A Manual of Life: Things You Didn't Realise Till You Did #94

Yellow lightbulb.
Light yellow walls.
Switch light on.
Stare at the part of wall closest to the bulb (and where the light is brightest).
Yellow fades to green.
Mind blown.

A Manual of Life: Why Not To Have Children

Reason #319

You realise that, unlike your (sensible) father, you would actively support and facilitate their watched-too-many-kungfu-films* plans to become Shaolin monks.


* If you haven't already planted such ideas in their tiny brains  *wicked chuckle*.

A Manual of Life - Alternative Definitions

Winter
n., An excuse to lower your ironing, and bathing soap, bills by hiding behind well-worn warm outerwear.

Also see:
Resources conservation; tea-addiction; "One can never have enough socks"

A Manual of Life - Alternative Definitions

Humility
n., Always remembering that while your life may be a wonderful and amazing tapestry, you are merely a plot-point in countless other stories.

Manual of Life - Ways to Keep Yourself Entertained #25

1. Land up in India.

2. Put on your most innocent, cheddar-wouldn't-melt-in-your-mouth face.

3. Head out into the public and find a suitably overcrowded location. Bonus points if it is an sweaty-armpits-and-chameli-oiled-heads environment.

4. Gradually ease your way politely into the centre.

5. Summon up your best AmrishPuri-in-Nagina voice to proclaim "Alakh Niranjan".

6. Wait till crowd realises it was you, and yell it out again to see them start once more.

7. Smile serenely (with a hint of latent pyschopath) into the growing space around you, while ignoring loud clamour.

Manual of Life - Things You Didn't Realise Till You Did #47

Almost nobody says 'semi-liquid(s)'.


We're all state-ists. Shame. So much shame.

Manual of Life - Alternate Definitions

Adulthood
n., That moment when you find yourself staring at a parent/elderly relative and realise you haven't really been seeing them as they are, but as they were a decade ago.  

And that you have been doing so for a long time now.  

And, in doing so, have failed to notice that a wholly different person, with wholly different needs, has supplanted the person of your memories - despite your being convinced that you had been carefully monitoring their growing frailties.

And which ends up with you in front of the mirror, trying to recognise yourself as you are today.

Manual of Life - Alternative Definitions

Summer
n.,
When people in a northern country can walk around the house with no socks on, without having to keep the heating on.


See related:
Myth
False dawn
Longing

Manual of Life - Alternative Definitions

Made for each other

A couple that simultaneously bursts into tears at the end of this montage.
Every single time.


See related:
Sappiness
Muggins (sl.)

Manual of Life - Things You Didn't Realise Till You Did #74

The first line still holds true.

So, another leisurely meal, another arbitrary thought. Try this one on for size -

There is no original Western European or American first-name that begins with 'Z'. All of them are predominantly Middle Eastern in origin, with some East Asian ones thrown in for flavour.

Go on, think about it.

Most of the first-names that you can think of come from the belt of land that stretches from Greece to Afghanistan (on a longitudinal basis), and from the languages that originated therein (Arabic, Hebrew or Cyrillic). There are a few Chinese names that I can think of off-hand too, and I can't quite speak about names in the South Asian countries, but the chunk seems to be Middle-Eastern/Central Asian in origin.

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On the other hand, there are tons of first names in Western Europe and America that begin with the letter 'C', but none in that West Asia/Middle Asia belt (excluding the East).

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All those history lessons about the many invasions of India from the armies of Central Asia suddenly make so much sense. Even a quintessentially Gujurati name like Zaveri has its roots in those incursions.


Update: We have the odd-one-out (thanks be to the wise Fëanor) - Basque. In my defence, the language is denoted as an 'isolate', so it really doesn't bear much in common to its neighbours. Still, a valid exception.

Manual of Life - Things You Didn't Realise Till You Did # 39

Cricket is the only non-table-related professional sport* in which the players wear (full-length) pants/trousers.

It goes against the very grain of why all other sports wear shorts - mainly, that one's movement is less restricted, one's skin can breath properly, and in many cases, it is more aerodynamic.

So why is it so? It surely can't be about sunburn, because there are solutions for that. It can't possibly be about the worry that scrapes endured while fielding might get infected, because have you seen how they play rugby?

And even if you argue that a batsman is better off wearing trousers so that the pads don't chafe and get a better grip, why in heck must the fielding side endure hot days wearing these horribly restrictive leggings?

Unless, it's merely about the 'gentleman's game' aspect of cricket. But hey, even tennis was like that, and see how it's evolved.

So. What gives?


Update:
The exception to this rule seems to be American sports. Baseball. American football. Also, other 'gentleperson' sports. Golf. And equestrian events (as Feanor pointed out).

NightWatchmen from the comments gives perhaps the best defence - while shorts may help in summer and warm countries, you wouldn't want to be standing around in the outfield at Manchester during the English 'summer' wearing shorts.




* Which excludes billiards and snooker. And chess. And no, leotards do not count. And we're discounting sports where pant-type garments are worn purely for protection, such as motorsports or ice-hockey.

Manual of Life - Alternative Definitions

Guilty Pleasure

Walking into a store full of delicate and glinting things, wondering over their frailness for a while, before yelling 'I can't take it anymore!' and sweeping a whole shelf full of the oh-soooo-breakable things onto the floor with an exaggerated flourish, and then rampaging some more across the store, all the while savouring the horrified looks on the people around you

....and then disarming the outraged employees/store owner by producing the exact amount of money they cost, which you had been saving up for months just for such an occasion.


See also:
Candid camera pranks
Mood-uplifter

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If you are going to do this, please don't pick a small, independent store which has taken great care to craft the things. That's just mean. Pick a nice public store-chain, at peak hour, and select their most ugly products.

Manual of Life - Ways to Keep Yourself Entertained #21

1. Take 10 steel pins. Or 20, if you are particularly bored.

2. Squeeze the top third of the index finger of one hand between the thumb and middle finger (of the same hand), so that the fleshy underside bulges out.

3. Carefully insert one pin through the outermost part of that bulge so that it just pierces the skin, but not the flesh.

4. Slide the pin through, so that equal parts of it are visible on either side of the flap of skin (which is holding the pin in place), so that it looks as if you've stuck the pin through your finger.

5. Repeat for all the other fingers, and thumbs.

6. Go waving it about and freak everybody out/become a demi-god in the eyes of children.

7. The toes come next, if you're very bored.

Manual of Life - Things You Didn't Realise Till You Did #99

I have yet to see a mainstream Hindi film where a character who's supposed to be talking in a non-Indian non-English language, is actually speaking in that language.

In no Bollywood flick has any character who's supposed to be African, or European, or Middle Eastern, or any other Asian talking in anything but nonsense lingo. Not even in those NRI flicks - where the film may feature a scene where some local in Switzerland will be talking in French, but the desi character will still be talking nonsense words. This would be just about acceptable if the character was simply pretending to be (as part of the script) a person of such a nationality, but even when the character is supposed to be a resident of said country, they still speak nonsense lingo.

Not. a. single. Bollywood. film.

And then we have the gall to get upset when Hollywood films show Indians talking in exaggerated Peter-Sellers-in-The-Party accents. At least they have us talking in Hindi, or Punjabi, or Tamil, or whatever.


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This only occurred to me while having to endure some ridiculous OTT flick that these long-distance buses insist on playing even if it's night-time and people want to sleep, where Sanjay Dutt plays some guy who's supposed to have been living in Africa for 20 years, and whose idea of the language of whatever country he was supposed to be from went something like 'Karaka baraka! Maraka baraka'.

No, I'm not kidding.

Also, this is possibly the last of the India posts for a bit.

Manual of Life - Things You Didn't Consider Till You Did #32

When you pee during really cold weather (near-freezing or below), why does it steam on impact?

Sure, there's a difference of 35C difference or more between the fluid from within your body and the surface it falls on, but water (which makes up 96% of urine) evaporates at 100c. So why can you still see vapours?


Bonus question: Is water the only thing being evaporated?


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I had a couple more India posts, and I'd hoped to wrap them up in January, so we could return to regular programming this month. But I obviously don't draft them when I should, and then tinker too much with them when I should post, so here we are.

Manual of Life - Alternative Definitions

Irony
n., Insisting that the water served to you in an Indian restaurant be bottled ("because you really can't trust this outside stuff - who knows where they filled it from"), but asking for loads and loads of ice in the fizzy drink of your choice.


See also:
Hepatitis A
Restaurant hygiene

Manual of Life - Things You Didn't Realise Till You Do #89

Nine out of every 10 mannequins in Indian shops are 'flesh-coloured' - Band-aid pink/peach/cream - and are either size zero (for women) for size studbuff (for men). The remainder are those unnerving silver/ebony robot-type ones.

Allowing for the proportion of fair-skinned Indians who even closely resemble that colour to be about a tenth of the entire population, and allowing for the proportion who are either super-skinny (by choice) or muscled up to be another tenth .......

this means that 80% of all the clothes displayed in Indian shops completely fail in their sole function - giving the buyer an idea of how they would look wearing them.



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A weekend post? Shocking no? Just to make up for all the non-posts.

Manual of Life - Alternative Definitions

Helplessness
n., Trying and utterly failing to soothe an old, blind, almost-deaf dog who spends the last few hours of his life yipping away because of you-dont-know-what (before he finally decides to chuck it all - softly, unnoticed - and head for that roomful of unguarded slippers* he dreams about).


See also:
Ruined weekend

Manual of Life - Things You Didn't Realise Till You Did #67

You don't get to see billiards* on TV much anymore. If at all.

When some kid looks blankly at you while you're talking about how fast-paced life has become, point that out. And if they start talking about pool and snooker, smack them with the cue-stick.


* Three-ball or English billiards.

Manual of Life - Things You Didn't Realise Were Weird Till You Did #43

That the reason you've developed a very slight head tilt to the right, caused by all the endless hours browsing (English-language) books in a store, is simply because the spines are printed left-to-right (when placed horizontally) so that you can read it normally when it's placed front-cover upwards.

Obvious, yes?

Except.

If you are already seeing the front cover, with the title and the photo and all the other little details - why would you be reading the spine?

So. Why don't more publishers just print the spine in a vertical top-to-bottom, so that when they're stacked as per normal, my neck doesn't need to get such a horrible crick every single time?

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For those of you interested in such esoteric information - and that's pretty much all of you - here's some book-spine naming and printing conventions.