Priorities, priorities

So, What all would you do (or not do) to watch the world cup soccer matches on TV? Would you quit a job inspite of your boss' promise to give you a pay-hike? Would you lock your wife in a room if she seems to be bothering you when you are watching the games? Or, would you let your house be destroyed in a fire??

Apparently, people in China are ready to do all of the above just so that they could continue watching their games.. Unbelievable. I think I was more stunned, not because these things happened, but they happened in China - not exactly a football powerhouse!!! I'd have thought people would do the aforementioned things in England or Brazil or some other place like that!!!

The poor wife who ran out of the house with her kid was reported as saying, "My husband paid no attention to the danger, he just grabbed the television and put it under his arm. After getting out of the house, he then set about finding an electric socket to plug in and continue watching his game." Bravo Mister. You are my inspiration.

This other marvellous fella quit the job, even after a promised pay-raise because soccer is more important than a job." And another one, when his wife turned off the TV during the Argentina-Ivory Coast game as it woke her up, locked her up in the bedroom and continued watching despite her loud protests.

This world needs more men like these. For too long, men have had to turn the TV off during important games/tournament (no matter the sport!) or switch channels to watch some stupid house-wife serials... This will not be tolerated anymore. The precedent has been set. We shall break free.

One final note. A crime is a crime only if you are caught, or even after being caught, charges have been pressed. The Guangzhou Daily reported that local police were forced to release a thief arrested for stealing a mobile phone when the victim refused to press charges because he did not want to miss the start of a match.

Source: Reuters

Blindingly obvious

Last week, I was waiting at the bus stop, looking for aride to take me to a bar to meet up with my friends so that I could join them for a few drinks. Oh boy!! Don't I have it too hard... I had taken a ride from my roommate and I was kind of not too happy that I did not get a ride all the way to the bar, eventhough that would have been out of my roomate's way!! As I stood there in the shade of the bus stop, I saw a person with the help of a walking stick , get to the bus stop. He was blind. He stood there waiting for whatever bus he was waiting for, with me. As the bus that was gonna get me closer to my destination came by, I boarded it along with my new co-passenger. During the ride, he tried to make a phone call from his cell phone. That is when I realized maybe even cell phones ae braille-d?? I pulled my cell phone out to see whether it had any features built in to help blind persons. I have been using a cell phone for the last three years and that was the first time I had ever thought of its manoeverabliity --- for a blind person.....

Do I have it easy or what? I have all my five senses working most of the time and I don't have to look for Mr.Braille's inventions to help me find which floor I am at or a hearing aid or a wheel chair to get me where I wanna go. Yet, I sit there complaining about things that are not so good about this world.

There was a time when people asked me what the hell I am so happy about, I'd tell them, "I am just happy to be alive". Somewhere along the way I had forgotten how lucky I am to have been born into a family where i was fed well, sent to schools for education and provided with the moral values that you need to build your own set of values etc... Thanks Mom and Dad, and my brothers and sisters for all that you have provided for me. I am the luckiest person ever. Thank you for helping me be whoever I have been, and will be. Thanks.

Lost in Translation

Couple of weeks ago, I was in Providence, RI, for an acoustics conference with my labmates. There were people from all over the world, which always is interesting, as you get to hear all sorts of accents and funny pronunciations et al. This one particular speaker from Osaka University, Japan topped it all. He was talking about some new probe he had developed which is state-of-the-art in Atomic force microscopy or something like that, who knows!. For those of you that have been in Grad School in the U.S., I am sure you have had course instructors from Japan/Korea/China and the first few weeks of the semester are usually an adventure when you try to get attuned to their way of speaking.

My lab mate, Matt K, wrote down a list of words, as he heard them, during this Japanese guy's presentation and we tried to figure out what they actually were supposed to be, after the talk. This was a lot more fun than I thought it could ever be -- You should definitely try it, when you get a chance. Some of the most "catchy" ones :

Oh Shitter -- Oscillator
ding dong counter - Ring down counter
Ting horse - Spring Force
charcarate -- Calculate
police office - Polished surface
impotent -- Important
cappa - Copper
material 'sickness' -- Material thickness
smaller 'brains' --- Smaller grains

The best sounding of them all was, "freaking C" which is "Frequency". Since this was an acoustics related conference, he dropped quite a few freakin' C's. We were sitting in the last row of the room and I saw the partial list of the words and I completely lost it. I had to go outside before I burst out laughing.

And also, every word that ends with "-tion" is pronounced as "shown".. such as "function == funk-shown". After going through the list of words, we had one that left all of us stumped. "Elijah". We could not figure it out for the longest time... and finally, it occurred ---