This has been a surprising month for the newspaper; one thing a pleasant surprise, the other, not so good. I am aware that newspapers are not available the day after a holiday (because the workers were not working during the holiday). Thus, I was pleased when I saw that the newspapers were available on 3 October (the day after the National Holiday of Gandhi's birthday). I had hoped that this would be replicated during the Puja. Unfortunately, this was not to be. During the Puja, and the Muslim Festival afterward, I did not get the newspapers for about a week. This left me bereft of articles for this post, and made each morning very lengthy and boring for me.
3 Oct Normally, I include articles only from the Telegraph and Times of India in this monthly post and which I can not place elsewhere in this blog. I saw an article in the 8 October Times of India but could locate it neither at its website nor through Google. I did find this similar article, however.
Regardless, I can not comprehend either article. If certain words do not exist then how can they be loved or hated? How can wazzock be loved and amazeballs be hated, and why not the other way around? Just now, I did a cursory search and it seems that the latter word does exist. (It sees to be slang, although I did not pay attention to the definition.) The survey was done in the U.K. It seems that the British are indeed a very peculiar species, and it is good that they are confined to an island.
How can accepted words describing reality be loved or hated? Raindrop simply describes a particle of water that falls from thew sky, and moist simply describes a condition of an object being damp. Why would there be any emotional attachment to this?
If a word can be, and is, loved then why is it not used frequently? In this blog, I have written over four lakh/400,000 words and I have never written the words hippopotamus or sprocket. I suspect that it will be another 400,000 words before they are included again. I have read many newspaper articles and blog posts, and almost never saw those words. Again, the British seem to be a very peculiar species.
4 Oct I have read many articles about the partial shut-down of the United States government, yet I can not understand what the fuss is about. I used to live in California; I can not remember a year in which that government was not shut down.
3 Oct Normally, I include articles only from the Telegraph and Times of India in this monthly post and which I can not place elsewhere in this blog. I saw an article in the 8 October Times of India but could locate it neither at its website nor through Google. I did find this similar article, however.
Regardless, I can not comprehend either article. If certain words do not exist then how can they be loved or hated? How can wazzock be loved and amazeballs be hated, and why not the other way around? Just now, I did a cursory search and it seems that the latter word does exist. (It sees to be slang, although I did not pay attention to the definition.) The survey was done in the U.K. It seems that the British are indeed a very peculiar species, and it is good that they are confined to an island.
How can accepted words describing reality be loved or hated? Raindrop simply describes a particle of water that falls from thew sky, and moist simply describes a condition of an object being damp. Why would there be any emotional attachment to this?
If a word can be, and is, loved then why is it not used frequently? In this blog, I have written over four lakh/400,000 words and I have never written the words hippopotamus or sprocket. I suspect that it will be another 400,000 words before they are included again. I have read many newspaper articles and blog posts, and almost never saw those words. Again, the British seem to be a very peculiar species.
4 Oct I have read many articles about the partial shut-down of the United States government, yet I can not understand what the fuss is about. I used to live in California; I can not remember a year in which that government was not shut down.
Moreover, don't people want to live in a society where there are no Thieves and Sexual Abusers at airports? Where women, children and other innocent civilians are not gunned down by government agents in lands that we will never visit? Where people can have many options of health care rather than having socialized medical insurance? Where unarmed Black women are not gunned down in broad daylight? Where people are not killed or injured by perpetrators of road-rage, vehicular manslaughter or while driving under the influence of various chemicals because no alternative is available to the unproductive government agency that nominally prevents these things from happening? Where people can communicate on the phone or via the computer and not have their conversations listened to by the Nazi Scum of America?
6 Oct I do not know if it is objectively the world's biggest street festival, but I do know that Durga Puja is always very troublesome for non-celebrants.
6 Oct I alluded to this being a problem in India in my Body Ritual Aong the Naidnipost.
9 Oct I suspect that Walmart has done this in the belief that Narendra Modi will be the next Prime Minister and that this will be more conducive to WalMart's growth in India. Regardless of whether this belief is true or not, I have always thought that an increased presence of WalMart here will help bring down prices--and inflation has been a continuing problem for these past five years.
9 Oct I saw a condensed version of this in the print edition of the Times of India but could not find the online version, so I a providing a similar article.
I am providing it because if terrorists can enunciate the truth in this respect then why can Americans not comprehend the truth?
11 Oct I have already mentioned some of the following in my Sport post, but it is worth reiterating and rephrasing. In the United States, the sports of American football, baseball and basketball each have more than thirty teams, and attract tens of millions of fans. In India, there is only cricket, and there have never been more than ten professional teams. Given that it is virtually the only professional sport, it ought to have at least as many teams as do the combination of American football, baseball and basketball, and given that India has four times the population, it ought to have four times as many teams. Instead, it has only eight; in other words, it is pathetically and microscopically small. Nevertheless, it is a great unifier, and for almost a quarter-of-a-century, people have adored the talents of Sachin Tendulkar, who announced his retirement.
Other articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
16 Oct When the print newspapers returned after the pujas, they contained some news that were a few days old. This article was about the cyclone Phailin; here is another one.
16 Oct For news, I prefer the Times of India; for the Sudoku and Jumble puzzles, I prefer the Telegraph. However, the latter newspaper does have a biweekly column by Stephen Hugh-Jones, which I enjoy, and every Wednesday it has a column about various legal topics.
I have place this article in a Google+ community, but thought that I should also place it here to show a free-market solution to a problem.
18 Oct I have always enjoyed reading and learning history, especially of things with which I am familiar. I think that I have already mentioned New Market several times in this blog. Here is another article.
20 Oct I have written that, late last year, we went to a restaurant that served emu meat which, we were told, came from Andhra Pradesh. However, we never had it. A few weeks later, I went to a restaurant that served ostrich meat, and it was delicious. The Kolkata restaurant closed at the beginning of the year and, it seems, emus are no longer available. (I do not know if the two are related.)
22 Oct Narendra Modi has said that the world is laughing at India because the government is heeding the dream(?) of a Hindu monk. I do not know if that is true; I do not know if this news item travelled far. Just now, I have found this article from San Francisco. In any case, recent reports seem to downplay the existence(?) of valuables. From the very beginning, I thought that it would be a repeat of Al Capone's vault..
22 Oct This may be a run-of-the-mill story (it was, in fact, on the back page of the local section of the newspaper) but it impacted us. Caroline and I were to have an appointment with the Inspector at the Ekbalpore Police Station. We arrived in time, but a short time later he came out of his office saying that an emergency had come up. From bits and pieces of information that we gathered, it seemed that there was a bus or lorry that became overturned nearby. The next morning, I saw the linked article.
23 Oct For me (and especially since we have shifted to another neighbourhood), it is nice to see foreigners, and even nicer to learn of their experiences. I am providing this to show another viewpoint of the city.
The next day, this article appeared.
24 Oct I do not know much about the singer Manna Dey, but I do know that there were at least a dozen articles about him in today's English newspapers. This is one of them.
27 Oct When I was in the United States, I did not really appreciate films. I appreciated individual films, like Field of Dreams, but not so much the art form. Then, the early 90s arrived and Caroline got me interested in Hindi films. Now that I am here in India, I do appreciate the more, but perhaps even more than that, I enjoy articles about films. The linked article is about Hollywood films; this very similar article is about HiFI (Hindi Film Industry) films.
27 Oct We woke up to a flooded Saturday morning. A few of the articles indicated that our area (near Park Circus) and Caroline's old neighbourhood (Kidderpur) were among the worst hit. Other articles: 1, 2, 3)
27 Oct I have been here for five monsoon seasons and do not remember a wetter October. This article is verification of it.
27 Oct In India (and especially for this blog), I have been interested in not only minorities but also history. This article is an example of the latter.
27 Oct It may see that I have a fetish about the Jews in India, given all the articles that I provide in these monthly posts. However, I am not reporting any ore than what I see in the daily newspapers. If there were articles about the similarly small Parsi population then I would link those here as well.
I do want to add something that I do not think that I have reported before: I have read that the Jewish population in India used to be far larger but that virtually all of them shifted/moved to Israel when that place became a nation.
6 Oct I do not know if it is objectively the world's biggest street festival, but I do know that Durga Puja is always very troublesome for non-celebrants.
6 Oct I alluded to this being a problem in India in my Body Ritual Aong the Naidnipost.
9 Oct I suspect that Walmart has done this in the belief that Narendra Modi will be the next Prime Minister and that this will be more conducive to WalMart's growth in India. Regardless of whether this belief is true or not, I have always thought that an increased presence of WalMart here will help bring down prices--and inflation has been a continuing problem for these past five years.
9 Oct I saw a condensed version of this in the print edition of the Times of India but could not find the online version, so I a providing a similar article.
I am providing it because if terrorists can enunciate the truth in this respect then why can Americans not comprehend the truth?
11 Oct I have already mentioned some of the following in my Sport post, but it is worth reiterating and rephrasing. In the United States, the sports of American football, baseball and basketball each have more than thirty teams, and attract tens of millions of fans. In India, there is only cricket, and there have never been more than ten professional teams. Given that it is virtually the only professional sport, it ought to have at least as many teams as do the combination of American football, baseball and basketball, and given that India has four times the population, it ought to have four times as many teams. Instead, it has only eight; in other words, it is pathetically and microscopically small. Nevertheless, it is a great unifier, and for almost a quarter-of-a-century, people have adored the talents of Sachin Tendulkar, who announced his retirement.
Other articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
16 Oct When the print newspapers returned after the pujas, they contained some news that were a few days old. This article was about the cyclone Phailin; here is another one.
16 Oct For news, I prefer the Times of India; for the Sudoku and Jumble puzzles, I prefer the Telegraph. However, the latter newspaper does have a biweekly column by Stephen Hugh-Jones, which I enjoy, and every Wednesday it has a column about various legal topics.
I have place this article in a Google+ community, but thought that I should also place it here to show a free-market solution to a problem.
18 Oct I have always enjoyed reading and learning history, especially of things with which I am familiar. I think that I have already mentioned New Market several times in this blog. Here is another article.
20 Oct I have written that, late last year, we went to a restaurant that served emu meat which, we were told, came from Andhra Pradesh. However, we never had it. A few weeks later, I went to a restaurant that served ostrich meat, and it was delicious. The Kolkata restaurant closed at the beginning of the year and, it seems, emus are no longer available. (I do not know if the two are related.)
22 Oct Narendra Modi has said that the world is laughing at India because the government is heeding the dream(?) of a Hindu monk. I do not know if that is true; I do not know if this news item travelled far. Just now, I have found this article from San Francisco. In any case, recent reports seem to downplay the existence(?) of valuables. From the very beginning, I thought that it would be a repeat of Al Capone's vault..
22 Oct This may be a run-of-the-mill story (it was, in fact, on the back page of the local section of the newspaper) but it impacted us. Caroline and I were to have an appointment with the Inspector at the Ekbalpore Police Station. We arrived in time, but a short time later he came out of his office saying that an emergency had come up. From bits and pieces of information that we gathered, it seemed that there was a bus or lorry that became overturned nearby. The next morning, I saw the linked article.
23 Oct For me (and especially since we have shifted to another neighbourhood), it is nice to see foreigners, and even nicer to learn of their experiences. I am providing this to show another viewpoint of the city.
The next day, this article appeared.
24 Oct I do not know much about the singer Manna Dey, but I do know that there were at least a dozen articles about him in today's English newspapers. This is one of them.
27 Oct When I was in the United States, I did not really appreciate films. I appreciated individual films, like Field of Dreams, but not so much the art form. Then, the early 90s arrived and Caroline got me interested in Hindi films. Now that I am here in India, I do appreciate the more, but perhaps even more than that, I enjoy articles about films. The linked article is about Hollywood films; this very similar article is about HiFI (Hindi Film Industry) films.
27 Oct We woke up to a flooded Saturday morning. A few of the articles indicated that our area (near Park Circus) and Caroline's old neighbourhood (Kidderpur) were among the worst hit. Other articles: 1, 2, 3)
27 Oct I have been here for five monsoon seasons and do not remember a wetter October. This article is verification of it.
27 Oct In India (and especially for this blog), I have been interested in not only minorities but also history. This article is an example of the latter.
27 Oct It may see that I have a fetish about the Jews in India, given all the articles that I provide in these monthly posts. However, I am not reporting any ore than what I see in the daily newspapers. If there were articles about the similarly small Parsi population then I would link those here as well.
I do want to add something that I do not think that I have reported before: I have read that the Jewish population in India used to be far larger but that virtually all of them shifted/moved to Israel when that place became a nation.