WotD: derelict

1. verlassen und verfallen
2. verlaten en vervallen
3. abandonado y en ruinas
4. abandonat i en ruïnes
5. délabré
6. anghyfannedd
7. tréigthe
8. 유기된 (遺棄된)
9. 棄置的 qìzhìde

Reading is half the battle

I'm having a little trouble staying motivated at work. My latest attempt at a solution is "10 before 10": Every day, I'll try to complete ten tasks before 10 a.m. So far, I haven't managed it once, but at least it's helped me refocus. I can already see some of the piles shrinking! Today, I grabbed a sheaf of printouts and went up to a special section of the stacks to track down materials that my students looked for earlier and failed to find. I expected to be alone up there, but there's a crew replacing the doors at one end of the room. When I arrived, they were working out what to write on the signs to let patrons know that they couldn't use the covered walkway on the other side that connects our two buildings.

They wrestled with wording a bit, and I tossed in my two cents. One of them read back his suggestion to me and asked, "You tink everybody'll unnerstan dat?" "There's nothin' you c'n write that everbody'll understan," I told him. Suddenly, his buddy (a glorious goon that I'm sorry to bullneck I couldn't capture on film) piped up with, "Ain't that the truth! We have a hallway closed off on the other side where we're doin' some work. There are signs on the doors saying, 'Hallway closed, hard hat area'. The other day, this guys walks in and I tell 'im, 'You know, you really shouldn't be here; this is a hard hat area.' And he tells me, 'I know, I read the signs.'"

Next time I get busted by an authority figure, I'm totally going to try that. "Sir, you do realise that you were driving the wrong way. This is a one-way street." "I know, I read the signs."

आज का मुख्य समाचार

मीडिया के लिए नए दिशा-निर्देश जारी
meeDiya ke lie nae dishaa-nirdesh jaaree
"New directives in force for the media"

Notes:

1. दिशा-निर्देश is an interesting compound. Both elements are Sanskritic borrowings from the same root, दिश diśa meaning "point, direction". So the meaning is something like "pointing out the direction".
2. जारी is another Arabic participle in Hindi guise, in this case the active participle of جري "to run". So it's the etymological equivalent of "current" and has the meaning of "in force" when applied to laws and regulations.

"Un, deux, trois, merde!"

Another thing I overheard the bullneck at work today say was, "My mind is like sponge right now. Everything that goes in is coming right back out." Mine's a sponge that's always damp; there's plenty of useful stuff in there if only you could figure out how to wring it out.

I was walking to work this morning when I realised I couldn't count to ten in Turkish. Mind you, this is something I used to do on at least a weekly basis to keep in practice. But somehow I fell out of the habit and didn't think about it until now. And there I was saying to myself, "Bir...üç, dört, uhm...iki! Bir, iki, üç, dört...bes? Beş? Beş. Bir, iki, üç, dört, beş..." and for the life of me I couldn't remember "six". Eight and nine eventually came to me, but "six" was AWOL. I finally gave up as I came within sight of the shuttle stop.

The most frustrating thing about such mental blocks is that there's no way to reason your way around them. The wordforms are completely arbitrary; either you know them of you don't. In such case, I often start going through the letters of the alphabet in order, hoping one will trigger a memory. That's what I started doing out of desperation as the walk back home reminded of my earlier failure; nothing. Finally, a dim recollection made itself heard, an old mnemonic I relied on before I learned the sequence by rote: That there was some connexion between the word for "six" and the world for "gold". But how did you say "gold"? Er...altın! Hmm...oh yeah! Bir, iki, üç, dört, beş, altı, yedi, sekiz, dokuz, on.

At last! Now I can finally count to twenty again! That is, if I can remember "twenty". Yirmi...?

(no subject)

It's it just me, or are people overreacting a bit to tonight's weather report as a result of Tuesday's nightmare rush hour? People left early to avoid a snowstorm that I have yet to see a flake of. And just now, I got an automated call from work telling me to check the webpage early tomorrow to see whether we'll even be open for business. Now I'd be lying if I said the prospect of a snow day doesn't fill me with childlike glee, but I'm really not expecting it to happen.