Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

21 Nov 2001, 12:33 p.m.

Wow, I usually make my first entry of the day…

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2001 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Wow, I usually make my first entry of the day earlier than this.

Russian class always holds some amusing tidbit. Today I realized that "Sumana" -- with the accents mangled -- turns into "out of head on." That is to say, the first two syllables of my first name are an idiom for "crazy."

In addition, when a group of people should be doing something together but falter (as my group often does when trying to pronounce new vocabulary in a single voice), one idiomatic rebuke is "Who's in the forest, who's picking wood?"

Last for the week: In Russian, it means nothing to say, "Behave yourself!" One must add the adverb "well" or "poorly" for such an imperative to make any sense.