For as long as I can remember, I have resisted being bundled up in
woollens during winter. When I was little, I could be bullied into
wearing warm clothes, but ever since I was old enough to refuse, my
answer to Aren't you feeling cold?
has generally been
No
. Every winter, however, the subject comes up again,
and people, often complete strangers, see fit to speculate on or
lecture me about low temperatures and my physiology.
For the past several months, I have suffered from a damaged ulnar nerve in my left arm. I'm recovering slowly as the nerve regenerates, but I am no longer impaired by the injury.
Research shows that owning a car makes driving seem cheaper and more convenient than taking public transport. 🙄
I'm used to seeing (and deleting) "So-and-so invites you to social networking site du jour" mail. I'm used to seeing "Sorry! I didn't know they were going to send mail to all my contacts!" mail (what, did their asking for your addressbook not tip you off?). I'm used to people being surprised and hurt because I didn't accept their Orkut or Facebook invitations. I'm used to invitations from people I've never heard of, some obviously bogus. I've even become inured to invitations that say "Please reply, or so-and-so may think you're not their friend!" (followed by a sad little face, usually yellow). I treat all mail from social networking sites as spam more or less automatically these days.
But the following invitation from WAYN ("Where are you now") still managed to surprise me with its sleaziness in forging my name in the From field:
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:11:25 -0000 From invitation@whereareyounow.net Tue Dec 15 07: 1:28 2009 From: Abhijit Menon-Sen <invitation@whereareyounow.net> To: Abhijit Menon-Sen <ams@toroid.org> Subject: You have 3 messages, 1 add friend request Return-Path: <invitation@whereareyounow.net> Message-ID: <8873441c21fe63757b147fd8053100b4@whereareyounow.net>
Sorry, so-and-so. I'll never find out where you are now.
One of my most enduring memories of Kurosawa's Sanjuro (a sequel of sorts to Yojimbo) is of Mifune's sardonic smile as he explains to a group of well-meaning but clueless young men that they're looking for corruption in all the wrong places. The other is of a cheerful bit of bird song, repeated throughout the film; and, indeed, in many other Japanese films by Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi, and others. I'd always wondered which bird was singing.
I posted to the naturerecordists list a couple of years ago, describing the call: a loud, fluty (fwEEEE) whitch-chit-chew. It was quickly identified as the Japanese Bush Warbler Cettia diphone by someone in Hawai'i (where it is apparently a very successful invasive species). I learned later that the long, subdued whistle followed by an explosive jumble of notes is typical of a Cettia warbler's song; but I had never seen or heard one when I first watched Sanjuro.
I assumed the species was common in Japan (given how often its song featured in films), but once it was identified, I stopped thinking about it. There seemed little chance that I would ever hear it live (although C. d. cantuarians may occur as a vagrant to North-East India), and little else about the song to hold my attention… until now.
I had the opportunity to spend two days birding around Delhi with Mark Brazil (author of Birds of East Asia) this week, and one of the many subjects we discussed was Cettia diphone. To my delight, Mark told me that there was much more to the song of the Uguisu than I had imagined.
In Japan, the Uguisu's song is very well-known, and it pervades poetry and literature as a symbol of the spring revival; signifying rebirth, hope, and an end to the hard (winter) times. It is also called the "spring bird" and "poem reading bird", and its call is traditionally transcribed as "Hō ho-ke-kyo". In poetry, the bird is associated with the ume (sour plum) blossom, and is as evocative of spring as the cherry blossom. (Aside: the Uguisu's droppings are even powdered and used to lighten the skin, since they contain guanine.)
Its position in Japanese culture is comparable to that of the Nightingale in western Europe; and the bird's name used to be translated into English as "Japanese Nightingale", though it does not sing at night. (The only bird I can think of whose call is similarly well-known in Indian poetry is the Koel, whose incessant, plaintive song in early summer has also led to comparisons with the Nightingale.)
There are many other Cettia warblers in India. I've seen the Grey-sided Bush Warbler C. brunnifrons both in its wintering grounds and nesting near the tree line in Kumaon, but not heard its song (yet). Brownish-flanked Bush Warbler C. fortipes is also relatively common in the mountains, and other species may also occur. Now that I know something of what I have to look forward to, I always keep an ear out for them.
I may never hear Cettia diphone singing, but its song has brought me much joy.
I'm often asked about my binoculars, Nikon Trailblazer ATB 8x42s (often mistaken for the Monarch 8x42, but a lower-end model). Here's what I usually tell people about them.
A couple of weeks after I received my new passport with the incorrect residential address, I headed back to the Regional Passport Office.
Unfortunately, I discovered that the RPO is closed on Wednesdays ("no public interaction"), but the information counter at the back was open, and to my surprise, I was told that I only needed to show up at room 10 (second floor) the next day with an application for the address to be corrected. I did that, and waited in a queue for half an hour or so.
In room #10 was a stern-looking lady who put her initials on my application without looking at it, and said I should submit it to the "corrections counter" 1A (downstairs). I stood in another queue to do that, and was told to submit a photocopy of the initialled application. I stood in another queue at a kiosk outside, then rejoined the queue at counter 1A. This time, my copy was stamped and returned, and I was told the passport would be dispatched the next Monday.
The ECR stamp, however, couldn't be fixed at the same time (although I was carrying all the necessary paperwork). The lady in room #10 started breathing fire when I asked about it, and said I should have the address corrected, and then come back again later to apply for the ECR status to be changed (for a fee of INR300). My protests that their documentation implies that a copy of the PAN card is sufficient fell on deaf ears.
The passport arrived by speed post today, with a hand-written correction to the address on the second page. I'll wait a while to regain my energy before the battle for ECNR status.
Update (2010-02-05): Only one visit to the RPO was needed.
A newspaper article taught me about the “complete healing of a person from within” using flowers energised by the power of the sun, but I'm not sure whether to eat or sniff them.
Raptors are carefully designed to be difficult to identify.
I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on our Lenovo Ideapad S10 (which was running 8.10), and I also got to install it on a friend's new S10-2. There's little to report in either case.