floccinaucinihilipilification

An Act of Estimating Something as Worthless.

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Radical Change.

First off, a bit of hat-waving: thanks to Khanh's reporting of Yudi-dhar's not-so-successful game, I had decided to find out about ice hockey possibilities in Singapore. Turns out the head honcho for the local Sg league is some proffy dude at BizAd; interesting guy, think I met him once or twice for a research project (Or may be it's his brother). Anyway, guy offered to get us (convinced a couple of friends as well) in touch with an ex-ice-hockey coach who'd "teach" us the game for an hour a week. Basically, it's an excuse to use their facilities at a cheap price every Monday. The difficult part, of course, is that we will have to learn ice-skating before hand.

Speaking of hobbies, might pick up salsa as well every Saturday. Courtesy another NUS lecturer, this time a dude I actually worked under for a year on a research project. Another fantastic chap; Dr Aslaksen is the sort of a guy who can speak to you for hours and hours together on calendars and yet find time to marathon-run and dance the salsa. Will have to remember to mail him soon; might have another joint 'project'.

Incidentally, he and I have long agreed on the fact that we are closet historians who might come out any day. Which is why you wont find the following defence out of character.

You see, Almandrax still seems to insist that drinking is anti-religious (or anti-brahmanical, to be precise) because

Sukracharya forbid all brahmins to drink any alcoholic drinks. Apparently, there are two versions; my version, with the brahmins and the raakshasulu ['demons' -MM ] being forbid to drink and the other more popular version with the raakshasulu alone being forbid to drink (thus resulting in them being called aSurulu (those who do not drink alcoholic drinks) and the dEvathalu becoming Surulu.

Well, I always thought it was more to do with prefixes; the 'su' prefix is auspicious, so 'surulu' are the good guys. The non-good guys will, therefore, be asuras. Or something to that effect. But that's a trivial point; RailCat has studied Sanskrit in school, and I haven't, so will have to take his word on that.

While mythistory explanations are interesting for historiographical reasons, they, however, still don't address the key point here; there is direct chronicled, archeological evidence of the fact that the ancients drank for religious reasons. The Vedas could very well have been written with a soma bottle in hand. The Vedic religion (as opposed to the 'Hindu' religion, if you want to put it that way) does not find drinking abbhorent.

Things have become slightly interesting with DesiDate; there's a bit of a complexity here that would, probably, require another phone call to resolve. Or probably more, I don't know.

Here's a poser then to end this post: would you date a person who is attached? If so, how would you approach the whole shebang? I have already made up my mind; just interested in knowing what the junta feels.

But wait, that's not EOF; this is. Subh raatri, Satsriaakaal, shabba khair and please do take good care of yourselves.

5 Comments:

  • At 9:37 am, Blogger Khanh said…

    How do you define attached? Siamese twin attached? Engaged attached? Arranged marriage through her family attached? In a long-distance relationship attached?

    At any rate, it seems that the one who will have to make the next move is the DesiDate. She will have to figure out how to extricate herself from the Siamese twin-engagement-arranged marriage-long distance relationship. It will frustrating for you bc things are really out of your control. You will have to wait and see. But it is unfair and unrealistic for you to be involved with someone who can't be with you 100%.

     
  • At 6:03 am, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I thot so too at first, about the 'Su' and aSu part.

    Actually the root for the word Surulu is Sura, the Soma you were talking about earlier. The dEvathas were called Surulu only after the mRutasanjeevani episode. Before said episode, used to be called by their mothers' names. Not sure what they were, but must be really common. Will look it up. Deal is, thanks to the aSurulu being non-drinking cow-killers, that label conveniently fits the Moslems: according to my Grandfather. He still calls them that. I hate those long fights we have about religious tolerance or the lack thereof on his part. Apparently I'm the only person in the family who cares about said stuff. The others couldn't care less what he says about that or anything else. Hmmm... need to post about my grandfather on MY blog!

    I will assume you wish to tell DEsiDate to go get shtuphed. But, whatever the deal is, Thou Shalt Not Covet ...!!!

    (Heh heh! KAUPHY - ROTFL)

     
  • At 8:02 am, Blogger The Cydonian said…

    How do I define attached? Well, she is 'attached' in that she now claims she has a boyfriend with whom she'd like to spend some time.

    The interesting bit is that she still apparently is wondering why I didn't call her (yet) for another date. I guess some messages need to be driven down strongly.

    aSurulu => Muslims? Heheh, I think your grandfather would be *very* interested in seeing the temples for Duryodhana (somewhere in Terai) and for Ravana (somewhere down south). (Yeah, I know Duryodhana isn't quite an aSura, but still).

     
  • At 2:03 pm, Blogger Khanh said…

    All this drama after only one date? Maybe this is the opportunity to cool things off with DesiDate.

    Yudi-dhar wants to add his two cents re: DesiDate and ice hockey. In regards to the girl, he says dump her. As for the game, he advises that you don't spend too much time learning how to skate but that you start playing with the puck.

     
  • At 7:23 am, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    About ravaNa:

    Brahmin king. Powerful because of his boons. Was evil in the dEvatha's point of view (but they did the attacking first - should have left him alone). But as far as treating his people, he was a just king. Extremely talented and gifted - and one of the greatest devotees of all time (of Siva - the curse made him hate vishNu). Only vice was he went after sita, because he thought he was insulted by the child (rama was after all about 14 years of age at the swayamvara - and, well... you have to say he defeated ravaNa there).

    Coming to duryodhana:

    Was a much better king than yudhishtra could ever have been. The oldest pandava coveted the throne too much - that is why fate made him suffer so much and he was able to rule for a very short while. Only vice again - duryodhana I mean- hated his cousins and let the sly Sakuni misguide him. (Sakuni is a whole story all by himself)

    I love talking about the epics...What was the point? And how was it related to the previous post? No friggin idea. Would my grandfather be interested in the temples? I think he knows about them and would love to go there if someone takes him there.

    Personally, I think the temples are now essentially museums and doubt if a significant part of the population would even think about paying their respects in them. (Apparently - not!)

     

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