Photography Was Allowed!

These snaps were taken when I visited a friend's house - is it in Bangalore or Sign Land, I wonder :), the situation was signs-signs-signs. Some are signs I have (and probably never will :) see anywhere else, some are just naughty perspectives, some are just plain funny! I really had a blast taking these.

The playground was called Concrete Ground for heaven's sake, and there were so many rules that one simply could not relax there...my heart goes out to kids growing up there...

My personal favorites are the no-games-allowed in-toilets, poetic r'turn well-wishing and the children-at-play sign boards... Nope, I did not break any rules taking these pix though, photography was not prohibited!

(I suspect photography will be next! :) )

Malayalitmus Test

I have devised a litmus test to determine the Malluness quotient of an individual.

Depending on how the person says the following word:
Neerazhi (നീരാഴി) - a synonym for the word "sea"

You can determine how much Malayalam a person knows, how "native" he or she is from the way they pronounce this word.

The na, ra, and zha are different!


TIDBITS
===========
From Wikipedia,

Extinct Kannada letters

Kannada literary works employed letters ಱ (transliterated 'ṟ' or 'rh') and ೞ (transliterated 'ḻ', 'lh' or 'zh'), whose manner of articulation most plausibly could be akin to those in present-day Malayalam and Tamil. The letters dropped out of use in the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, respectively. Later Kannada works replaced 'rh' and 'lh' with ರ (ra) and ಳ (la) respectively.^[70]

Another letter (or unclassified vyanjana (consonant)) that has become extinct is 'nh' or 'inn'. (Likewise, this has its equivalent in Malayalam and Tamil.) The usage of this consonant was observed until the 1980s in Kannada works from the mostly coastal areas of Karnataka (especially the Dakshina Kannada district). Now hardly any mainstream works use this consonant. This letter has been replaced by ನ್ (consonant n).^{[citation needed]}

Barking Barking Malayalam Chopping

A joke that Malayalis share about non-Mallus is that the hapless foreigners always say: "Kurachu kurachu malayalam ariyum". This post is about debunking and clarifying that joke - which is quite an impossibility!

Well, a little more about the "joke".

When the foreigner (who has tried to learn the notoriously difficult-to-speak language) means to say:
"കുറച്ചു കുറച്ചു മലയാളം അറിയും ",
They end up saying it as.
"കുരച്ച് കുരച്ച് മലയാളം അരിയും.".

The former means "Little little Malayalam I know" while the latter means "Barking Barking Malayalam I chop"! :)

There is only a slight difference in pronunciation for the 'ra's involved in this statement. The normal 'ra' (റ) sound that a foreign-tonguer would utter naturally would result in the correct version (knowing-knowing) of the statement in question!

The other ra (ര) is a sound that Wikipedia tells me used to exist in early Kannada and Tamil as well; but they became obsolete there. To understand the difference between the two 'ra's, contrast the two la sounds in "Loyola" (ലൊയോള). The difference between the two 'ra' s is also the same.

The barking-barking version of the statement is actually a testimony to Malayali elitism and sarcasm. The joke is that the foreigner would not be able to say the joke... or hear it, he would auto-correct it.

It is an insider joke!... perverse Malayali humour... :)

Do It With Mirrors

Today I went along with a friend to (window)shop around for an exercise-machine at the Proline shop on CMH Road. There was a full-wall mirror installed in the display/trial area. I noticed that in this mirror I seemed to be fatter than I thought I was.

I pointed this out to the salesman, who initially pooh-poohed my suggestion. (I am comfortably obese, you see... and who does not think they are slimmer than they actually are?) Then I showed him his reflection in the glass-window in the front (it was night) and asked him to compare it with the mirror. He was also startled by what he saw!

On further investigation, the mirror seemed to be slightly concave and made you slightly more convex; it most definitely had an aberration - a mistake of convenience?

What a brilliant sales-strategy!

1. You enter the shop, thinking that you are getting fat and that need to buy-equipment
2. Make the mirror show you a fatter version of you.
3. Seeing is believing, so...
4. You really need that exercise-machine now, don't you?!!

And On the Seventh He Rested

I have temporarily defected from the world of gainful employment, after my resignation in July. I am taking an indefinite break from the material world (time and money). As the Tata Safari ad went, it was time to reclaim my life; it was time to rediscover some of my passions, which were slowly slipping away. My world is definitely money-less now, and also, sadly, not as time-less as I thought it would be.

Well, I do kinda miss office and I feel like writing a report. :) Here's the status report on the 50th day-versary of my quarantine.

THE LOWDOWN
================

Life has still been busy. Have been doing things that I would never have done otherwise because they are 'unimportant'.

* Was confined to bed for 6 days - bad case of fever (not swine flu)

* Cleaned up the clutter and piles of junk that had accumulated - both in my house in Bangalore and at home in Trivandrum

* Successfully came up with a blog-idea a day for nearly the whole of July

* Went around with my cousins, who had come down from the UK and the US.

* Went to watch the Badminton World Championship in Hyderabad.
Lin Dan, the Roger Federer of shuttle, won!

* Took a break from computers in general for around 10 days

* Started writing some programs (open-source) that I had meaning to do for quite some time

EVENTS
========
* Fever
* Cleanup
* Speech at family function
* Shuttle tournament - saw the World no.1,2,3,4 in action on the same day
* Coincidence - bus broke down, auto-rickshaw broke down - both on the same trip
* Coincidence - caught my ex-boss bunking office, met an uncle - both accidentally

TYPICAL DAY
===========
8-11 - Get up/breakfast, read newspaper, crossword
11-4 - Go out somewhere (there are random trips on the bus. With a pass, you don't need to tell even the conductor where you are headed. I also go to Reliance Timeout, where you can comfortably sit and browse through books. Or maybe a movie.)
5-7 - Go to read in the neighbourhood park
7-10 - Dinner, laze around
11-3 - On the computer, generally programming also browsing

LESSONS
=======
* There's still no escaping the tyranny of time.
* You can do only one thing at a time.
* It's kind of tough to be responsible for your own time; it's so easy to slip.
* Anything can start to be boring.
* My mood-fix: watching four movies in a row
* It's actually not that important to read the newspaper everyday. You know what, some articles are really repeats!!!

PoA
===
Even now, there's no time! There's still so much stuff on the back-burner to get back to! For instance there's a movie I borrowed nearly 2 years ago: The Two Jakes, unopened books (too many to list :) ), piles of documents and emails to sort... I also need to get up to speed on technology.

Plan to get everything online soon.