The little byline of my blog title is borrowed from Frank Herbert's Dune. Absolutely love it. So succinctly describes life and our constant struggle with finding some logic to all that happens around us.
Had a similar moment of realization, last night. Had gone with a friend to the nearby Starbucks. We usually order our coffees grande, and I ever bothered to find out what the other sizes were. Until, we saw one guy order mocha, tall. I couldn't quite see what was the glass he walked off with. My friend, said that 'tall' was in fact the shortest glass available at Starbucks. I refused to believe this, I mean, there must be someone pretty educated and sensible guy up there in the Starbucks chain of command who would have come with these names, how could tall possibly be the shortest. It would be an insult to the word. Well, I was so cocksure that the world is logical, that I placed a bet, it's not possible, the tallest glass has to be 'tall' while the shortest glass could be called something else.
Alas, i walked out of the coffee shop with a lost bet, a bruised ego and in a very confused state of mind about the affairs of the world.
lol, I could never understand why my comforter size is 'twin' when it is for just one person. the Indian chauvinist in me will immediately brand it as *****can idiosyncrasy, or *****can stupidity, but I don't do it nowadays :D.
ReplyDelete"One more thing" that you must have got acquainted to in TX by now is - "It's all Big!":)
ReplyDelete"Small" seems to be a forbidden word
ReplyDeletehttp://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001677.html
ReplyDeleteThis might have helped You unless you really never wanted to win "smirk smirk".
Latino heat!
Well, I never knew what a "Happy Meal" was till I was handed a small plastic Batman by the lady at the serving counter - and yeah, this was after I had got my degree!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@ borna
ReplyDeleteyou remind of of Obelix, "these americans are crazy"
@ gopal
yup...we can add that to our chant of "it's all good"
@varun
yup...i did google and found out that they hate the word 'small' in here...
@ vikram
oh but i did want to win! I'm a very sour loser
@ akshay
Did the lady say, "lets put a smile on that face" as she handed you that plastic batman? [:P]
starbucks makes my blood boil..
ReplyDeleteJjje baat. Hmm... its a 'tall' order this making sense of life business.
ReplyDelete@Dash: I reckon it must be a 'big' boil. Mwa ha ha ha ha... ho ho ho... :-P
@dash
ReplyDeleteunder what brand name do they sell it then?
@sunny
damn! I have created a monster!
Nice post :) .. reminded me of the conversation between samuel l jackson and john travlota in pulp fiction ..
ReplyDeleteJules: Do you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in France?
Brett: No.
Jules: Tell him, Vincent.
Vincent: Royale with cheese.
Jules: Royale with cheese. Do you know why they call it a Royale with cheese?
Brett: Because of the metric system?
Jules: Check out the big brain on Brett! You smart mother****; that's right! The metric system.
Actually, this kind of terminology is pretty common !
ReplyDeleteCalling it small is just not possible .. customer must be satisfied with the amount of coffee. So even the smallest cup size must have a "satifying" name.
Remember Sathyam? The cheapest seats are called 'premium' (next higher is 'elite')
And hotel rooms .. cheapest ones are called 'queen size' or 'superior' or 'delux'.
Only exception I've seen is airlines, where it's still called economy class