Well, I couldn’t access the F5 page to see the question, but according to Dan my question came up next: What are your five favorite words (in any language), and why do you like them so much? Me, there are tons of words I’m crazy about in a few different languages. Well, I’m not going to do this very carefully, so my faux-dictionary style may be riddled with inconsistencies, but anyway, here you go: Machin-truc (ma�chin-truc): Fr. (coll./slang) n. (pron.) device of thing of unknown nature or designation; thingamabob. Eg. “Ce machin-truche, qu’est-ce que c’est?” (That thingamadoodle, what is it?) …
Month: July 2005
Back To This Business
I’m back in Korea. And look at the first news article I see on my return, translated and in my email box: Subway Farter Attacks Fleeing Man On the 20th, a 57-year-old Mr. Mun was charged without detention at the Kangdong Police Station in Seoul for assaulting a subway passenger who expressed displeasure at his farting in the subway. At approximately 7:30 p.m. on the 19th, Mr. Mun let out a loud fart in the vicinity of Cheonho Subway Station after embarking the Line 5 train. When a 24-year-old office worker named Seo, who was next to the farter, expressed …
Miniscule World
You know, the world is small. It’s insanely small. My back hurts, I’m tired from a day-long ride in planes (though it’s only a taste of what’s to come in a few days), and I am in Montreal. I’ve been in the city an hour and a half, and already run into someone I knew in grad school. And someone I thought was really cool and interesting, no less! We’re going for coffee in a couple of days, before she leaves town. Tomorrow’s the wedding of an old friend, and I’ll see another old friend. I am definitely seeing a …
The Rare Nice Moments
This week, Ritu asked: What are the five nicest things you have ever done for someone else? I’m the kind of person whose efforts at being nice always end up in micro-failures. I promise to send someone something, and then can’t find it; or pack it up and neglect to mail it for months on end; or find it, pack it, mail it, and it turns out I posed the wrong box, or the right box to the right place. I offer to carry an old lady’s groceries and then the bag tears and her eggs end up smashed all …
My Rudest of Awakenings
This week, Laura asked: Here’s a question you may interpret however you wish: name five most unpleasant awakenings you’ve experienced! These, unfortunately, have been many and varied. I think the five worst were these: Worst of all, was after a horrible, awful, dreadful weekend-long fever. I had nightmarish dreams of one of the girls who was perhaps expressing too much obnoxious interest in me, who gutted me and feasted on my innards. I dreamed of Italian condottieri attacking me in my home, subtitled in my mind in English. I dreamed of Marxist and Capitalist mice levitating and arguing in my …