by Rish Chaudhuri

Knowing Many Languages Is Important

Over the summer, I ventured to the distant shores of Indonesia to do my internship. While in the taxi on the way home from the office, I happened to look at a movie billboard advertisement. It was pretty routine stuff – the usual murder mystery that seems like the type that is predictable after 20 minutes. But what caught my attention was the actor’s name. Now I can imagine most of you must be recovering from your summer stupor and rather grumpy, especially not in the mood to listen to the cultural ramblings of a foreign kid. But bear with me. The actor’s name was Chut Keke. It just so happens that in Hindi, Chut means fucker, and keke is very similar to the Hindi word for feces. So in the mind of the Rish, the sign said “Random Murder Mystery, starring Fucker Shit”. I almost died laughing in the cab, and the taxi driver’s legendary expressions of perplexity at my impromptu histrionics did not help matters at all. God bless Indonesia!

Before Embarking On A Long Distance Flight, Pray Your Socks Off For A Good Neighbor

As I live in Singapore, I have to travel a long way to get to Penn, which I’m not tremendously happy about. Sometimes this journey consists of 2 flights. This time the first leg of my journey required me to take a 13 hour flight to Amsterdam. When I got to my seat, the seat next to me was empty. Good times were ahead. But then arrived the neighbor from hell. For the purposes of this article let us call him: Stinky Beast. Stinky Beast, was as his name suggested, very stinky, and very beastlike. Every 20 minutes, he emitted a wonderful concoction of the different things he had eaten during the course of the day. Each emission evoked a different dish, but of the most terrible kind. Worse was yet to come. During the middle of the flight, while Stinky Beast was sleeping, he leaned over to my side and unleashed the most deadly of weapons: Tobacco Breath Of Doom. My senses were pulverized to shreds, like the clubbing of a baby seal. Retching in agony, I begged the Good Lord for mercy. And mercy did come, in the shape of the airhostess waking up Stinky Beast for ice cream. As sad as it may sound, this was a victory. In the Fartolympics, the score was definitely Cherry Garcia 2 Chicken Curry 0. It is a miracle how I got out alive. From this day forth, I vehemently oppose gassing as a method of warfare.

Rick Astley Will Win In The End

Imagine someone with Tourette’s who RickRoll’d people instead swearing. Well, that was the person who worked in the cubicle. The office was big on Karaoke, so I guess the dude was preparing his A game. At first I thought he was talking to me, and he raised some interesting points:

1. I’m not a stranger to love (true)
2. He knew the rules, and so did I (vaguely familiar with the rules)
3. He was never going to make me cry (Its hard to make me cry, and he was a nice guy as well)
4. He was never going to run around and desert me (There is little space between the cubicles, running is difficult. As for the desertion, it was nice to know if we were hypothetically friends of some sort, he wouldn’t ditch me. Bros before Ho’s)

But then I realized that he was repeating the same things over and over again, and I was being constantly Rickroll’d. They say when you can’t beat them, join them. So I became a convert and joined in intermittently. Sure made Excel a hell of a lot more fun!