Misspell it, meaningfully ...

San Jose Mercury News is conducting an entertaining competition. The rules are as follows:
- Choose an English word.
- Make another word from it by changing just one alphabet (alphabit :) ). In other words, a letter can be added, removed or changed from it, to get the new word.

Send the (now misspelled) words to perspective@mercurynews.com.

I sent the following entries ...

- buscher (noun, pronounced, bu-sh-er) -- (the alphabit 't' in butcher replaced by 's') -- A hawkish head of any powerful state who defies sane opinions and invades other states based on false intelligence information and faulty judgment. Irresponsible acts by such a person usually result in wide spread anger and devastation and claims several innocent lives. A typical usage could be: "The beginning and the end of the twentieth century saw some of the worst buschers of all time. We hope the twenty-first century has something better in store for humanity."

- milemma (noun, pronounced, mii-le-ma) -- (the alphabit 'd' in dilemma replaced by 'm') -- A state of mind (usually a disorder) that makes a person confused between various impressions of living world. When in this state of mind, the person often thinks that the physical things seen (by other normal human beings) are unreal and that there is a parallel universe existing somewhere. Such a person usually has hard time believing that a life is neither a movie nor a dream.

- wittok (noun, pronounced, y-2-k) -- (the alphabit 'l' in wittol replaced by 'k') -- An overly hyped phenomenon that is predicted to happen some time in future in anticipation of which, the world appears to prepare carefully and meticulously. The predictions usually hint at disruptions to normal human life. The topic gets such an attention that even common people in remote parts of the globe discuss it over lunch or dinner (as if some comet were to hit the mother Earth). When the predicted date/time passes, nothing happens. A typical usage could be: "In spite of technological advancements, the scientific community is predicting rather too many wittoks lately."

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The winners are at: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/editorial/13268025.htm

Our judges were Mercury News staff, two men and a woman. They judged the three submissions shown below to be the winners. ``Hubrids,'' a rare double play on words, and ``nagosecond'' tied for first place. "Kung flu" also was judged a winner.

"Hubrids," n. the excessive pride of Prius owners
-- Russ Atkinson, Los Altos

"Nagosecond," n. the amount of time between the shouted command to do something and the moment when you whould have accomplished the task on your own.
-- Allen Fleishman, San Jose

"Kung flu," n. an Asian variety that really knocks you out.
-- Jo Ann Lawlor, San Jose

translation ...

This is unicode text. Please view it as such:
On Windows platform: Any browser: (Windows 2000, XP), View->Character Encoding ->Unicode UTF-8.

Translating into संस्कृतम् some of the noble initiative names from upakriti.

• Light a lamp - dipa-jyotI - दीप-ज्योती
  
• Knowledge enrichment - dnyAna-vR^iddhI - ज्ञान-वृध्दी
  
• Protect the flame - jyotI-rakshA - ज्योती-रक्षा
• Bring a Smile - smita-vardhanaM - स्मित-वर्धन
  
• Festivities - Anandotsava - आनन्दोत्सव
  
• Health - nirAmaya - निरामय
  
• Arts - kalopAsanA - कलोपासना
  
• Sports - krIDArthI - क्रीडार्थी
  

Kyle Maynard - The great inspiration ...

I read it in the readers' digest and then at the official Kyle Maynard site. This man is amazing and makes me feel ashamed at times.

Hats off to him.

zabriski point after sunrise 

A travelogue of trip to San Francisco

Note: This blog is best viewed with firefox browser.

Pioneers:
As you all know, Anil was here in San Jose and we had a good time.
I decided to combine my blogging (mis)adventures with writing something about our trip to SFO.

I love San Francisco for its form, for its cultural programs, for its roads with ups and down, for muni, for that unique cosmopolite nature.

We used the yeoman services offered by CalTrain on the weekends and it was just fabulous. These trains are so nice and relaxing that I have now started hating driving to SFO on 101. The train not fast but it just relaxes the busy commuters. That is so vital.

I used the transit 511 planner to plan the trip After reaching SFO, we took the muni and it immediately landed us in some trouble because we just missed one of the buses to golden gate bridge and quickly we changed the plan to go to the beautiful pier 39 which has got a lot of naval history attached with it. Here is a picture of Anil



at fisherman's wharf en-route pier 39.

We roamed around the pier and visited the little but interesting shops around. Pier 39 is a very enjoyable place. People roaming around, a few solo-shows like riding unicycle, shops selling weird things, eateries and food stalls, a nice view of golden gate bridge and alcatraz, dirty (subjective ;) ) seals are some of its features. Here are a couple photographs:


You can see the ship in background of this photograph, with a different angle here.





Then we decided to go to golden gate bridge and were looking for some help to get there. As we were waiting for line 30, we met a lady who migrated to SFO 35 years ago and immediately became friends with her. She was very talkative and seemed to know the city and muni very well. She was telling us that she had a couple foster children, one in India and one in Guatemala. The city was like heaven for this lady who had a gray head and wore glasses to give her that kinda bossing appearance. The ease with which she was moving around stemmed from the familiarity with the city. She was all praise for it. She gave me the clear directions and still I managed to mess it up all and we got delayed unncessarily. But finally we were able to get on the muni line to golden gate bridge. This is that signature place of interest and inspiration in SFO. The golden gate area is simply gorgeous.



I have not written much about the peoples, the eateries, the streets and cultural culminations of this city. But then, this was just a glimpse!

Do visit SFO sometime!