Auf Wiedersehen! July 28, 2008
Posted by afrojade in Eurotrip, Random thoughts.Tags: strange-things-happen-to-strange-people
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So, I am finally back in India! Mumbai! IITB! This, along with laziness, explains the large delay in me updating my blog.
I’ve spent the last couple of days re-adjusting to life back home. No driving on the right hand side of the road, no converting prices into euros and exclaiming how cheap stuff is (I will be broke soon if I continue to do that!) and no smiling in a friendly manner whenever a girl walks by (I shall suffer physical damage soon if I continue to do that!).
A couple of things I noted during this intern. They are in no particular order, and I may add stuff later as I remember more.
- The German word ‘kraft’ means force, energy and power. Go tell a physicist that!
- Spaniards, especially those on an Erasmus exchange program in south-west Germany, are always late for appointments.
- Introvert Peruvians who don’t talk at all, often turn out to be awesome dancers.
- Germans organise the best parties in the world.
- ‘Johnson’ is Valencian slang for a doper.
- Germans never share their food with others. At restaurants and even at lunch in the mess, it’s every person for him or herself. This attitude felt very alien to me, being an Indian, and especially being an IITian.
- When you’re travelling at 300 kmph in a thunderstorm, in a train, you can’t help but marvel at German engineering.
- The informal German word for ‘Goodbye” … Tschüss is very funny.
- Only the Spanish can take a dead pig, slap some salt on it and dump it in a cave for three years. And then consider it to be a delicacy. (Actually jamón isn’t bad, it’s pretty good …)
The ’stats’ feature thingy July 18, 2008
Posted by afrojade in Random thoughts.Tags: about-my-blog, stats
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My blog is one month old. Since I am now acquainted with this phrase, I can use it — “Happy birth month!” 
Anyways, I love graphs. They can tell you so much, or absolutely nothing. There’s a really cool ‘Stats’ section in WordPress. The main graph there tells you the number of visits to the blog. This is my ’stats’ graph for the past one month (the first month of this blog’s existence):
A couple of observations
- There are SO MANY lukkhe interns out there!
- The days when I posted stuff are clearly visible as peaks.
- WordPress tells you a lot of other things as well … like the what people were searching for when they came to the blog via a search engine like Google.
By the way, WordPress is smart enough to not count your visits to your own blog.
Little Red Riding Hood, a Cannibal July 14, 2008
Posted by afrojade in Random thoughts, wtf.Tags: comics, fairy-tales, red-is-a-cannibal, sandman
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The story of Little Red Riding Hood. Such a nice, clean story. A bit scary, because of that big bad wolf, but then again, no one gets hurts, except for the nasty wolf. And it has a happy ending as well. A great story for kids.
Or so I thought.
I first read about it in Sandman, and I couldn’t believe it. I did a bit of research on the net, and found out that it was true. Little Red Riding Hood, as is the case with so many other happy fairy tales, has a dark and sinister past. Originally it was far more violent and it had a morbid ending. The wolf ate Grandma, and tricked Red into eating her flesh and drinking her blood. It forced her to strip and sleep with her naked. And then it ate her.
And then there is the question of interpreting the story. Today’s version can be thought of as a warning to kids. “Don’t trust strangers.” The original version is far more interesting. Is the ‘wolf’ a reference to cunning, scheming men who seduce and trap young women? According to Charles Perrault, the Frenchman who was instrumental in giving the story it’s current form
There are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.
In various versions of the story the wolf is replaced by an ogre, or more excitingly, a werewolf.
The “Red” in Red Riding Hood is said allude to prostitution, the hymen, or the blood of the menstrual cycle — depending on which source you believe. Freud, for example, would jump on the “attractive young girl going deep in the dark forest” part of the story and draw some very obvious conclusions from that.
There is a lot more to fairy tales than what meets the eye. I find this quite interesting, and would love to explore more.
A couple of interesting links, about Red Riding Hood.
- This page lists a several different versions of the story — http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333.html
- A “politically correct” version of the tale — http://philip.greenspun.com/zoo/red-riding-hood
- This seems to be a course on Fairy Tales — http://www.northern.edu/hastingw/fairytale.htm
And ofcourse, the Sandman pages that sparked this post. Enjoy.
I do not believe this. July 8, 2008
Posted by afrojade in wtf.Tags: role-reversal, wtf
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I am speechless.
No, I am not gay. Nor am I a woman masquerading about as a guy.
Food July 2, 2008
Posted by afrojade in Eurotrip.Tags: all-the-olives-are-on-one-side-of-the-plate, cooking, orange-juice
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Have tried my hand out at cooking recently. Have had to in fact. I had assumed before coming here that I could survive by eating in the mess for lunch and eating out for dinner everyday. But the prices in the restaurants here soon put an end to that fantasy. Necessity being the mother of invention, I am now proud to say that I can cook to save my life.
My first pasta.
My second pasta. (Which was brilliant by the way … pesto mit basilikum is awesome.)
Yet, laziness dictates that I usually end up eating frozen dinners . (And yes, you can probably make out that I like Orange Juice 
)
A Correction July 2, 2008
Posted by afrojade in Eurotrip, Random thoughts.Tags: whos-afraid-of-heights
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I stand corrected. Stuttgart is not the best city in the world. This is not to say that it isn’t brilliant. I would still love to stay there. It feels right, which is important in a place where one stays. It’s just that a lot of the things that I find really cool — are turning out to be quite commonplace here. Neat gardens and interesting city centres and beautiful landscapes seem to be everywhere in Germany! Which hurts a bit … there are so many small things in which Mumbai could be so much nicer. I hate to sound like a typical NRI — always cribbing about India, and how bad it is, and how the West is much better and all that. My only defence is that I sincerely do like Mumbai!
PS: This post has been been lying unpublished ever since I went to Munich and Vienna. However it was inspired by Munich, and definitely not by Vienna. Vienna is a dead city on a Sunday morning. I don’t care if Catherine considers me odd to have expected life in a European capital on a Sunday morning. I guess I am just spoilt by living in Mumbai and India .
A couple of pics to end the post …
Marienplatz — A typical Bavarian parade. Yet, I don’t know if they were heading off to war or to the nearest pub. They were marching with both swords and beer mugs
The Englisher Garten — A pretty amazing African music troupe kept me entertained.
The Austrian Parliament — Yup, that’s a house on top of the Parliament building.
Vienna fanzone — The stewards sure know how to have fun!
