If there’s an important meeting at work tomorrow, be sure to have an emergency call from back home before the meeting begins.
If you get to fart while you cough, it’s almost certain that the cough is heard lesser than the fart!
If you’ve been longing for that siesta from God-knows-how-long, be ready to sacrifice all your winks you planned to catch when you hit the bed!
The reviews have always misled you, and you’ve missed the best movies. The next movie you watch rejecting a mean review, chances are that you’ll end up kicking yourself for not paying heed to the critic.
You take your buddy to the food joint you’ve been harping about for ever. Don’t curse your luck that the dishes taste awful this time.
The Hindu’s Metro Plus had not too long ago featured an article on the ‘grating words’ in the English language. I’m adding my two cents worth to that delightful write up. Let me rush to assure you that this is different in many ways. OK, in some ways. Mmmm… at least in the words that have lost their amusement value on me.
Like how DG had subjected me and my team to a particularly irritating word, in one of the organizations I worked with previously. He was my boss and a square old man (Now you make sense of the initials? And to add to my cautious tone, they don’t mean any other thing than of their most basic purpose) . Well, not really ‘old’ as in old enough to start counting his days to golden handshake. He wasn’t your average chirpy manager who gets things done through glib talk, but a self-anointed pall bearer of all the organization’s troubles. Famous for his reply-time-objectives (yes, it’s a pun on RTO in Disaster Recovery parlance), he had resigned himself to talk only two things — work and cricket (in that order).
He was always up for challenges or so it seemed. His dialogue would be replete with ‘challenges’ thrown in most liberally. DG would exhort his team to take up challenges in beating the monthly metrics, saying how we had it easy with all the support available from the seasoned monkeys – data monkeys we all were, if you will — who had to encounter a lot of challenges when they were learning the tricks. I will say it was a challenge to sit through a meeting with him and download his diktats thinly veiled by imploration. Getting the project was a challenge, taking it up was another. The time line was a challenge, so was its execution. Not to mention challenges in commute, in seating, in communication, in the food served in the cafeteria that would most likely affect our performance, challenges in dressing up and dressing down on occasions which could otherwise send wrong signals to our colleagues, challenges in staying up at office till the wee hours, challenges of leaving office on time, let alone leaving early, challenges in questioning us and challenges in taking our questions! Eventually, we were challenged in keeping up with his challenges, so to speak. To be precise, in keeping count of his utterances of the ‘c’ word.
The last time I heard about this corporate soldier, he had overcome many hurdles, er, challenges, and moved on to a more exciting, er, challenging opportunity.
A Reuters poll revealed that 'whatever' is the most irritating word in the English language
‘Dude! What are you trying to tell me? That I need to learn the art of talking from your exalted self? What’s your problem as long as he has managed to convey what he had in his mind?’ It isn’t that way, my friend. You see his repeated usage will end up distract… ‘Dude! Give me a break. I’ve seen many like you who claim to be the guardians of the
Qu
een’s English!”
As the globe revolves and you look at the different geographical boundaries turning by, you will but admit that a notable chunk of the non-English speaking world knows the language today. We’ll leave out France and its erstwhile colonies, Germany, Austria and the Scandinavian countries along with a couple of Western European nations. China and Russia too. And a handful of landlocked countries in Africa and a few other islands strewn across the globe. So, other than these ‘exceptions’, what’s the one word that the gen-X (or is it Y now?) has come together with? Of course you know it, dude!
Listen dude, I don’t have a problem with your using it left, right and center. But dude, don’t start your conversation with ‘dude’. John, if you’re reading this, remember when I used to ring you up. ‘Hey John’, ‘Ya dude, temme’! Hope you still remember my name, or have you stored my number on your cell as Dude #898?
Ram, I must have embarrassed you at times, especially when I would talk about your fetish for pink hairclips for fluorescent green tops, to your mocktail party friends. You were right in giving me a nasty stare with a nastier ‘Dooode’! But dude, you could’ve probably said something nicer instead of ‘dude’, when I found your lost keys!
It’s all English and it’s all communication, yes, when I net it all out. But dude, you can seriously challenge me with something easier on my feeble ear.
Wild Bore 