Wings · of · Words

I was talking with the new waiter/host from Nepal at the restaurant and I asked him if he wanted to stay here or go back to Nepal. He said he wanted to go back to Nepal, not live a "machinery life" here, where it is just work, work, and get money and everything costs money so you have to work and work. I think this is an intriguing and interesting assessment of our society. Any thought?

What you call things; regionalisms are fascinating!
From crumpetsfortea

I'm actually going to push it a bit and also state names I've heard things called in countries I've been to, and that I tend to mix into my vocabulary

Age: 22
Where you grew up (Ages 0-18): Evergreen, CO USA

1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks: creek or maybe stream

2. What the thing you push around the grocery store is called: Shopping cart In NZ, it's a trolley

3. A metal container to carry a meal in: Lunch box In nepal, a tiffin box

4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in: Frying pan

5. The piece of furniture that seats three people: Couch or my grandpa's word is davenport

6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof: Gutters

7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening: Porch

8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages: Pop. In MA, this is soda, not pop, soda.

9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup: Pancakes, if you're being western, flapjacks. In NZ they are also called pikelets!

10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself: sub

11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach: swim suit, swim trunks

12. Shoes worn for sports: Tennis shoes/ sneakers. In NZ, trainers

13. Putting a room in order: Tidy up, straighten up, neaten

14. A flying insect that glows in the dark: firefly, lightning bug

15. The little insect that curls up into a ball: Roly polies. If it is long and red with many legs and is friendly and rolls up like a cinnamon bun is a millipede

16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down: see-saw

17. How do you eat your pizza: Hands, from the pointy end. make a sort of valley shape if it's really wide.

18. What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff: Garage sale. My grandma called them rummage sales. Yard sale if it's outside, not in a garage.

19. What's the evening meal?: Dinner In NZ, this is tea. In Nepal, it doens't matter the time of day, when you eat your main vegetables, rice, and maybe lentils or meat meal, it's dal bhat

20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are: Basement

21. What do you call the thing from which you can drink water in public places: Drinking fountain. My grandma calls it a bubbler

I'm adding a few

22. A shop where you buy used clothing, books, toys, etc.- thrift store, in NZ Op shop for opportunity shop. In ireland, charity shop.
23. What you throw garbage into- the trash, trash can. At summer camp, with mixed culture staff, the bin.
24. The door from which one leaves a building- this word is usually on a sign above it- Exit. In NZ, the Way Out
25.The rear compartment of a car- the trunk, the boot
26. A word/phrase to emphasize spectacularness- awesome, hella good, wicked good. In NZ, sweet as.
27. Words for many/ a great quantity of- lots, tons, loads in NZ, heaps
28. Shortcut word for vegetables.- veggies. In NZ, vege, pr. like veg

Pass it on if you like, feel free to add some if you wish! This amuses me so much!

Built a cow nest.

-translation- prepped a room for Cookie's imminent calf-birthing. She's due on the 6th and she's HUGE
In doing this reaffirmed that one of my skills is spreading shavings with a broom. It's resume-worthy, I tell ya.

Watched Repo the Genetic Opera

-translation- drooled over costumes in a movie where goths/sluts stole organs and got high while singing.
Watched with ex-boyfriend who wants to commission a coat from the movie. I REALLY want to make it.

Got my innards scanned by a giant radioactive donut

-translation- got an abdominal cat scan. It's nifty to see a photo of your insides. Going in the machine made me feel like han solo. However, I did not emerge in carbonite. The only downside was having to drink a vanilla and aspartame barium "shake" It's essentially drinking white paint. I tried the berry flavor at first, but it was worse.

Had a conversation with someone whose life pattern is exceptionally foreign to me. I'd never talked to an ex-alcoholic ex-drug addict abused woman who has the child of her best friend and a different fiance both of which had been or were in jail. She totally loves her children. It's intriguing meeting someone who has lived in the same country as me, and whose life was so vastly foreign, who made such interesting decisions. I really don't want to open the bottle of classism and such, and am not looking for comments along those lines, because I haven't processed this experience yet.

This weekend should be busy and full of awesome.

So I have housing now. I wasn't even given a this one or this one, they just shoved me in a mod. At least it's a single, and it's in enfield. I don't know if it's good or shitty and I vaguely have heard of the people, but I'm upset that I didn't even get a veto, just was informed. We'll see how it goes.

I should be used to dysfunctionality by now, living in a city where water and power only come occaisionally and transport involves fitting 24 people in an nine person van. But goddamit, this is from a place with drinkable water and indoor heating!

Whimper whine.

On the bright side I'm in bangkok and saw a pet squirrel in a squirrel dress. I did not even know squirrel dresses existed.

So I have not posted in a long time, and I figured I probably should.
I am working at a barn that teaches riding to troubled youth. This has resulted in me falling in love with a Clydesdale named Alice. She is huge and gorgeous and I REALLY want to ride her. I'm learning horse behavior and falling more in love with them. I think it's easier to like an animal when you can listen and watch it and understand what it's saying sometimes. My favorite sound is whickering, which means they are pleased or excited about something. It's a pleasure sound.

My other job is an on call waitress at a Nepali restaurant, which is fabulous for hearing Nepali often. I can't understand sentences yet, but I can say some, and I can pick out words from sentences. Thapa, the host, has been giving me some words of vocab, a little at a time. The glass goes on the left- dubri, and the napkin goes on the right, dhanni. There's some funny interactions, when I am confused, but they are a really nice family and I don't think they're making fun of me too much. (Although I hear vidyarthi, foreigner, often. I don't know if they're talking about me or about the customers, but since I also hear Nepali, often, I think they're not using it to refer to themselves. I also get dinner, which is uniformly fabulous. The shrimp chili being cooked, and that's being cooked like 10 ft away from the door, makes my eyes water when I come in. I also can now make raita, lassi, and some alcoholic drinks.

My last note of interest is after having a fabulous sushi dinner with AJ and Jason, I drove home, and like 3 min from my house fell asleep and drove the car into a tree. It was an experience. I was totally unscathed. The car was not. In the end, I think we're getting more for it from insurance than we would have if we tried to sell ti working, but now our insurance will go up and I now have a driving record and we have to get another car. Sigh.

Wow. Today has been one of those days where I fell pretty happy about how it went and wonder why the hell I feel that way.
So, so far today I have
-crashed my ipod
-got an internship app submitted
-learned to braise (like really hot more permanent soldering)
-put the oxyacetalene torch in the jar of flux thinking it was what I was supposed to do (I blame galvanized steel fumes entirely- I got really silly too. Ah, brain cells. How I loved you....)
-I understand posting on a horse more or less, mas o menos, plus ou moins, soko soko.
-I was mean to the horse accidentally. Apparently horses are different. You must go back to the least amount of pressure/kicking/pulling every time, even if it didn't work the time before. I get so confused sometimes. I think the horse is smarter than I am. Whatever happens, it is always my fault, not the horse's. Maybe it's true but I think he has some fault too. Maybe I told him the wrong thing. I don't think I ever told him to jerk the reins out of my hands. Brain not understanding. I think I need to understand horse body language. It made a world of difference once I knew dog body language. Sigh...
-Today's weather was absolutely fabulous
-I got my Amtrak tickets- by the way does anyone know the way to the train station?
-Finished Full Metal ALchemist and realized I want this uniform more than ever. The movie didn't entirely make sense, though...
-Am amused with life and hoping Kelsey can work magic on my ipod...why does this scene from aniyoko with burning candles and pentagrams come to mind?

I think being a morning person makes you 10% more evil. Owen and I were going to go to aikido this morning. He said to bang on his door or something if he wasn't there. Wasn't there. So....as I didn't feel like finding out if his mod was in fact even open, I called his cell phone three times in a row. heh. I know he woke up because he turned it off, as I tried the fourth time, probably to go back to sleep.

I've already been up for two hours because of the farm. Heh. I'm kinda gleeful about waking people up in evil ways. You should see what I do to my brother....I believe singing was involved, then yanking the covers off and flashing the lights. I love being evil.

By accident, I found out that if you cook pancakes by covering the pan and cooking the top by steam, you get a sort of crumpet/cakey effect that when spread with nutella is dazzling. This experiment must be repeated. Also, this works when you have no oil and so the pancakes will stick to the pan anyway, but this cooks the top which was the situation I was in. So, I'm going to try it again soon.