The Samskritam Skit We Performed

Please enjoy the Oscar-winning-potential, big-time-stumbling-in-Sanskrit video of our "performance" of the skit we performed during our Samskrita Shibiram:

It is a moral story. Try to make sense of it. The bottom line: If you do not have common sense, your super special abilities will not be of any use.

[Available for viewing only in select countries]


Enjoy!

PS: I am supposed to climb a tree at the end of the story. Just in case you were wondering what in the hell I was doing in the end, that explains it!

Samskrita Shibiram

Last weekend was one of the best weekends I ever had. I went to learn a new language - a language that is my heritage, a language that my mother mastered, a language that gave roots to many languages that I speak today. The language is - "Samskritam". Or "Sanskrit", as most people know it.

All my life, I grew up among people that spoke Samskritam quite often. My mother teaches Samskritam. So does my aunt. My father kind of speaks it ever so often to make fun of my mother! Even then, I never thought of studying it. And as any kid growing up in India, my pursuit was mostly after Math and Science. My mother took me to a Samskritam Summer Camp (Samskrita Shibiram) when I was little, but I hated sitting through those day-long class sessions.

Quite frankly, when I heard about this two day Samskritam Camp, I thought this will be as boring as the one that I attended when I was five. It turned out to be one of the best weekends that I had ever spent! In two days, we learned to speak the basics, wrote a story entirely in Samskritam, performed a skit (video coming soon), and shared many jokes and stories.

The crowd was quite enthusiastic all through out and we are even thinking of starting a weekend study/discussion group. I am quite interested in learning Samskritam. Especially, I am thrilled to see how close this language is to Russian in many ways. This should be quite interesting!

почему я изучаю русский язык?

привет друзья! мои друзья часто спрашивают меня, почему я изучаю русский язык? ...

OK enough now! In case you wonder your monitor's gone nuts looking at the above text, your monitor is working fine, and you dont have to adjust the character encoding for your browser! That funny-looking stuff is in Russian, and here's the translation: "Hello friends! My friends often ask me why I am studying Russian?...".

The reasons are:

- Russian is waaaay cooler than any other foreign languages I know.

- Learning Russian is very challenging. (Believe me!)


Yesterday, I was looking at the back-cover of my text book, and Voila! there was a "Top 10 Reasons for Studying Russian". And according to the first law of blogging, I can certainly write a blog entry on this!

So, with all apologies to the Editor of the book "Live from Moscow" (and Dave Letterman), I am reproducing those reasons here.

давайте... ( ~ let's go )

10. The alphabet is the hardest part. Really.

9. Those funny-shaped letters make great tattoos.

8. Big Brother would want it that way.

7. Dostoyevsky makes for good light summer reading.

6. Russian has 75% fewer calories than the leading foreign languages.

5. Learn the meaning behind those little wooden dolls.

4. Understanding Russian grammar is guaranteed entry into the "Mensa" society.

3. The word for "hello" has 13 letters.

2. Knowing two alphabets increases your brain capacity.

1. The book is cool.


что Вы думаете?! ;) (What do you think?!)

Dale Gribble And The Government!

Note: This may interest you only if you are a big fan of "King of the Hill". If you don't know who Dale Gribble is, read his wiki. It is worth reading!

I did not imagine this would ever happen! Dale Gribble - the legendary anti-government, top conspiracy theorist started believing in the government! No kidding!

In an episode I saw this past Saturday, he goes to Dallas to solve the puzzle involving the Kennedy assassination. And of course, he ends up not even figuring out the directions and settles down by a river side. A fed come up to him, and offers him help...

The next scene portrays him driving his crazy "bug" van, decorated with Stars and Stripes. For the first time in his life, he pays taxes. He signs documents by his own name. He demands public service saying, "As of 2 PM yesterday, I am a taxpayer. I want service for my $36 worth of taxes."

I still doubt though, if he will continue to order pizza by his real name, or by his assumed name - Rusty Shackleford! Hilarious!

Here's the punch line: The episode is sponsored by the US Airforce!

Can it be real? The Airforce sponsoring "The King of the Hill" ?! That's interesting. It does not require a degree in rocket science (or Russian) to figure out that any advertising campaign involves quite a bit of research on it's viewer demographic - the category of people that watch this TV show. Seems very clear that the prime demographic for this program is late teens and early 20s. I wonder why they did not choose other hit series like Family Guy or The Simpsons!

PS for Dale: Sorry Dale, I did not mean to disclose your identity by publishing this post. Let me know the next time you return back to your conspiracy theories against the government...I will promptly delete this post!

Panther Pride, this time in DC

Last week, I attended the UNI Alumni Meet in downtown DC. The meeting was very exciting and it gave me a chance to meet some great people. Graduates from the '60s (President Koob) to '05 (Me) were present at the meeting. Most of the UNI alum here in DC work for the Federal government - in the Department of State, Justice, Etc. It was quite an interesting opportunity to learn quite a few things about UNI, from UNI graduates that belonged to several generations.

President Koob and I



President Koob talked about UNI, Educational Funding, his own experiences at UNI, and his retired life. When he concluded, people started asking questions on subjects ranging from the UNI football team to the out-of-state admission statistics. I asked him about the "Students First" campaign, and he specifically took note of this question. He thanked me for asking the question! He personally thanked me again toward the end of the meeting.


The best moment of the evening came during Dr. Koob's speech. At one point he said (and I paraphrase) "A lot of people do not even wish to say that they are UNI graduates. I mean, who goes around telling everybody that I am from UNI?". I immediately responded with "I do!". The whole room bursted into laughter and people applauded. President Koob addressed me as "The Next Generation" and thanked me again for that answer! Cool, huh?!