Hindi in a Month - inside

So inside you find the normal parts of a language workbook: lists of vocabulary, exercises requiring you to translate short paragraphs, instruction on how the language is used. What's interesting is the choice of words for vocabulary and the example sentences used. An American or English book might not give you the translation for the castes or worry about whether you could say "Incarnation".

"Palpitating" is also not a word I would expect to learn in a beginner's course.

The vocab sections are broken up into examples of words starting with a certain written character and sections with a theme. Here's one on hygiene and self-care.

Here's a section on disease. Note: Fatness can be cured in 40 days.

There are also several pages with common sayings, many of which are familiar to me. Some of which are not.

Then grammar. Don't do it?

We have example sentences.

And here are sentences from the section on cloth.

A bit of instruction on fruit and vegetables.

Mangoes are mentioned quite a bit in the book. Mangoes are mentioned quite a bit in the book on Punjabi I also own. This is why I like seeing language books published elsewhere - they have a different flavor from what I am used to.

Hindi in a Month

I like old, bilingual dictionaries and learn to speak another language books. I especially like old bilingual books when they were written and sold in another country. You get an entirely different set of example sentences and textual flavor than you do when they're from your own country, written with someone of your background in mind. So when I see them at my local library book sale I snap them up. I've found quite a few gems and I've wanted to share them.

I have been unable to find a copy for sale or referenced online outside of Worldcat - there are 7 copies of what appears to be 3 different editions, none of which quite match mine. This one here was published for the Varma Brothers in 1964. It is 205 numbered pages, 18 cm.

The other cataloged books were published 1962, 1966 and 1951. The last was published by National Book Stall. It appears to have gone through several editions. The author is only listed as J.S. Bright but his entry on library pages gives the name Jagat Singh Bright.

Looking at other works he is connected to it appears he made quite a career writing and editing books about Indian history, language and important figures. A cursory search turns up nothing on Rajendra Kushwaha. This copy was sold at Minerva Bookshop.

Are Simla and Bombay completely separate locations? There's a Shimla north of New Dehli but I'm not finding any on the map near Mumbai. Did Minerva Bookshop have two stores? Is the Minvera Book House in Shimla the inheritor of the Minerva name? Not amazing detective work but I'm being lazy. Here's the back cover.

And here's a list of their other publications:

I'm especially interested in "Friends: How to win and retain them", "Ideal jokes", "Timber calculator" (I have no idea - do you calculate timber? probably.) and my favorite - "How to increase your height".

More on the contents of the book in the next post.

Update on CVS Specialty Pharmacy

Nope. Not in today. My mother spoke to a nice lady on the phone who said she could see the order on her account but for some reason it didn't go through and they have no idea why. She got a supervisor who sent the order to shipping and she'll check on it to make sure everything is okay before she goes home for the day.

Now it's supposed to come tomorrow.

The aggravating thing is you can only call the general line to straighten these things out. You make your way through an interminable phone tree, wait for the next call center representative and then get shunted to any one of hundreds of reps in their centers around the country. So when you have a recurring problem, you have to deal with a new person each time who is only just now learning the case. They refer to customers as "patients" but that's rather disingenuous.

The people at these call centers seem very nice but I also believe they are working under rules and regulations that are anything but. Businesses are built around making money, not helping people. Those two things can be very much at odds and the tension between them can be harmful.

Another review - CVS Specialty Pharmacy - Absolute Shit - They are going to get someone killed

So my mother now needs specialty medications in order to continue living. Like the kind where she cannot miss a dose. And unfortunately her insurance has deemed that she has to go through CVS Specialty Pharmacy otherwise it would cost her first born child and I would really rather not be traded for drugs. Now the people she actually gets to talk to on the phone don't seem horrible; they genuinely wish to make sure she comes to no harm. They're just people and most people would rather not see random strangers suffer by their hand. However. CVS Specialty Pharmacy must be one of the most incompetent damn organizations in the country.

The first time she had to refill her medications they jerked her around and jerked her around for over a week. She calls for a refill on a Monday. They say they are going to have it at the local pharmacy on Friday. They call Friday morning and say, hey do you live at home or in a facility and she's like, I already told you and they're like, oh, haha, whoops. We'll have it Saturday. And she's coming to the end of her medication. Crunch time. That night, another call. Do you live at home? I already told you! Oh. Sorry. We'll have it tomorrow.

Guess what? They didn't have it tomorrow.

Then they gave the local pharmacist some bullshit about how she couldn't have a refill until Thursday which was blatantly not true. The pharmacist was incredibly upset about the way they were behaving and eventually got it out of them that UPS was delayed two days. That shouldn't have mattered, of course, which means some idiot didn't send out the order on Monday like they were supposed to and they were trying to cover their greedy asses so they wouldn't have to pay for extra meds. In the end they read a Visa gift card code off to pay for a bridge dose. The pills came Tuesday. When they should have come Friday.

This was a month ago. And now it's started all over again. They allow you to refill online so that's what Mom did, end of last week. She gets a phone call couple days later. Do you live in a facility or at home? What kind of unprofessional, inept, amateurish organization is this!? The guy on the phone says they've been having "IT issues". You're in a business where mistakes could cost people their lives. Pull your heads out of your asses. So, he says everything's cleared but she gets his name to be sure.

What do you know. Next day someone calls her again. We just have a few questions. She name drops the last guy and this next person says she'll get the info from him. And now tonight she's gotten a voicemail and a text asking her to call. (I tried to call but they "are having an unusual amount of incoming calls so, apologies, just hang on the phone for hours hoping to plead for their service. What happened to the users of a company being the customers? Now we have to beg for their largess?)

 Her prescription is supposed to be in tomorrow. You know. The pills she needs to live. We'll see if they actually care about the lives of their customers.

It's a giant corporation and giant corporations have basically been given carte blanche to do as they please, up to and including murdering people because the heartless jasckasses who run these things have so much unneeded money they can use that to fill the void left by their souls instead of human emotions. So I don't really have a lot of hope. It says something that the pharmacist says they do this sort of thing to people all the time.

Security by Gina Wohlsdorf - Another book I probably won't finish

I just... It looked neat on the shelf and I liked the concept. An ultra-deluxe high-rise with top security is infiltrated by a murderer. The perspective is from the cameras on the floors and grounds and sometimes the page is split for simultaneous action. Unfortunately, it's not holding up. The camera perspective is just a gimmick; the list of cameras at the start of each chapter is essentially meaningless. The perspective is sometimes right there with the characters and sometimes like they are being watched from afar. (Cameras generally don't have audio so that would make it hard to keep the pretense up but it would be interesting if it was done right.)

Now, this would be all right if the story, or the characters, were any good. Tessa is the designer/overseer of this big building, getting ready for the grand opening. Her leather jacket wearing, motorcycle stunt riding foster brother comes to talk to her. They met when they were 8 and 10, respectively. They haven't seen each other in years. There's sexual tension and it's way awkward not least because it's implied by the text and by another character that Tessa was very fortunate to get placed in the same home as this hottie. When they were preteens. It's mentioned several times that Brian is in shape but he's not, like, vain. And he's not too buff. Brian is also the type who doesn't listen to his love interest when he's told "no" or "go away". And it's really obvious from the text that that's okay because Tessa doesn't really want him to leave. She can't keep from being giggly and smiling while he tags along with her around her work place after she told him to skedaddle.

Franklin, the manager, is a person "only another narcissist could like" and he's gay. This is how he is introduced and it is later explained that he made up a story in his head about how his life was hard because he was gay but really everyone was kind and accepting and why would he think being gay can be challenging? He's sabotaging the hotel for the competition. The killer kills him within the first fifty pages but it's better to say he's tortured to death for no apparent reason. We are lovingly told how 22 bones in his body are broken and his jaw is broken and his screams reach the empty tenth floor and then he's bashed in the skull with a paperweight and dumped in an industrial dryer from which wafts his moans and the smell of burned meat. The maid just gets stabbed to death. I'll leave someone else to interpret this.

Then there's Henri, the fat, farting arrogant French chef who exclaims "Mon Dieu!" and "Zut Alors!" at regular intervals. He had damn well better turn out to be a spy from, I don't know, Wyoming or somewhere because otherwise this is the author's idea of humor. Also, the kitchen and ballroom are on the nineteenth floor which is a recipe for logistical headaches and disasters.

So, the "Killer" is roaming around, picking off lonesome people for no as-yet known reason but he appears to have a compatriot on the cameras and that's who is narrating the book. Sometimes. Sometimes the narrative is neutral and sometimes it's clearly the unknown watcher, who has way too much of an interest in Tessa. The way all the characters are described makes them seem slightly gross and pathetic and quite frankly I would be fine with the Killer throwing them all down an elevator shaft. This somewhat takes away from the tension.

You know what? I don't need to read anymore about the randomly sadistic gigantic Killer or Tessa and Brian's somewhat incestuous love story.

I'm going to continue reading Jamaica Kincaid's Annie Jones which is a much better book. Eleven year old Annie is growing up in Antigua and as she gets older and starts to turn into a young lady she notices that her mother, who she is very close to, is now treating her differently. It's a sort of slice of life book with reflections on growing up and daily routine and love for parents and the discovery of death. New schools, new friends, new observations.

Verizon Fios Review - Five Minutes of Phone Menus

My internet was down. I tried to call Verizon. Took five minutes to go through their byzantine phone menu. The recorded message kept trying to deter me from calling, telling me to go online to report a problem. You know, with the internet I didn't have. I was put on hold. After 15 minutes it cut me off. Tried to call again. Couldn't remember what esoteric combination of button presses got me to where I was. Kept asking me for my pin. Not sure where it is. Just want to say their service is down, not access payment options. They also throttle service but I'm complaining about their non-help number now not the fact that they don't give you entirely what you pay for. Service isn't bad generally.
But let's put it this way. Hope you never need help because while they charge you for service you may not be getting, they won't talk to you so you can get help.

I want to review the experience somewhere because it was so frustrating and made me feel so helpless but I don't want to sign up with another organization to complain. So I'll complain here. You want to give honest feedback on a shitty service but you have to allow access to your personal information to some other site and acquire yet another password. I'll post it here. No one will see it but it'll be out there.

I'm either going to take my mother for a walk or go back to playing Thief.

There's no actual content here or Fish in Exile

I read one more chapter of Fletch. In it he has a call to the finance expert at his paper where we get a chapter long info dump of the rich guy's backstory and finances. Excuse me while I try to drum up some enthusiasm. Wait...wait...nope, no, not happening. I'm just not feeling it. I'm too tired for this nonsense. My mother got out of the hospital barely a month ago after her heart transplant and I just don't have the energy for this long-winded exposition.

Which is why it's weird that I read in entirety Vi Khi Nao's Fish in Exile. Because that was pretty ridiculous as well. Mythological callbacks and metaphors abound in this tale of a couple who lost their twins to the sea. So many metaphors, so many allusions. It's a serious story with serious grief and some of it is quite well portrayed and yet. Part of the way Ethos and Catholic Romulus (yes, those are their names) handle their grief is by buying pair after pair of fish (as a pair of proxy children, named Dogfish and Pistachio) and putting them in dresses and "walking" them until they die and then starting the process all over again. I understand what it's supposed to mean in regards to their grief and guilt but it's just too silly. And the metaphors. The entire book is metaphors and similes. "I watched the pluvial curtain let down her translucent laces."  She's saying it's raining. But she just said that in the previous sentence. "Snow was predicted, but rain comes heavily in sheets." It's repetitious for no real reason other than to use fancy words. It doesn't truly add anything. Tons of this. "And soon, like a child that blooms into a hand, I fall asleep."  "I sipped from the well of the Corona." (He's drinking a beer.) "I don't understand women or cameras. My thoughts are outnumbered by white diminutive dots." The entire first part of the book from the point of view of Ethos is so dream-like and metaphor heavy that it's almost impossible to figure out what is going on. He can't make love to his wife. She's turned cold. He puts daisies down his underwear. She's not thrilled by this. He eats the daisies. They taste like tobacco. He has a haversack he keeps putting bread and butter into. There's also the neighbor couple who were present at the tragedy and Ethos' mother.
At the core of the story is the loss of two children and everyone's guilt about what they could have done to prevent it's happening but you get the full story so late and before that no one's guilt makes sense.

One more thing to share. I have a Library of Health 1935 edition of the 1916 book, edited by B. Frank Scholl. Twenty books in one volume, it was a health library for housewives to use to care for their families. (No internet!)

From the section on Self-Care for Women, on exercise and nutrition and how you can't change your natural body type but you can take care of yourself.
"This individual perfection will be each person's own type of beauty, and if this is brought out as nature intended, will be most attractive and delightful." p. 1635.
You are an individual not made to be fit to someone else's mold of beauty; take care of yourself and let your God-given loveliness shine.