2 year old limerick

The secret to poetry is rice
Each grain a sticky thought
You chew on it, don't forget to share
If it's too hard, then make curry!

...

Words, how did we come to make them? Who thought of putting an e after an a to give us such a pretty looking word as "faery" or make the daily ritual sound like a rare and special thing by calling it "quotidian"? And then we have QWERTY which really shouldn't be a thing.

Casa Bonita

I feel a think coming on as some favourite but forgotten character once said. I have moved into a new place a mere catapult shot away from my old apartment, and yet, so very different. It is the place I have always wanted but did not know I wanted, and now that I have it, I cannot but want to have it longer! So goes my fierce nostalgia for the present projected into the future. The perfect little apartment on the second floor of an open set of homes, with a central shared space where children play, an old railing to which I lock my bike, paint peeling in just the right places all give the facade character. Imagine that, after living in a chunky, dingy apartment building with blinding white walls and little else that stood out. And the inside of our new abode is an even more cutesy tale. A cosy living room lit by a lamp, a thirty year old couch, a recliner in the corner and a view of the park. Two bedrooms with our lives in them, a kitchen full of brand new dishes waiting to be filled with our food experiemnts, beer in the fridge, a makeshift bathroom curtain to block out the streaky windows and a very chic shower curtain. Domestic bliss is quite real, I have to admit. But if it seems like I attribute it all to simply these objects, it certainly is not the case. We have fun neighbours, and I have a brand new roommate who is easygoing and a friend which is pretty stellar as roommates go so really I saved the best for last. We also have a theme of leaves to bond us :)

Mind Farts and Psychic Vampires

This is a post dedicated to expanding the English lexicon. I introduce two words, the first of which I had coined awhile back and the second was introduced to me by Victor and Caitlin.

Mind farts came to me in a brilliant flash of mindfartiness during a long, intellectual discussion filled with obscure references and random philosophy. It means to let off fumes of nothingness which if done in large amounts may contribute to global warming, but which relieves you (like this post).

Psychic vampires, as was explained to me by V and C, are people who tire you by their mere presence. Interaction with them leaves you needing a Gatorade and so in the interests of your sanity, you should identify those people early and not let them get to you. Sounds good.

Costarricense!!

I think the last year was what I'd call a money's worth year or in other words a full-on paisa vasool Bollywood entertainer! There was separation, drama, happiness, laughter, loneliness, fun, friendship and so much newness. Visited three new countries and in one of them as I write this. We are in Monteverde, Costa Rica now. It's been a week since we landed in San Jose and 14 frijoles y arroz (beans and rice) later, I can say that I'm looking forward to the next six weeks.

I am so happy here that I had to analyze the feeling. I have concluded that it is because this place reminds me of home so much. It's hot, sweaty and tropical green everywhere. I already have a pimple on my forehead and an uneven tan. We walk an hour everyday uphill and downhill to and from Instituto de Monteverde (MVI). Right next to it is The Cheese Factory that has icecream and shakes but we are trying to keep the visits weekly. Our walks are in single file with Caitlin periodically calling, "A la derecha/esquierda" when vehicles pass, Yamuna clicking pictures of every interesting thing she sees, Kotrina with her cute "Pinto" a dog who has taken her as its owner and me dreaming of watermelons! We've seen caimans, vultures, a toucan, white-headed capuchins, hummingbirds and countless chihuahauas.

Costa Ricans live life at their own pace, are very friendly and one of the tiquismos (local expressions) is "pura vida". Very touristy but what the hell. This Costariccense is taken out of context in funny ways too. We wanted to do yoga here since Ernesto told us about the studios, but since the cheaper and better one was closed on Saturday, we went to the expensive one called "Rio Shanti", already strike one! We enter to meet two breathy ladies who used "that is so awesome" in the most irritating falsettos 3 times in the same sentence, strike two! And they hugged and said, "second hug, see you tomorrow morning at 9", strike three!

Downtown consists of shops and restaurants and can be navigated in 5 minutes. There is a hippy resthouse with the token hippies strategically placed along the banisters, the SuperMercado (supermarket), the souvenir shops, the local watering hole called Bar Amigos, out of whose back windows we "chicas" were hollered and catcalled at as we went home and there is another bar which we haven't tried yet which is the chica-friendly one.

The project that I'm going to be working on looks very promising and Ernesto, my adviser and teacher here at MVI is a Costa Rican from heaven! He is doing research on food insecurity and nutrition and health impacts of eco-tourism and integration into the market economy in the community. I will be doing a literature review on public health program models and their adaptability, talking to people in the community and even trying to work with them if possible in the fields or at the workplace. I will be able to improve my Spanish and talk to people, see what life here is like and live like a Tica for awhile! On the weekends, we plan to go on hikes, drive up to Mt. Arenal, hang out at the Common Cup which is the local coffee shop that sells coffee from the farmers in San Rafael, and visit the famous Cloud Forest Reserve at some point. This is excellent.

Estabien,
To life

Read at your won peril

So finally I memorised all the elements in the periodic table. It is immensely satisfying to knwo the names of elements like Unnilquadium (named after neither a Keralite nor a Swede), darmstadtium, tantalum and hydrargyrum. The last three rows are basically a big rah-rah to the biggies of chemistry and their laboratory addresses. So you have Fermium, nobelium, einsteinium, rutherfordium, mendelevium, californium, berkelium,dubnium, seaborgium and meitnerium. And now that I have permanently reduced my blog readership to -1 I can say with pride that I love chemistry because:

1. I can pronounce such choice mouthfuls as those given above even though I've never seen or handled them before in my life

2. I can work with chemicals most of which our professors mournfully used to say are carcinogenic without any sort of protective gear (real chemists have corrosion resistant skin)

3. I do not need to go the doctor for my cold because I kill any hapless bacteria or virus by inhaling noxious vapours

4. I have a cool lab name MOC. I won't tell you what it means because then the readership of this blog will plummet to -100.

5. The lab coat I wear is the hottest trend since leggings and ballet flats. When I wear it in the corridor everyone points and stares (ALL EYES ON ME) and forgets even to point and stare at the girl in the glittery purple patiala.

6. When I don't know what is going on in my test tube I can admire the colours in it.

7. We don't need colour swatches to discuss clothes. For eg. "Waaaaow I want a tshirt coloured like her diluted titanium solution"

8. Nowhere else will you hear people saying," I finished my anal yaar" (analytical chem)
I love it for reasons even more boring and sometimes hate it for those very same reasons.

Accentuated Misery

Recently the UNESCO Atlas of World Languages in Danger found that 196 Indian languages are facing extinction. Yes but fikar not because where we lose languages and heritage a growing section of people have decided to evolve new accents which sound so strange that they may soon be given the status of a new language so really its all good.

We all know the endless sardar jokes, gujju jokes, mallu jokes tambram jokes and miscellaneous other accent jokes. But these accents are natural and not forced. Methinks there are not enough jokes on the deliberately cultivated accents.

1. South Bombay Accent

Girl wearing goggles in the rain at bus-stop: Hey darrril lets watch that ajab ghajab one yaaaaa

Guy with pants falling off: No yaaaaaa me and kunaaal have band practice

Girl: oaww freeeeek dooood so jammin and alll nooo

Guy bobbing his head (cool): Yaaaa man nirvaaaaaanaa

Aaaaaaaaaa

This accent comes with a twang so nasal that five minutes of it makes you want to stuff Vicks down their throats. And of course grammatical errors don't count because hey she was "talking at him" in the accent. It is so magical that it has the ability to make even Hindi sound like a foreign language. The worst of it is that these fakers make fun of people who speak normally. You suck yaaaa

2. World accent (each word is pronounced in a different accent)

This accent afflicts the rich and glaaam people. Of course they've been to so many places that its a bit tedious to list them all so why not just incorporate the accents into their speech.

Actresses endorsing products:

a. Bikoooz ur worth it.

b. Like a phuuuurl its one of a kiiiiiiiind

c. Its not just a founn its who we aurrrrrr

This slavish sham superiority is laughable at best and disgusting at worst.