Wednesday, November 14, 2007

NOT MY FAVOURITE WORD

Just had to get these out of my system.

I never thought another phrase could match the irritation I feel when I hear "How is you?". I was wrong; here is: "My bad"! And all of a sudden, everyone around me seems to be using it!

A couple of weeks ago, having lost track of timezones while travelling from India to America, I asked someone at the Chicago airport what the time was. Her response: "Twenty five to four".

Arghhh - why can't you say 'three thirty five', woman? I can tolerate it if it's just a few minutes to the next hour (like 'five to ten' or 'ten to three'), but twenty five minutes to the next hour?! A lot of people do talk like that! Is the intention to make me waste time calculating?

Okay then, it is ninety eight minutes to eleven - I'm off to bed. Or should I say a hundred and fifty eight minutes to midnight?

25 comments:

Sweetstickychewy said...

hey there Vinesh.

lol..I can totally feel that. Might as well come straight to the point than giving me some mental sum to work in my brain.lol.

I guess its juz the way people swing. Differences.:D

And i sooooo know about how u use one word and the next thing u know the whole clique is messing with it.. hehehe..

have a good day!

Cheers.

Compassion Unlimitted said...

LoL..Hope you had a peaceful sleep..Perceptions vary.dont allow them to bother you..otherwise you will lose sleep on this..lol
TC
CU

Unknown said...

Ahhh I know exactly what you talking about. Lol!!

Forty five minutes to eight, I gotta scoot.

Vinesh said...

@sweetstickychewy: thanks for dropping by :-)

@compassion unlimitted: nothing can be stopped except my temper i guess :-)

@j: ah, not another one!

PreethZzZ said...

Hahahaha.... Omg soo true... I hate that time thing that most westerners do... Offlate though having lived in the western world almost my entire life... I do say 10 to etc... But make it so that its all easy calculations! LOL! And the my bad thing... Oops... I say it! "my bad"! ;-)

Prats said...

lol....did u get your 480 minutes of sleep?
Not to worry, these are the irritations that'll take you a long way... :)

Sandhya said...

Hillarious.

I hv heard this time calculation first time.

Rashmi said...

You bet....

I too get most irritated when someone asks How is you?
I almost shouted at one person when he said "I owe you some monies"... this guy is not some child who is learning English but a Marketing Manager of a well known mobile service provider!!

Time calculation... Well I heard it for the first time though I'm used to the 10 to 10 :)

Jeevan said...

Some times we need our fingers help to calculate the wester time or international time.

Anonymous said...

Need to keep watch on the words while chatting with you ;)

Vinesh said...

@preethzzz: listen preethzzz, make the world a better place and stop saying it :-P

@prats: just fell short by one thousand seven hundred and ninety nine seconds! :-B

@sandhya: you're so lucky!

Vinesh said...

@rashmi: some monies? oh gooddd! i've only read those in comics :-) how irritating!

@jeevan: haha - true buddy! actually even the toes.. :)

@rathi: hahaha - why, do you talk like that? ;-)

Marutham said...

Well, facing all that while away from homeland is nothing when compared to what you got to hear from the half baked Indo-american slang people here are trying!!
Atrocious cud be too strong to use in this context? !! hmmmmmm

Jo said...

Haha... that's new to me and it sounds really weird!!

Aarthi said...

OMG!!! it is really irritating..but haven't heard anyone saying sumthng..like 25 to 4..so odd..

B said...

oh I know.... its more irritating wen ur fellow indian students (who have studied gud grammar in english medium schools in india) speak in such lingo.......... mostly to imitate the black accent and style........ like my bad......... kills me. then I jus pretend I didn't hear anything. They either get my msg or I remove them from my gramaticaly-correct-people's list. :|

oh and abt the time lady, man, im sorry, that mustve been hard! such cruel people I wud have rolled my eyes at her on 25 to 4.

Vinesh said...

@marutham: hahahahaha - those are so good they are beyond any comment and comprehension!

@jo: consider yourself lucky, jo! :)

@aarthi: isn't it? it takes all kinds i guess..

@red soul: exactly my question: how the hell do these guys pick it up? :-) anything american goes...*sigh*

Prats said...

hey.....thought i'd let you know that you've been tagged at my site...and I would love to see how you go about it...

aMus said...

that could be irritating. hope its out of your system and you've enjoyed your _ minutes of sleep...wouldn't spend my preciuos energy calculating :)

Vinesh said...

@prats: aaaaaaaahhh :-O

@thinking aloud: i'm better now. i count the seconds.

Serendipity said...

You poor, poor child.

Raghu said...

how is you now? ;-)

G U R U said...

That reminds me of a dialogue between Madhavan and a station master in 'Anbe Sivam'...Madhavan asks the station master, "how long will the train stop here?"... to which the station master replies, "two-to-two to two-two". Meaning, 1:58 to 2:02. Madhavan doesn't understand that and gets pissed off.

...and so did the audience :)

Deepali said...

I say some things repeatedly and EVERYONE makes fun of me. But can't help it.

Apparently I have got 3 people into the habit of starting sentences with 'so'.

I find that listening to myself (when lets say someone has taken a video), makes me realize just how bad the 'condition' is.

Anyway the time thing is crazy - thankfully this is the first time I am hearing it.

Shruti said...

My first visit to your blog and I see a topic similar to one that I wrote not so long ago. You should check out this one:
http://high-spot.blogspot.com/2007/12/some-things-i-hate-to-hear-from-you.html