Recently in Weekly Word Category

Denigrate

The Back Story:
They say pictures speak louder than words, here are some pictures with words within them ... the punchline is missing, click the pic for that. If this isn't enugh for you I'll mention I'm looking forward to Tropic Thunder in the UK, but I have to wait a month ... AGAIN!!! My precious never ever betrays me this way .. One worldwide release date, end of story!!

Expedite

The Back Story
Sometimes at work the client/customer has an unrealstic expectation from us. Rabbits out of hats, that sort of stuff. As an example we had a scenario where a certain client witnessed what seems to be a bug, an unpredictable, intermittent bug. The worst kind. The sort that needs to be proved. The sort that needs to be prepared for. The sort that requires a lot of legwork to investigate. Naturally to the customer, this is the most important thing ever, the highest priority issue of all time (for now).

Our liaison happens to be internal to the company. Someone willing to help the customer & get things rolling, but not quite. That's supposed to be the role of this person, but not quite what happened in this instance. Instead their role became to nag us (pretty consistently), making demands for a fix, an instant fix. Unrealistic demands.

Anyway, the issue was complex & full of peril, it meant getting more bodies involved. More experienced bodies. The oracles if you like. The powers that make us double think about each word we put to them, for dependant on what we say, we could get the perfect response, or the pits of hell-fire.

The oracles responded. Guidance was given. To reach the bottom of this cauldron, a certain small sacrifice was demanded by the client. Now we'd explained already that a lot of legwork is required to investigate this nature of issue. A little sacrifice on their side is no big thing to ask, except in this instance our liaison has become too friendly onsite, willing to hassle & nag us for them, as though working 'for them' rather than 'with us'. This mistake bites back when on-site refuse to accept this demanded sacrifice. I do not envy the liaison at this stage. *shrug* Not my problem though.

They have only have one more card to play. They predictably do just that, get yet another liaison, a little higher up to try & chase us. The vamp sends this out: As this is an urgent issue for ####, would they not be willing to try this in order to expediate our investigations? & it's a fair point. We can't pull the rabbit out of the hat if we have no rabbit after all. Wait hang on ...

Expediate .. is that even a word? Yes. Yes it is. It means to Expedite ... Oh.
A lesson learnt here. Whatever happened to the issue?!

_ram-jaane'

Vituperate

The Back Story
It was word of the day on some site yesterday, but I baked up a bit of a back story that I thought I'd post involving the fellow commuters when I work in London. If I get in on time, rather than early, I've usually had a number of reasons to become a vituperator by the time I'm in. The innocent looking folk who will try & budge you out of the way to get in front of the train doors, they'll say sorry but they won't mean it. I have once shifted such a person by force back to their original position & said sorry. Most days I'm more tolerant.

So, I decide to concoct a little something to say about how I totally understand the scenario where you turn, like Michael Douglas in Falling Down, I totally understand it. In commuter-mode, these sods really do show their primal nature. All animals I tell you, the talk of their supposed civilization really crumbles to dust if you saw them all getting in to work. So, yes, they could make you want to retaliate, vituperate, vent in many ways.

This very day that I decide to say this, they were actually toned down. Odd. The guy standing in front of me even folded his newspaper to read the part he wanted rather than open the whole thing & turn pages in my face & had the opposite not been my normality, I'd have thought nothing of it. Today, I was thankful.

Caveat

The Back Story
I picked up this nifty word from work of all places. Someone thought it was much in having to "check all the previous branch release notes for any caveats that may have been mentioned along the way" between numerous releases of a piece of software. When I read this, I agreed almost instantly. We have a bit of a catch 22 in this respect. Release notes can't contain each & every detail of prior releases, but then again, some clarifications of 'odd' scenarios would be useful to users.

Thankfully it's not part f my job description to decide what stays & what doesn't, but hang on, could I have read this wrong?! I don't even know what a caveat is, I should look into it. Weeks pass.

The Batman releases .. Yes. Even in the UK. Having avoided all Bat stories out of bitterness, I do a bit of catching up. I read this interesting article about villains they could use in follow-up films (but should NOT).

As I read it I am thinking to myself, okay I agree with the reasoning, but on the flip-side I am a firm believer that 'any' story can be sold as a film, it's all about the 'how' it's done & then I read this under sub-heading Caveat: "With the proper writing, directing, and costuming, almost any of these characters could be rewritten as interesting or dangerous or modern.. " As always the guys at FSR cater for the most important person I know. 'me'. Bravo. I was supposed to check up this word weeks back. 1 more week passes.

I come across this long detailed very interesting article that almost reflects my exact thought on Indian cinema .. right that does it, ah so in context the word does mean exactly what I thought it meant. Sweet. Order again in the world of Ram.

Side Note: Yea' so I've fallen way way behind (a months worth) in my blogging. I'll catch up at some point. I've been keeping myself busy (not just slacking). More on this later. So, keep your eyes open for backdate posts for June/July.

Palaver

The Back Story
Semi-cheating here. It was the word of the day on the widget on my Mac. To build a little story around it though, it sums up our lunchtimes at work quite well. 1pm-2pm in the communal kitchen, a few of us gather & talk a pile of total rubbish. We've recently decided to record our 'palavers' & perhaps even build a podcast out of it if all goes well.

Even if not, the jibberish that we splurt can' go to total waste, there's content there that will come useful in one form or another, so documenting it is definitely a good idea. It make me feel better about my 40 wasted hours a week, at least 5 go to some use. :)

Dexterity

The Back Story
A blog post I read some while back spoke of dexterity, my initial thought was to relate it to Dexter (not the kick-ass TV show, but the meaning) ie; to be on the right side as opposed to the left one. So, as I stared at the picture on the post & saw nothing that made the right side of the picture stand out any further than the left. A little confused I went ahead and looked it up. It now made sense, the picture was of a bunch of tailoring which required adroitness, (& yea' it also meant that I learn that adroitness is a synonym for 'skill' but cooler sounding.)

Idiosyncratic

The Back Story
It was an interview on the DVD for House M.D (Season 1), referring obviously to Dr. House & more specifically the perfect portrayal of him by Hugh Laurie.

Corollary

The Back Story
I can't remember the exact context. Yet again it happened in the Twitterverse. Something was said that I didn't understand. The lack of my understanding of this word was the reason. It won't happen again.

Alcove

The Back Story
Non required really - In Bruges ... the only film this year I saw twice at the cinemas. 'nuff said.

Gratuitous

The Back Story
I've been reading this quite frequently over at Dark Matters. Now it's not like I don't understand what he means when he gives a break-down rating of say Gratuitous Babeness: öööööööö (8), even though babeness isn't a real word. It blatantly means, the babes in this one will be overly good-looking. However, from this particular instance I also seem to give the word gratuitous a positive spin, which isn't necessarily true.

Checking this out had clarified this matter. Case closed.

Meniscus

The Back Story
It's ten past four in the afternoon. Due to my genetically inhertited disorder of regularly doing so, I'm going to the office kitchen to wash my hands, as I do. To my surprise, it's like the ten past nine rush hour of the mornings, my supposed bosses (technically team leader & manager) & another happy chappy by the name of Jones have decided to get themselves a cup of tea. The manager likes his tea with a lot of milk, he over fills his mug to the point that it's overflowing if any more is added.

Dr. Jones strolls by & says, living life on the edge there aren't you? A little surprised, he responds "what?" .. to which Dr. Jones says the meniscus is reaching beyond the mug. Me being me, I enquire what the meniscus is .. Dr. Jones reels off verbatim the 2nd definition of the above given, just like that, off the top of his head. Impressed, I decide to blog this. What a loser, the others probably think to themselves.

Parricide

The Back Story
I noted a friend of mine put forward a question on Twitter. Straight away I thought, that's it. A bunch of interesting words worth learning. A few joke answers came about in the conversation that followed, but the genuine answer to the question still remains unanswered (as far as I know), so any smarty pants out there that wishes to shed some light - I welcome you to do so.

You may be wondering, why would you give a teacher a word of their own? It's not like they are held anywhere near as close to relatives. In Western civilisation I'd have to agree, teacher's aren't given the stature that they are in India. Who am I kidding? Even in India such stature doesn't exist in large parts. That said, the idea of giving them such a high level of love & respect certainly isn't a dead duck.

As a child, as a part of your cultural upbringing we are taught morals, what is right & what is wrong. As a basic foundation the Vedas and Upanishads contain verses of universal appeal that include: "Maatru Devo Bhava, Pitru Devo Bhava, Acharya Devo Bhava" (Mother is divine, Father is divine, Teacher is divine). I'll interpret these here as "you should respect your parents and teachers". Back in the day, kids would be sent away to Gurukuls (boarding schools) for a number of years, from an early age, they'd return qualified teenagers. I guess teachers were more integral to the life of a child back then.

As with everything else in religion, it is always a matter of interpretation & how far you personally wish to take it on board. This is why it's called Sanatan Dharma (Universal Religion) .. wrongly labeled as 'Hinduism' by most, but hey that's up to them, their interpretation. :) I tend to see religion as open-source code. How you use the given functions and variables is up to the coder ie; you. I think it's fair to say a large chunk of interpretations here will agree that you should try not to end up being a parricide though.

Purgatory

The Back Story
In Bruges, which I saw on Monday mentioned that other place beside heaven and hell .. Purgatory .. as "It's when you're not awful, not really bad, but you're not really good either - a bit like Tottenham". Now considering the way out there humour and krazzy talk that happened through that film, I didn't really know how serious to take that definition. So, here we have it.

Here's also a little comic that has some relevance:

Coerce

The Back Story
Short and simple, within a span of a few days numerous sources used this word around me. Thomas Haden Church in Smart People talks about doing something not because yo have to, but simply for fun, even if it's frowned upon. Ellen Page responds that she just did as she smokes some pot with uncle Haden Church. He turns around and explains that this is different, he had to coerce her into doing that.

Amitabh Bachchan, the mac daddy of Bollywood film stars has started blogging, and his language is astonishingly sharp. He uses lots of words I don't understand, you can expect a stream growing for the future weeks :-P .. he used the word 'coerce' too.

Somebody at work used it too. It made sense to look it up. I guess I coerced myself to?!

Juxtapose

Scrutiny

So I went to thesaurus and searched for search. Pop went the weasel! .. but why didn't I know this? Well, I always thought it was a far more negative word. To scrutinise something, in my head meant to patronise or overshadow. From the actual meaning I see how I made this connection, but I learnt now that supposedly it can be used in a less heavy fashion too.

Marina

The Back Story
Going back to that book I read a while back (The Interpretation of Murder) and a that other book I've completed since but have yet to blargh (new name for blog).. both used the word in totally different scenes but this fit the given description. If this was the end of this story, it'd be pretty boring & so this is not the end.

I've mentioned a friend of mine that runs rowthree who goes by the name of Marina. Now by the given meaning this doesn't seem to fit, I mean as far as I know she's far from being Russell Crowes' tug-boat friend.

.. & so I looked further at the origins of this word. I found that in the late 1700's, it was the Italian and Spanish that made the word Marina to equate a feminine equivalent to Marino. Marino derived from the word 'marine' meant "belonging to the sea", which seems a much nicer name. I approve. Part of the approval comes from the meaning, the other part from the linguistic equivalence that these Spaniards & Italians have with the fellow Indians. We too have many dual words one for the feminine and one for the masculine - though the overall meanings be the same.

Right, on that note I'm off to the Italian diner. Man's gotta eat!

Antonym

The Back Story
Probably pretty obvious how I came about this one. Anyway, dctionaries are used to obtain the meaning of a word, Thesauruses similarly to find words that equate, or mean almost the same thing. "What to use if you want to find the opposite of something?" I asked myself. Almost instantly I heard a vice. "Google" I snappishly answered back at myself & so I did it. I googled "find opposite of word". My head is growing again, at the thought of my kick-ass interweb usage skills.

I initially found the word that meant this was 'antonym' and googling some more I found this handy dictionary website that also gives you antonyms, as well as dictionary & thesaurus results all in 1 search (if they exist). Niice! I also then found Synonym.com & so as a by-product I also got to learn the word synonym which I though meant similar but is actually more specific, to words. It is mentioned that back in 1870, the word 'anotonym' was created to serve as opposite of 'synonym'. Random fact stored in RAM. Fantastic progress, my head gets even bigger, until I notice that, the place I started, dictionary.com / thesaurus.com, also has this feature as a part of it's thesaurus. Tsssssssssss .. *pop*

So, what's the antonym for "exceed" ?

Feign

The Back Story
Okay, I'm kind-of ashamed of this one. I should have noticed earlier. For the past 2 or 3 years at least I've seen this word frequently enough staring right at me, to which I made an assumption. Dangerous.

In this particular context, it made sense, sort of. I thought feigned meant hidden. So going back to the staring me in the face part. I have a friend whose blog is called FeignedMischief -- Hidden Mischief, it makes sense in a roundabout kindof way, so it must be right, surely, stored in memory, or RAM if you will.

Now, in 2008 when I think to myself I should learn more words, I vow to double check these "assumptions" that I made. Conveniently, in my readings I come across this one where it just doesn't make sense under the context, so I double check it .. and here we are. Named & Shamed. Sorry Simone, for ever doubting your solemn nature. You must be a true thespian. ;)

Tremulous

The Back Story
If you are on my Facebook friend list, you may have noted that over the past months my status has been almost constantly prefixed with the statement "is twittering:", followed by my Twitter status (that I also have in the header of my blog pages). This is the annoying side-effect of having the official Twitter application automatically updating by Facebook Status. I've been looking at 3rd Party Applications like TwitterSynch too, but am not convinced yet to make the side-step to it.

Anyway, for those who aren't aware: Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via sms from phones, instant messaging, loggin into their website or numerous third-party applications. The name though caused a couple of messages & wall posts asking why I'm always twittering, to which I responded with the above explanation.

I decided then to look up if the word actually meant something like "sending small messages" and amongst other things, it does. It means..
1. to utter a succession of small, tremulous sounds, as a bird.
2. to talk lightly and rapidly, esp. of trivial matters; chatter.
3. to titter; giggle.
4. to tremble with excitement or the like; be in a flutter.

With the understanding of "tremulous", apart from the part about being scared and shaky, it does now make more sense of the word Twitter: "Shaky txt spk", okay so they were probably thinking "to talk lightly and rapidly", but I prefer it my way. :-P

So, hold up -- my response to why are you always Twittering could have been (based on No. 3 -- giggle) I'm just a happy camper, Rocking and-a Rollin'. Well damned, this opportunity lost shall be compensated for another time. (Many times). I'll see to it immediately.

Poutine

The Back Story
Well, it's not a word in the dictionary, but when all else fails there is always Wikipedia ;). This word isn't one I've found by myself. I can't take credit for that. That'd be the odd looking feller in the office who sent me a link after noticing my lunch for the past few months (One of my many stalkers).

What I can take credit for is perhaps the meaning. That's right, I was the first person in the history of mankind to put these two magical things -- cheese & chips -- together. I'm only kidding. Actually, I'd be rather proud of that. Never mind.

What I can say is that if I asked 100 people that knew me well to list 5 things that they could relate to me. I would say "Cheese & Chips" would be pretty high on that resultant list, quite likely in the Top 5.

The poutine is from it's description, something I've been trying to imitate for years, ()the curd rather than cheese is imperative, though the gravy is not). I should probably look into this gravy thing next too, I don't believe I've ever had any of that stuff, Anyway, back to poutine, it would seem. In Canadia (aka Canada), it's quite a common fast food meal sold by many of the commercial fast food moguls, not here though, that or maybe I've not been paying attention -- I'll keep my open now though, for sure ... and on that note I think I'll cue the music.

Grimace

The Back Story
Well, not so big, but following on from the Batman theme,as you all probably know the Dark Knight has the poster tagline: "Why So Serious?", which hasn't become the milkshake level of quotes but give it time, I'm sure it'll spread. Anyway watching the trailer again, I heard the words "Let's put a smile on that face" and in my head I pictures a clown that was sulking. At the time this word "sulk" didn't quite register, nor did "frown", the only think of were "An Anti-smile" or "Grimace", but I felt neither was appropriate.

Later when I came across the word Grimace twice in my reading, I thought maybe it is the same as to sulk, the characters I was reading about weren't happy. To be honest after looking it up I'm still not certain I can use the word as a replacement to frown, but I'm swaying towards not. I think it's more specific. The sort of awkward, uncontrollable "ew" factor.

Let me know if you think you know better, but only with evidence might I accept.

Peace
_r.j'

Hysterical

The Back Story
Well, I felt hysterical when one of the applications on facebook decided to "tell me off". Cyberdyne, Skynet, Judgement day .. it all begins here. The story goes as such, when I finally finished reading "Who Moved My Blackberry?", I updated the status on my Books application on FaceBook. In a nutshell, this allows people to see what I've read & what I'm currently reading. So a week passes and I get an email from this application..

Subject: You've been reading 'THE INTERPRETATION OF MURDER' for more than a week. Still true?

I'm thinking to myself, are you serious? A piece of code is now telling me how to lead my life? The thought of it somehow reminded me of the quote from Road to Perdition "It's all so f*cking hysterical" from Daniel Craig (Pre-007). Funnily enough, the book itself is also about doctors who are psychoanalysts. They study and 'cure' hysteria. Seems like I have a thing or two to learn from them. ;)

Explicable

The Back Story
Well, I'm not sure this actually deserves to be a new learnt word, because I sort of knew it - mweh .. why not. Myself and a surgeon were at the infamous Aldo's Italian Diner the other day. We have a lot of uncommon ground me & this guy, but he's a friendly enough chap & as is totally forbidden in being civil, we always end up talking about either politics or religion. This time it was religion.

I tend to be on the fence on this one as I think it's a personal thing, but being on the fence allows me the leisure to argue either side. I won't go into the actual debate except to the point, it came up as "How do atheists explain the unnatural things that can't be explained mathematically or scientifically?".

I was using the word illogical and inexplainable, the doctor was using "inexplicable". Annoyingly he kept using it as though correcting me, so at one point I side-tracked and just asked if these things mean the same thing, he said 'not exactly' .. & so I thought I'd look it up, I was right, he was wrong! .. but he's an old man, set in his ways, so I won't bother breaking his ego & correcting him when I see him next .. then again, I'm not sure of that -- I might ;)

As for the answer to the question, the answer was "ignorance" as I'd anticipated.

Okay, so I'm publishing one week behind.. but the point is that the learning is cultivated -- and that it is

Sojourn

The Back Story
A woman named Arwyn, her dog Kreeg, and a one-eyed man named Gareth travel throughout the lands of the planet Quin looking for 5 shards of a magic arrow to defeat the evil dictator of the land, Mordath. -- Plot for a film?? Not quite, this is the description of a comic I used to collect. So what's the relevance? It was called 'Sojourn'. How come I haven't hard of it (assuming you haven't)? Well, if you ask the average man of the street to name 5 comics, they'll probably reel off the superhero films/comics that have been prominent, these tend to come from the worlds of Marvel and DC.

'Sojourn' was part of a whole different universe by a company called CrossGen. They made some pretty neat comics, original & interesting stories, amongst them were Negation, Ruse, they even started one called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.. all very different genre-wise, but they did encompass a common thread too.

The unfortunate scarring events that followed in my sojourn in the world of CrossGen is that somewhere along the way, it all went terribly wrong for them -- they got some bad publicity and when this happens to a small company, naturally troubles in the finances department soon followed. CrossGen went bankrupt in 2004, with numerous titles ending abruptly / incomplete.

By this point I had stopped getting all but 2 Marvel comics (Hulk and Punisher). Soon after this loss, I stopped getting comics altogether.

The weekly word idea remains cultivated for now & hasn't seemed to onerous so far..

Carrion

The Back Story
My good friend Tim has been pretty engrossed in his upcoming novel for the last few months, almost lost in the fine-tuning process. Though he seems pretty stressed in recent times I must admit I almost envy him. What he's doing is an admirable thing. He has put aside some savings from his previous career and taken the time out to focus on living out this dream. It's a high-risk investment, it certainly takes guts -- & money ;) .. the latter part is what I'm struggling with.

Anyway, for the entire time I've know him, he's been pretty protective of this current novel (& rightly so), but over the last week, finally he let me read the first few paragraphs.

It's little enough to have my interest peaked, but not enough to really have any idea where the story could possibly go. Yet being the ignorant man with a small vocabulary, within this little extract I did manage to come across a word which I almost pointed out as a typo, instead I asked and learnt the meaning. Now I know what that description in that extract was saying about the protagonist's career choice: Law.

I wasn't too surprised to find a dedicated Wikipedia article on Carrion: It refers to the carcass of a dead animal. Carrion is an important food source for large carnivores and omnivores in most ecosystems. Examples of carrion-eaters, or scavengers, include hyenas, vultures, .. you get the point. I also manage to use the word carrion when describing the meat pies in Sweeney Todd to somebody. Actually I forced it into conversation but we're all allowed that to some degree.

The weekly word idea remains cultivated for now & hasn't seemed to onerous so far..

Recluse

The Back Story
A few weeks back, the pub after work on a Friday evening. The team has got together for their last social venture of the year. As per usual of such an event, people talk, a lot. Most of the subject matter covered tends to be hit or miss. Naturally, when people want my attention, they bring up 'cinema'. My boss did just this.

He spoke of a cool cinema that he had been in Birmingham if I recall correctly. A small one-screen cinema where they ran double-bills. I was informed you got a coffee & cake in between these two films and that the owner (mentioned as a recluse millionaire who ran the place at a loss) came and interacted with the clientèle as they enjoyed their coffee and cake.

Sounded pretty damned awesome huh? I mentioned it sounded like something I'd do in retirement days. My boss was amused, he told me he didn't really see me as a recluse millionaire. I didn't really understand, I figured it'd be due to the debts that he knows I'm in, so I quizzed him about it later. He told me it was both: he didn't really see me as a "recluse" or "millionaire". He thought I was too friendly to be a recluse & he hadn't seen any evidence of my millions. I was confused and mildly offended & I wasn't too sure why. Perhaps it hadn't occurred to him that I had said it was a retirement plan, as in future.. long way ahead in the future. I still have time.

Anyway, I sent a text to my fellow comrade Demon to inquire about what a recluse was. His response was: "Basically, me" (by me he meant him rather than me, but things became clearer.) The boss knows of my fondness of the shift work at the Fortress of Solitude, but I can see how he doesn't perceive me as a recluse. Outwardly I'm good at covering that up, in the end I took it as a compliment. The guys at work really don't know me as well as they should in the three years I've been there & this gives me hope.

I write this today in seclusion, as I woke up with a splitting headache this morning and have skipped off work. I slept through most of the morning & feel a bit better now. So there we have it, one more word in the kitty. I should probably go get some 'fresh' air.

The weekly word idea remains cultivated for now .. let's see if it lasts?

Onerous

on·er·ous (ŏn'ər-əs)
1. burdensome, oppressive, or troublesome; causing hardship: onerous duties.
2. having or involving obligations or responsibilities, esp. legal ones, that outweigh the advantages: an onerous agreement.

It's not common for unknown words to come up at work, with regards to actual 'work'. This one is though. You can probably tell by just looking at the meaning.

The Back Story
In the glorified version of 'pass the parcel' that is played at work, there are occasions where people/organisations will haggle for a product that they wish for. The ideal result of such a scenario being the gain of something for free. If not free the least price possible would still be acceptable. The full price is the worst case scene. You can't blame them for trying, but when it means you end up with the booby trapped parcel, sometimes measures have to be taken, to make sure you're not being abused. So in response to my questioning this I received the below which was comforting but not entirely clear, until I looked it up:

________________________________________
From: ZZZZZZ
Sent: 08 January 2008 12:33
To: Ram Solanki
Subject: RE: call_id: xxxxxx

Hi Ram,

If you could give them some advice 'this time'.
If it becomes too onerous, let me know and I will push back.

Feel free to advise them that this assistance is normally given through consultancy.

Cheers,
ZZZZZZ

I think this means I better get back to work ,,,

So. as promised I have that first entry here with regards to the "Weekly Word" I've learned.

Cultivate

A conversation that goes back a couple of months, perhaps longer. Robo-Ninja and I had feasted upon the grease that is available at the Pizza Hut Buffet, however something was missing from this meal, we weren't satisfied.So we headed to Starbucks & ordered a Signature Hot Chocolate each. Robo insisted on also getting a Cinnamon Swirl. I personally am not big on desserts drenched in icing, so I passed. Somewhere between paying up and receiving our ordered beverages, Robo obliterated that icing-topped monster of a cake. I was in awe and I'll admit it, I envied the look on his face. Saying that he looked blissful in the moments he devoured it would be a huge under-statement.

Later that afternoon, I admitted this envy to him. I expressed how the envy was not of the cake, but the fact that, with little regard to his surroundings, he enjoyed it, like an innocent child having his first taste of something that he would grow to love. His response in true Robo-fashion was somewhere between surprised and appreciative. He mentioned that I had a knack for pointing out the little things that the average person wouldn't and that he found it refreshing and appreciated it. He said that my pointing this out probably meant he lost a small part of this innocence and that it's something he would like to be aware of but not lose. Finding the balance between the two is the Opportunity Cost. I agreed totally.

So about a week ago myself & Robo-Ninja went to see I Am Legend, as the trailer played, we started discussing the merits of the recent Taare Zameen Par. He hadn't seen it and I was expressing how the novel aspect in it was how it focussed on a child's perspective, the details of the simple things that as adults we don't stop and appreciate. He concurred and agreed this was an interesting approach. However he felt he maintained some of this. I pointed out this sort of reflected on the above stated conversation, and he reminded me that even them he had shared that he wanted to cultivate this innocence. I looked puzzled, I misinterpreted this for culminate. So it's only when I admitted to my ignorance of this word, that things were clarified.

As a sidenote: It was that first conversation that shall always make me remember the Starbucks Cinnamon Swirl as "F*cking Awesome Cake". Given it's new name, which I couldn't get out of my head, I gave in to my distaste for icing and tried it the following week. It does what it says on the tin, it is as above stated F*cking-A!