
A sudden weather change made sure I started bringing out my umbrella to work. But being the absent-minded-professor-aspirant, I left my umbrella at work one day. As fate would have it, it rained that very day and I got wet. That night, my throat started throwing tantrums. Luckily it was still weekend, and I thought I could recoup within a day and be ready for work the next day.
Soon my entire body was on strike. I could hear every organ - "down with all the running around" - "we refuse to budge". And being a nice boss, or rather having no other choice, I had to submit to the pleas of my employees.The last couple of days have been funny. I feel like a bird who's wings have been cut off. My doctor had specified... "No exercise, no running, no walking, no activities, no work..." I thought "well, that does not leave too many things that I can do!!"
Your body wants to rest when you want to run. But it wants to run when you want to rest. To explain that better, its as if your employees want to strike when they have to work. But they want to work when you've granted them their leave!! The world is full of such funny morons who always want to do things they are not doing. Err... why do I feel Iv just described myself!
Moral of the story: If a boss is too busy to notice his employees' problems, his employees have to go on strike, and so badly that the boss has no option but to submit.
The Lazy Workaholic
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
The Hungry Anorexic - To fat or not too fat
Hey there FAT folks!
How FAT are you? I am very FAT today!! In actual FAcT, I am not very FAT. But the FAcT is that FAT is a reFlective and relATive term. So how FAT you are is really how FAT you feel...
Ok enough of this FAT story. Let me get to the point.
Getting up early in the morning and going for a jog is a very pleasant experience. Let me first admit something. I am making this a habit for 2 reasons. One of them is to lose weight and get fit. But the main reason is because my water heater doesnt work! If you're wondering what's the connection, I feel its easier to have a cold-water shower if you have just worked out. When the morning's cool, its pretty difficult, even in a warm place like Singapore, to have a shower in biting cold water. So thats how it all started.
Having grown up in a locality thats filled with news about actors and actresses gaining and losing weight like its money, I have always imagined what it would be like to lose a few pounds. But surprisingly, whether I ate mom's cooking or otherwise, my curve has not even been sinusoidal. I just kept putting on weight. So I have decided, thanks to my water heater, that I will go for a run every morning!
When I checked my email this morning, it was filled as usual with forwarded emails. No I am not going to fib about any weight-loss commercials here. One among them was a mail with many pictures. As usual there was a long list of addresses before the mail actually came to the point. The pictures were about those children who suffered famine in Sudan and Somalia. It was ironically interesting to note that some of those pictures actually won a prize for "picture of the year". Indeed!!
One such picture affected me... the child's body was but a network of slender bones with hardly a few microns of skinny layers of what we generally call 'skin'. Not too far away sat a vulture, waiting for the child to die before it could get its food! Interesting, isn't it? One life's at stake due to the lack of food, and the other's waiting for that life to go away before it gets its food. Both seemed to be in the same situation...
Here I am in a "greener" part of the world... getting reminded of myself when I read about Jughead in an Archie comic. And not too many thousand kilometers away, there are children who suffer for even a bread crumb a day. I felt happy this morning when I wore my belt and plugged the buckle one hole closer to my waist than usual, but I feel happier now, that we have been blessed with food to eat & that our dictionary & vocabulary actually contain the word 'fat'.
I would have loved to make this early blog of mine a funny one. But I thought otherwise. Let us just spend a moment thinking of these children.
The Hungry Anorexic
How FAT are you? I am very FAT today!! In actual FAcT, I am not very FAT. But the FAcT is that FAT is a reFlective and relATive term. So how FAT you are is really how FAT you feel...
Ok enough of this FAT story. Let me get to the point.
Getting up early in the morning and going for a jog is a very pleasant experience. Let me first admit something. I am making this a habit for 2 reasons. One of them is to lose weight and get fit. But the main reason is because my water heater doesnt work! If you're wondering what's the connection, I feel its easier to have a cold-water shower if you have just worked out. When the morning's cool, its pretty difficult, even in a warm place like Singapore, to have a shower in biting cold water. So thats how it all started.
Having grown up in a locality thats filled with news about actors and actresses gaining and losing weight like its money, I have always imagined what it would be like to lose a few pounds. But surprisingly, whether I ate mom's cooking or otherwise, my curve has not even been sinusoidal. I just kept putting on weight. So I have decided, thanks to my water heater, that I will go for a run every morning!
When I checked my email this morning, it was filled as usual with forwarded emails. No I am not going to fib about any weight-loss commercials here. One among them was a mail with many pictures. As usual there was a long list of addresses before the mail actually came to the point. The pictures were about those children who suffered famine in Sudan and Somalia. It was ironically interesting to note that some of those pictures actually won a prize for "picture of the year". Indeed!!
One such picture affected me... the child's body was but a network of slender bones with hardly a few microns of skinny layers of what we generally call 'skin'. Not too far away sat a vulture, waiting for the child to die before it could get its food! Interesting, isn't it? One life's at stake due to the lack of food, and the other's waiting for that life to go away before it gets its food. Both seemed to be in the same situation...
Here I am in a "greener" part of the world... getting reminded of myself when I read about Jughead in an Archie comic. And not too many thousand kilometers away, there are children who suffer for even a bread crumb a day. I felt happy this morning when I wore my belt and plugged the buckle one hole closer to my waist than usual, but I feel happier now, that we have been blessed with food to eat & that our dictionary & vocabulary actually contain the word 'fat'.
I would have loved to make this early blog of mine a funny one. But I thought otherwise. Let us just spend a moment thinking of these children.
The Hungry Anorexic
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Aham Asmi
Who am I??
Welcome to the blogspot of Aham Asmi. If you're wondering what kind of a name that is, well it just means "I Am!"
I believe everything and everyone has a split personality. For any given thing or person, there are always multiple faces that surface at different times. Obviously when there is 'many', there is conflict. This blogspot is all about this...
But no matter how many faces X has, X is still X.
"X is" and "I am".
Aham Asmi
Welcome to the blogspot of Aham Asmi. If you're wondering what kind of a name that is, well it just means "I Am!"
I believe everything and everyone has a split personality. For any given thing or person, there are always multiple faces that surface at different times. Obviously when there is 'many', there is conflict. This blogspot is all about this...
But no matter how many faces X has, X is still X.
"X is" and "I am".
Aham Asmi
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