International.

Its 2.30  AM and I`m just back from the 4^th of July Celebrations at the Charles River in Cambridge, yes the fake one in Massacheutus, America and not the real deal in that little island off Europe. (Just to let you know, I think that Massacheutus is the stupidest, most difficult to pronounce name in the world and the New Englanders purposely chose a name that lesser Americans couldn’t pronounce.) (Not to mention the abusive connotations the third syllable has for Indians)
Today was about a hell lot of different perspectives, and they were what you call international. I think that’s a word that has been over used till its nearly meaningless, but today sort of underscored the meaning.
My Italian neighbour who has incidentally studied anti terrorism in Israel and is doing a thesis on Terrorist Recruitment gave me his perspective on Islamic Fundamentalism. It was as revealing as it was scary. I was blown away (Pardon the explosive pun on terror).  I thought we were sort of bigoted in India. This, my dear, was a whole new level of the said bias.

The other perspective was from this delightful American chap whom I only wish I had read more of earlier. His essay describing how the German language is. The delightful title – The Awful German Language perhaps hints at his feelings about it.

I must beg indulgence for reproducing a particularly interesting nugget :

There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech — not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary — six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam — that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each inclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it — after which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb — merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out — the writer shovels in “haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein,” or words to that effect, and the monument is finished.

The slightly troubled looking Frau who took great pains at Max Mueler Goethe Institue to drill into us the conjunctive and various other such terms may not be happy reading this. However, you will be pleased to know that this publication has not attained the notoriety required to for it to be read by German Teachers, let alone troubled ones.
“Let my ovaries fry” , is the slightly flippant statement that kind of was the lynchpin of the days harvest of people-thought. Said in a sort of final way by this girl I know who has had one child too many, one year too quick for her liking. She spoke about her ovaries accusingly. Like they stole slimily behind her and bludgeoned her with a bat. She was slightly baffled at the presence of two babies in her surroundings. It was bloody hilarious. Even more so, because she was mighty serious. One level up on the bra burning feminism, what?

A Chinese girl speaking in that slightly abrupt but beautifully musical Chinese way, told me that she dislikes Chinese American girls since they are complex people who pretend to be American and are not and do not even have the decency to pretend to be Chinese.
An interesting background to this was the fact that she began the conversation with what she said was her American Boyfriend`s advice to her “ To be involve in American society, you have to sapeak loudly and tly to be hot.” (sic)
However, she was very nice and little girl like. She even had a bag that looked like a dead animal. All in all, a very amiable and likeable person irrespective of what you think I mean by the above.
Amen to that.