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Indeed! I seem to recall attempting a little ribaldry myself on that very point in the thread to which you refer.
Yes, I think so. When I was planning my trip to Australia, all the travel brochures used "Uluru, formerly Ayres Rock" and told us not to expect to be allowed the climb it.
'fess, Jo - is there any country you have not yet graced? I'm jealous
Well I never made it to see Uluru in all its glory!
Actually the list is humungous. It starts with India, China, the rest of Asia, all of South America and goes on forever ....
I think I was born of gypsy blood, if I don't travel regularly I start to get the jitters. I even had to seek out jobs which allowed me to travel (I've been to every city in Britain except Norwich). I once went to Sweden for the day (from Denmark), so I could tick it off my list. You should pity me, poor unsettled soul that I am!
25 things that prove you're a Bombayite......if you're proud of being one.
1.) You think of Chowpatty & Juhu beaches as "nature."
2.) You say "town " and expect everyone to know that this means south of Churchgate.
3.) You speak in a dialect of Hindi called 'Bambaiya Hindi', which only Mumbaikars can understand
4.) Your door has more than three locks.
5.) Rs 500 worth of groceries fit in one paper bag.
6.) Train timings (9.27, 10.49 etc.) are really important events of life.
7.) You spend more time each month travelling than you spend at home.
8.) You call an 8' x 10' clustered room a Hall.
9.) You're paying Rs 10,000 for a 1 room flat, the size of a walk-in closet and you think it's a "steal."
10.) You have the following sets of friends: school friends, college friends, neighborhood friends, office friends and yes, train friends, a species unique to Mumbai - ???.
11.) Cabbies and bus conductors think you are from Mars if you call the roads by their Indian name, they are more familiar with Warden Road, Peddar Road, Altamount Road and the like.
12.) Stock market quotes are the only other thing besides cricket which you follow passionately.
13.) The first thing that you read in the Times of India is the "Bombay Times" supplement.
14.) You take fashion seriously.
15.) You're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.
16.) Hookers, beggars and the homeless are invisible.
17.) You compare Mumbai to New York's Manhattan instead of any other cities in India.
18.) The most frequently used part of your car is the horn.
19.) You insist on calling Mumbai as Bombay, CST as VT, and Sahar and Santacruz airports instead of Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport.
20.) You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.
21.) Your idea of personal space is no one actually standing on your toes.
22.) Being truly alone makes you nervous.
23.) You love wading through knee deep mucky water in the monsoons, and actually call it 'romantic'.
24.) Only in Mumbai, you would get Chinese Dosa and Jain Chicken.
25.) You call traffic policemen as 'Pandus" and expect out of towners to understand that.
NY'ers have train friends too! I pity people who have to drive and don't.
I presented the email without comment, whilst realising that almost any large city with an effective public transportation system would have 'train friends' (or tram friends or even bus friends). So I presumed that would be the case in NY. And yes, I pity those whose journey to work has to be the cocooned (entombed) loneliness of the long distance driver. As an alternative, however, I have often commuted by bicycle, and whilst it is a journey undertaken alone, there seems to be a liveliness to it that a car can never achieve. (Plus, of course, you give yourself many pats on the back for environmental awareness, economy and health benefits!)
cheer
the sunshine warrior
ps. Bombay train friends usually engage in repeatable activities like playing cards or singing bhajans (hymns).
I think all places on the globe offer nuances of pronunciation - that's probably why you've had so many replies!
Anyway, different pronunciations of place names is rife in Australia - and I'm not referring to the often tough to pronounce Aboriginal names. (Try the famous "Woolloomooloo" for instance! The "common" (and therefore correct?) pronunciation is "wool-a-mar-loo").
We Western Australians can instantly identify an outlander by their mispronunciation of the towns of Derby (Derby us, Darby them) and Albany (Al-bunny us, All-bunny them). The one that always gets them however is the town of Toodyay - we say 2-jay, "they" just mangle it!
Victoria (and Tasmania I think) persist in saying "cassle" - when we know they really mean to say "carssle" (for castle).
Just for a laugh, how about these: Innaloo (a suburb of Perth, pronounced exactly as it looks - unfortunately!), Upper Swan (also in Perth. By the way, what IS the word for intimate but unnatural relations with a swan?) and Blackbutt (one in both Queensland and New South Wales - named after a type of tree).
Cheers
Stales
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