Anything About Everything

10 January 2023

New soundtrack

Filed under: Music — rajiv @ 12:14 pm

If life has a soundtrack, mine took a different direction today.

Meja – All ‘Bout The Money

And Paula Cole – I Don’t Want to Wait

28 November 2020

American states

Filed under: Geography,Language,World — rajiv @ 3:39 pm

12 of the 50 states that make up the United States of America have names beginning with a vowel – see here. I don’t believe that there is a higher proportion of countries in the world, or countries in a continent, or states/regions in a country, or towns/cities in a country, that have names beginning with vowels. On the other hand, all continents have names beginning with vowels (if you ignore the North and South of the Americas, or the submerged continent of Zealandia. Does anyone else find that striking?

22 September 2018

Tanggam

Filed under: History,Language,People,Society — rajiv @ 4:34 am

From here:

“Interestingly, two minor roads, Lorong Tanggam and Lorong Samak, located on the opposite side of the main road of Jalan Kayu were given Tamil names, where Tanggam (Thanggam) means gold in Tamil.”

Tanggam means mortise in Indonesian, part of a woodwork joint – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortise_and_tenon.

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14 July 2018

Divided We Fall

The use of the term “colonised” in the following video (at 2:42 to 2:55) struck me as very odd:

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14 September 2014

British, Great Britain

Filed under: History,People,Politics,Society — rajiv @ 3:19 am

In answer to the question “Is it ever correct to call someone “Great British”?”

From Wikipedia:

“Brittany (French: Bretagne [bʁə.taɲ] ( listen); Breton: Breizh, pronounced [brɛjs] or [brɛχ];[1] Gallo: Bertaèyn, pronounced [bəʁ.taɛɲ]) is a cultural region in the north-west of France. Covering the western part of Armorica, as it was known during the period of Roman occupation, Brittany subsequently became an independent kingdom and then a duchy before being united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain (as opposed to Great Britain). It is bordered by the English Channel to the north, the Celtic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Bay of Biscay to the south. Its land area is 34,023 km² (13,136 sq mi).”

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13 June 2014

Chicken Jokes

Filed under: Humour,Personal — rajiv @ 1:49 pm

My 4 and a half year old  daughter, Yasha, found this joke very funny:

Why did the chicken sit on its eggs?

Because it didn’t have a chair.

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8 March 2014

WhatsApp!

Filed under: Business — rajiv @ 9:34 am

I have a large group (more than 300 players) that plays football. I messaged them on WhatsApp to see if we had enough for a game tomorrow night. WhatsApp deactivated my account and when I tried to re-activate the account, I was informed that the number is no longer allowed to be used with the service. I messaged the group to inform them of my new number and WhatsApp deactivated that as well, and won’t let me use that number any more either!

16 December 2010

Extradition

Filed under: Law & Jurisprudence,Politics — rajiv @ 2:21 pm

On MSNBC: (more…)

9 December 2010

Irony

Filed under: Business,Media,Society — rajiv @ 10:27 am

A Facebook ad on the Facebook Disabled website.

2 September 2010

Money Laundering

Filed under: Corruption,Crime,Finance,Markets,Society,Sport — rajiv @ 2:47 pm

News of the World smashes multi-million pound cricket match-fixing scandal:

“In a meeting with our investigators puppet-master Majeed:

  • BRAGGED that the scam is rife and future games against England this summer are already earmarked for cheating.
  • CONFESSED his match-fixing round the world had netted customers MILLIONS.
  • REVEALED how he oversees cheating by using no-balls, specifying how many runs will be scored or conceded in certain overs, with signals such as changing gloves to confirm the fix is on.
  • ADMITTED he abuses his position as owner of non-league Croydon Athletic FC to launder his illicit gains.”

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