Me: Bilingual

Warning: Strong language ahead

The other day I was cooking dinner and instead of using the microwave I decided to use the oven to make some nachos. It was a noble thought. 

I managed to cook them well then put the hot plate on the tray with an oven mitt taking the utmost care. Then being a professional numbnuts, 2.5 seconds later I moved that plate with my bare hand forgetting that it was burning hot. The plate, having a zero-tolerance policy towards all numbnuts, promptly burnt my fingers. It hurt. I screamed like a little girl. 

After yelling "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" for 37 seconds straight, I suddenly had an epiphany. Hey, I am bilingual!

Based on a story read long time ago, the language you use in times of emotional stress, that is, the language that you curse in, is your native language. So, now that I can curse both in Hindi and English when the chips are down, there is no denying the fact that I am bilingual. Hurray for me! 

Are you bilingual? I don't recommend my method of testing though. Save your skin, it's the only one you have. 

Peace!

What parlez-vous do you speak?

 

 

Recently I received the Census 2021 form in the snail mail. It said right on the envelope that I was legally bound to respond to it. Don’t you love it when they send you a letter with that text right on the envelope? Well, at least it was not a traffic ticket. But I did go on Google to check that they were telling me was truth and not like the TV licence thing. Oh, that’s a different story altogether.

 

Anyway, I know census is important and I expected that they would be doing this online this time, so I didn’t mind filling out a form. It was slightly longer than I expected but not too bad. I struggled with the educational qualifications bit, no, no, I did go to school, honest. I went to school in India though, and they didn’t make it easy to map it to the British education system on this form. I had to search around a bit on the web to find out which options to choose for that and I am still not 100% sure that I clicked the right buttons.

 

The biggest issue was the language question. They asked what was my primary language and I got stuck. French and German were out, while I do know a few words of those, at most I can say my name and that I am hungry. Spanish is even less of a candidate as my favourite sentence in that has something to do with a tomato that’s reserved for the soup.

 

At the moment I speak English most of the time but then I live in England so why wouldn’t I? But I was not born speaking English. No, even though I was born in Delhi, I wasn’t born speaking Hindi either. My first words were probably “ma” and “da” like most children but after that I did learn Hindi because it happened to be my mother tongue.

 

But that was years ago and since then things have changed a lot. In addition to learning English in school, I fell in love with the habit of reading and Enid Blyton, Ian Fleming and Arthur Conan Doyle contributed to my education as much as my English teacher, Mr. Kaushik. Add to that my love for the action movies in English - James Bond, Mission Impossible, Broken Arrow - and you can understand why I am as comfortable in English today as I am in my mother tongue.

 

And that was my problem. The question didn’t call for my mother tongue or any kind of official language but “What language do you use most at home?” So, I tried to sort this out with a few questions to myself.

 

What language do I think in? Both. Depends on which topic I am thinking about but these days is 80-20, 80% English, 20% Hindi.

 

What language do I dream in? Again, both. It depends on the characters in my dream.

 

What language do I speak at home? Hmmm, considering that I live alone that is covered by the thinking language, but let’s say what language do I use with my family? That depends on the family member I am speaking with but the family members I speak to most are bilingual and which language we use depends on which language we start speaking in.

 

Ultimately, I answered Hindi based on the last two questions.

 

What language do I curse in? While I do curse fluently in both languages (and a couple more) when I am genuinely pissed off and need heavy curse words that would be unprintable, I resort to Hindi.

What language do I do my calculations in? I can do maths in English and I can count to ten in French and German, if you gave me a column of figures to add and I had to it in a hurry I would have to use Hindi numbers.

 

Problem solved. But it was quite an interesting analytical trip down the labyrinth of my brain. I usually enjoy those.

 

So, what language do you parlez-vous in?

 

Bullshit Omniscience Principle

This is a principle that I have come up with. In says that like God, "Bullshit is everywhere." Let me elaborate.

You must be familiar with the old quote, “It’s love that makes the world go round.” Some jaded people hold the view that “It’s money, not love, that makes the world go round.” Actually both are wrong.

 

My principle, Bullshit Omniscience Principle, says that "It’s not Love and it’s not Money, it’s the Bullshit that makes the world go round. If it weren’t for the bullshit that we constantly hand each other the civilization as we know it would cease to exist."

I know, I know, you are not convinced yet. I will prove it with examples from real life. But before that, let's define what constitutes bullshit. I'd say that anything which you say but don't mean, all the half-truths, all the white lies, all the things you say just to please someone...etc. etc. that's all bullshit. 

So when you go visit a friend couple and see their child for the first time, the first words out of your mouth are, "Oh, he's sooo cute! Cho chweet!", even when you are thinking, "God, they can use HIS photo to scare Gabbar Singh!". Bullshit! 

When you meet a friend's wife or girlfriend for the first time, afterwards you tell him, "Shefali seemed really nice!" Bullshit. Actually you were thinking, "Such a control freak! She's going to make his life a living hell. And doesn't he see those teeth or what?"

When ladkewale talk to the bride's father at the planning stage they always say, "We don't want anything..." Bullshit! They think the bride's father will give them more than they can ask for. 

When you are sitting in front of the interviewer for the job, your words are and I quote, "I don't worry about overtime, the work should be finished." But after you get the job, you make sure if you enter the office at 9:01 then you leave by 17:01 not 17:02 even if you have to shut down everything 20 minutes in advance. And any day when India is playing Pakistan is a day for you to fall sick. 

The interviewer is no fool either, he's paddling his own bullshit. "Our company has an excellent employee growth program.." when he's really thinking, "Yes, we will give you a score of C+ on appraisal and give you a 3% raise or tell you to go find another job." 

This is even more interesting in the case of girl candidates. She would serve up some bullshit wrapped up in nice words, "I am very focused on my career, I am hard-working, a team player and totally dedicated to my work." When actually, she's thinking, "My father is looking for a boy for me, as soon as the engagement is done, I will be out of here so fast there will be a hole in the air."

And the interviewer is thinking, "So what if she doesn't know anything about automation and answered 7 of the 10 questions wrong. She's cute, at least there will be some good-looking faces around here, the male-to-female ratio in the testing team is already so pathetic!" 

The examples are too many and time too little. But let's take one more. 

You are on a date with a beautiful girl with a figure like your favourite bollywood goddess. You say, "My god, you have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen!" Bullshit! You were looking at boobs, you don't even know what colour her eyes are! 

On the other hand, she is saying, "Awww, you are so sweet!" but thinking, "Thank god, I Googled him before coming on this date. If he didn't make so much money, I'd out of here like a scared rabbit...what a geek!"

Okay, I must stop here, as you can see there is absolutely no shortage of examples from our real life and I think I have made my point now. 

Let me summarize by saying that bullshit is the lubrication that keeps the wheels of the civilization turning smoothly, it's the glue that holds this world together. In fact if there's one thing that separates us from the Neanderthals it's our capacity to paddle bullshit all day, every day, ad infinitum. 

But you know, if you want some no-bullshit material you can always come read my blog. ;) 

An Effort - An Adventure - A Beginning

You didn't think I was just going to sit still, did you? So, finally after spending a truckload of time and money, I lauched my websites. I call them City Portals!

The idea for these websites kind of developed over time. I started working for a software giant in the year 2000 and in 2001 I had to go to the US for work. When I started living there I found that the best way to find anything in the new place was to search for it on the net (Google was not yet so popular so Googling was not a word). That method was quite successful in finding a lot of things from directions to deals on cellphones. Later, I moved back to Delhi and after a couple of years I moved to Poona.

Now Poona was again a new city and I needed to find a lot of things there starting from a house. To my dismay I found that my tested and tried method of searching on the net did not work in Poona. Simply because the few sites that were available had very little relevant information, mostly touristy kind of information and most of the time had not been updated in years! Over the first few weeks in Poona, after a few dozen searches I realized the sad truth - Poona was not online!

I don't know when the idea actually took form in my mind (but most great ideas start like that) but slowly I came to realize a fact following from the sad realization - If Poona was not online, I will need to take it online!

Easier said than done, right? Right! Even though I had the necessary web designing, web programming and online research skills, I did not have the massive amount of time that would be required to create a data-centric web portal that can be really useful to the general public. On top of that it has to be updated, constantly, otherwise it would fall into the same trap of presenting information that nobody could use.

Well, to cut the long story short, I hired some professionals, got the site developed and ApnaPune.Com (lovingly called APC) was born.

But what about Delhi? When I was trying to bring Poona city online, how could I forget my hometown, my city of birth - New Delhi? So, MeriDelhiMeriShaan.com (loving nickname - MDMS) was born to keep APC company.

On my birthday this year - (22nd of August for those of you who don't know), we launched both the sites, bringing them 'live'! Now, I am proud to say anybody can go to one of these sites and do a simple search to find out what movies are playing in the city on which theatres with their addresses, phone numbers and even user created reviews of the movies. There are many other categories in which information is available, readily and in a comprehensive manner.

The major source of my pride in the guarantee that the INFORMATION WILL ALWAYS BE CURRENT....as there is a dedicated team of people behind each site, people who collect information from the real world and put it online for anybody to search and use. This for me is the beginning of a dream! One day, every city in India will be online and part of this chain.

I encourage you to check the sites and let me know what you think. They are both geared towards the cities that they serve but we have created them in a way that they can offer something interesting and useful to any visitor no matter where they are coming from!

The links are:
www.meridillimerishaan.com
www.apnapune.com

Cooking up something new

Would you believe I never learned to cook? Culture being what it is in India, boys are not obliged to learn to cook, and believe you me, I had no interest in learning to cook in the time I could go out and play in the street! :-)

So, long story short, when I got a chance to go work in the US, I took it, but soon found out that the US of A is not very kind to strange foreigners who have chosen to be, stupidly it seems, vegetarian. Since I was working for an Indian company, hence getting money enough to buy food but not 30 days in a month in a restaurant (Indian restaurants are really pricey, it seems all over the world.), the next option was ...you guessed it, cook!

Don't be silly, if I can't afford to eat out how can I afford to employ a cook? I meant cook not as in noun but as in verb..cook for myself. So, that's how I started to learn to cook, willy-nilly as one would say, cook or starve kind of situation. Still being the lazyass I am and a computeraddict on top of that, I spent over a year in US, cooking, on an average, about 3 times a week. Rest of time there were other options like microwaveable pizza or french fries.

Cut to 2006. I moved to UK. And immediately found out the brand names for readymade, microwaveable pizza. I spent about 6 months, on that pizza, rarely making pulao when the mood struck me but otherwise spending more time in front of the computer than the stove.

But then, I made a trip home, (you know about that right, last March?), and Indians express their love and affection through food. So, not only my mom was making my favorite dishes but cousin sisters, friend's wives trying to fill the void for Indian food created in 6 months, in 10 days.

The result was that as soon as I got back and tasted the readymade pizza again, I was like, "Wha...! You must be kidding me?! This is horrible!!". Well, I simply had to start cooking and I did, courtesy of the British stores that carry quite a good variety of Indian spices, cooking sauces, pickles and even real Basmati rice.

Cut to now. Recently I have started "enjoying" the cooking. No, I never had that attitude that cooking is women's job, but I did consider it something akin to magic that they could make such delicious food and seemingly so easily. I had started to learn by trying to make aloo-paranthas (hmmm, how to explain that, well, round items, like roti, but stuffed with mashed potatoes that have spices also mashed in. Does that help?). They used to be my favorite item, (ate a lot in Frankfurt) and I could make them even before I left India. But even if it was man's job or woman's job, it was not my job. I was mystified by how can someone cook. I know it doesn't stand to logic, maybe like a person who can ride a bicycle can never understand why someone else can't. Believe me I burnt rice so many times in US, I had a name for it.

From magic it turned to work, a chore to performed in order to eat.
But now, with the help of the British stores and their wonderful Indian-imported cooking sauces, I can make food that makes at least my mouth water. And I can eat it without having to stretch a point that it's my own work of art so I have to eat it. Now, I have started experimenting a bit, no, not to invent new dishes, just to try and make the dishes I have not tried yet. Nothing fancy, or even difficult, even a housewife will sniff at me calling that an experiment, but things that used to mystify me. Like recently I made peas n' potatoes, another one of my favorite dishes.

Moral of the story is that I have come to the conclusion that everybody, and by that I mean every boy, should learn how to cook. It is a wonderful ...sport? activity? skill? pastime?..??...and being able to feed yourself, adds a very important part in your personality. I am a little sorry, very little because I don't believe in wasting time being sorry about things that have already happened, that I did not start learning to cook before, but I am also very happy that I have started! My next plan is to make 'kheer', a dessert made of milk. Not difficult, but very delicious! Why is it a target? Because I am still a lazyass and making that will mean cooking another item on top of the usual dinner that I cook every day now! :-)

Advertising in different cultures

I have just been commenting on Robi's blog. A post he had about Indian ads. I ended up saying a few things that I had once planned to use for a post of my own. If you like you can check his post and my comments here.

Also pasting it here so my readers can read it without jumping around.

Hi Robi,
First of all thanks for your comment on my blog.

This is what I had come to say when I saw this post. Struck me as quite interesting. I live in the UK so I don't get to see any Indian ads these days. Both the videos you have posted were hilarious; the first one I didn't watch after 59 seconds, it was kinda distasteful.

On the whole, I think, it is part of a copywriter's basic education to "know his audience" which would mean cultuaralizing (making my own word here for your concept) the ad campaign. I have lived in the US and seen their ad's, now I live in the UK and watch their ads, and of course, I have lived in India the most and seen a whole lot of their ads. I'd rank them, on the basis of personal preference, India then UK then US.

They are ALL tailored to their culture. If you ask me, American ads, 95% of them are just yak-yak, only words, either from an on-screen character (a celeb if possible), or voice over on images of the product or something like that. British ads have a strong weirdness factor in them, do something absurd on screen then relate it to the product with words.

Indian ads cover a lot of ground in variety and creativity. You can watch an ad for all of 59 seconds and not know what it is all about and then just see the name of the product in the last second and you are forced to nod and admit that it "makes sense".

I have been always interested in ads, they are quite fascinating in their novel, creative ways. I miss that living in a western country, here there is too much repetition of the same ads. In India, several new ads are released every week, (I am talking about TV spots), and it's fun to watch the new ones. Believe it or not quite a few ads earn their place in water-cooler chats and such.

So, coming back to your point, I think ads are already tailored to their target cultures - Americans want information as much as possible; if you convince an American with features and benefit you can force him/her to pick up the phone and order the item right away. Hence, the yak-yak ads.

British are nice, polite people with their straightforward mindset, genteel and gentle, always trying to act prim and proper. Hence the weirdness, once you got their attention with the absurd visual, feed them the information needed to make them buy.

Indian, it's simple, so many types of people, so many sub-cultures, so many mindsets, hence, so many styles of ads.

Well, that's my 2 bits, take it or leave it. :-)

Nice post, I think I am going to read some more of your posts. You have an interesting way of picking up on things and I like that.

Regards,
Sunil

Beauty is a sham!

“Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.”, we have all been hearing it since ages, haven’t we? I have too, but then I ask myself, “If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder then what the hell are all those beauty contests for?”

I used to watch as many of the beauty contests as I could. I still wouldn’t mind watching if I knew beforehand of the schedule. But I wouldn’t because I don’t read, watch or listen to the news.

There have been times when the judges have selected a beauty queen and I have said, “Well-deserved!” (Like Sushmita Sen winning Miss Universe), but there have always been times, when I have screamed, “Are you bloody kidding me!?” (No, I don’t say “bloody” that’s more of a British word and I have recently moved to Britain, but the word I was going to use is not so nice. Anyway…)

So you can say that since my idea of beauty differs from those judges, it really is in the eyes of the beholder. Are you sure?

There are common ideas of beauty, as a group of people or society at large would agree to what is beautiful and what not. That same group of people might agree on a 100 people and yet may have dissent about others.

Or, you could meet a girl you don’t find attractive at all but who is somebody’s girlfriend or somebody’s wife, the apple of their eye, the prized possession or whatever..(ack! The inscription on the knife in my back reads “Women’s Lib”). And you do see the kind of guys or girls who look to you like nobody can find them beautiful by any stretch of imagination and yet….for example I think Julia Roberts is ugly, but her fans would want to kill me a slow and painful death just for saying that. There is a quote that I read recently, it says “..in the right light, from the right point of view, in the right situation, everything is beautiful…”, something like that.

So what’s the deal here? Is it in the eyes of the beholder or is it something that can be defined?

I have been thinking about it lately, quite a lot, and I have come to the conclusion that leaving apart the extreme cases of individual preferences beauty is largely defined by society. Beauty is what a certain ratio of the population may possess. It has to be a group not so small that almost nobody has it, but it has to be something that not everybody has it. Let me take an example.

Big breasts are considered sexy and something to have, so much so that surgery and money come into play. But if all the women in the world had big breasts, it wouldn’t be sexy. If only a few hundred women in the world had big breasts, it wouldn’t be sexy. It’s something that’s possible to see in a man’s lifetime, but something that’s not common - that’s beauty!

I will take two examples to illustrate my point.

My friend N in Germany, has a preference of brunettes, dark-haired girls. I can’t understand why because I think blondes are so sexy! But, he argues, Germany is full of blondes, brunettes he doesn’t see so often. On the other hand, India is full of brunettes almost exclusively, and blondes….not really. Hence my fascination.

Second point is from a story I read in high school - Country of the Blind. Don’t ask me who wrote it, I am too old to remember that now. One peculiar thing that I never forget about that story is that the hero, who is the only person with eyes and a stranger in that land, falls in love with a pretty girl who is considered ugly in that society. The barometer of beauty in that land of the blind is skin. Yes, the smoother the skin of the girl, the more beautiful she is considered. I don’t remember the story in its entirety and I doubt that it has any statistics but I will give you even odds that smooth skin was something not every girl had in that country.

Beauty, as per my arguments, is nothing more than a statistically selected group of features, a standard defined by the society and thus, is completely worthless!

So, do you agree or do you want to cross swords with me on this one?

How popular are you?

This first made me laugh but as I read through the FAQ and other pages, I seriously admire these guys. Fantastic idea. Check it out here:
The Popularity Dialer .

Too bad they are only in the US. I could have used some help to boost my popularity.

Good work, guys!

Happy Birthday!

Today I'll talk about my personal life (yeah, like I talk about anything else on this blog). People who have been checking my blog lately would know that today is my birthday. So, as expected I am receiving the usual emails, phone calls, instant messages, text messages etc. etc.

At this time, I divide the people I know into 3 categories. First one, the people who I expect will remember and wish me, and they do. Second, people who wish me but I was not expecting them to. Also in this category should be people whose method of wishing exceeds my expectations like i was expecting an email but they tracked me down and wished me on phone in whatever corner of the world I was. Usually my parents are in this category. Since they have no business with the english calender, they cannot always remember the date and thus my date of birth holds no significance for them. Therefore I do not expect them to wish me or remember. This year they did, last weekend when I was talking to my mom on the phone she did remember, out of the blue and thus my parents did wish me.

Well, on to the third category - the people I think will remember but do not. Bad though it may sound, it is not really that bad. You always know how someone feels about you, every time you interact with them. The whole relationship does not boil down to the two words - "Happy Birthday", they are just bonus.

In this day and age when a man's circle is so big he can hardly remember the names much less remember dates for each one of his friends, associates and acquaintances, it's all done through reminder systems of some kind, paper or electronic, other than a few birthday you can never forget even if you tried (more on this later). But the very real and pressing stressful demands of real life can push it to the back of your mind. I have missed some myself, and I have had that happen to me.

I am very bad in that I don't remind anyone of my birthday, even if I am talking to them on that same day, I don't mention it.

Despite my cool, clearheaded and calm philosphy and understanding, sometimes I do feel a little disappointed. Not angry, just a little disappointed! Not about everybody, just a few people, very very few, in this category. I think once I have lost that little, tiny bit of disappointment, I will have attained enlightenment!

The Mot Juste

While working in Germany I learnt that the word for "shit" in German is "Scheiße" pronounced "sha-izay". But of course, it's a dirty word so people don't say it, especially not in the work-environment. So they say "shit" because that's not a dirty word, not in the German language. I have seen similar practices in other places other languages.

Translation is not the only subterfuge. There are replacements for the dirty words in the same language too. When I first went to US and started watching the TV shows, I was appalled by the language. My favorite type of TV shows are comedy sitcoms and they are mostly based on a family situation or friends and families. I was shaken out of my socks watching a young girl use words like "screw" in her father's presence! Believe me, I opened the dictionary and checked to see if there was any other meaning. No, it is the word that means "sexual intercourse".

The difference between "screw you" and "fuck you" is only that one can be used on the national television and the other has to be replaced by a beep.

There is a whole system of such replacements words that covers profanities, blasphemies, aggression and sometimes just plain nothing. For example, I'd really like someone to explain to me what is gained by replacing "ass" with "arse" when both are pointing to the same part of our anatomy.

My point is when everybody around us knows what the word we speak really stands for, what is the sense of this whole shocked-look-hand-on-the-mouth kind of righteousness.

Both sets of words mean exactly the same thing, convey the same meaning and yet...

I think Man must be the only animal in the animal kingdom who has two faces!

A culture of dishonesty

I am watching this TV ad for laser eye surgery, and it says that the surgery costs 395 per eye. "Per eye"! I think most people would want to fix both eyes while they are about it.

But it's not just that. It's in everything we do. Anywhere when you say something that will be read or heard by many people, honesty and factual information becomes secondary to appeal.

Prices are now always 19.95 even though it's 20 quid, they will appear as 19 to a prospective buyer, the visual appeal.

When a product is advertised the good points are embellished to the point where they are just short of falsehood. In case of several toothpastes and toothbrushes I suspect they go beyond falsehoods as long as it can't be challenged in court.

Take a good look at matrimonial ad's, words have different meanings, a "well-adjusted" girl may mean more than 2 months since she was released from the mental asylum.

This tendency is more apparent in case of businesses and corporations than individuals. Recently I had an occasion to buy a used car, and I buy a lot of things from the net, liked used books, and I find that descriptions from individuals usually contain the bad points as well as good. The system of feedbacks to create an honest reputation might have something to do with it.

A placement ad from a big company will talk all about the company's strength, it's ultra-techy image and a whole page full of things that will make it look like it's the only company to work for but there will be no mention of the fact that they laid off a big percentage of their staff in the Y2K crisis, and did it heartlessly, just before a big holiday. Or the fact that 20% of their staff resigns every year because of their policies, work environment or remuneration.

Come to think about it, how many of the "real people" ads have real people in them?

I can go on but I know I don't have to, you can think of countless such examples yourself.

Sounds like "Honesty is the best policy" is no longer the best policy. I am not a preacher of 100% of the truth 100% of the time, no culture could withstand that. On the other hand, as George Vth said, "Once people begin to deviate from the truth, they do not know where to stop!"

What is the result? The result is a common distrust. When a recruiter reads a CV he is prepared to grill the candidate to find out how much of that is true. When a candidate gets a call he always turns to his friends to ask "What kind of company is this?"

Think about the last time you tried a new product or service. Then think about the last time you tried a product or service without the recommendation of a friend or a source independent of the provider of that product or service. You might be surprised.

The ads, the press releases, the speeches, we have learned to take all of them with a grain of salt. We acknowledge them but don't accept them until we can verify ourselves.

The human race has come a long way from the caveman era. And this is the trend. What will happen in the future? Will we all become professional con-men? Will we never believe anyone who says, "Come on in, the water is fine!"?

Hypocrisy vs. Diplomacy

I have always prided myself that I am quite 'frank'. Frank to the point of being blunt. If I don't like something I say so. If I like something I say so emphatically! But even I cannot be 100% frank, 100% of the time. There are times when being honest and truthful goes against common sense. The most basic of instincts in Man, actually in all animals, is the instinct for self-preservation. That's why when dad asks, "Did you break the window?", the child's head is already shaking in negative even before the question is finished, never mind the truth!

Then there are times when speaking the blunt truth will hurt somebody's feelings.

So, when someone is reading you a poem that he, (or worse still, his girlfriend) wrote, you are in a pickle. Do you want to say, "Nice!" or do you want to say, "Man, she sucks!"? Of course, there is that theory about finding one thing to praise and ignore the bad. In this case that'd leave you the option to say, "Yellow paper, huh? Very nice!"

Enters diplomacy! The art of saying things you don't mean and saying things in a way that hurts the least. Or sometimes just not saying anything!

Examples:

"A diplomat always remembers a woman's birthday but never her age!"

"Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock."

"Diplomacy is thinking twice before saying nothing."

"A lover tries to stand in well with the pet dog of the house."

The long and short of it is that sometimes to get a favor, sometimes to be polite, to avoid hurting feelings, to save ourselves, to avoid expense...for various reasons, we find it necessary to be diplomatic.

Then what is hypocrisy? Not saying what you are thinking? Or saying the opposite of what you are thinking?

I have seen people who when they are talking to someone are all sugar and saccharine and just as the other person walks away they turn to me and say, "Oh, I hate that guy!" And I am thinking, 'What will he/she say when I walk away?'

I myself try to be diplomatic without being hypocritic. My friends know which one of them I like and how much. What habits of theirs I find interesting and which I hate. Sometimes I find it a fine line to walk. "When in doubt, tell the truth." I like to tell the truth but at the same time not try to hurt feelings. This second part I am still working on. :-)

One good thing about being frank is that people know where they stand with you and vice versa. A line of praise coming from me would mean something. A criticism from me would not be to just hurt their feelings. And because I speak bluntly they know I can take it when they need to speak freely with me.

According to Emerson:

"Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing."

I agree. And it is fun to see that astonishment!

I would like to end with a scene I find funny, it's a classic and I always think of it when someone says anything about being frank.

This is from the classic movie Wayne's World 2. Kim Basinger and Dana Carvey are sitting on the couch.

Kim says, "I am going to be frank!"

He replies, "O..kay! Can I still be Garth?"

Makes me laugh even to think about it.