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December 24, 2006

Midnight Mass

Went to midnight mass this evening. First time in years. I used to go in High School, with my parents. Jill would come along as well. We had a bit of a tradition. I’d go with her to the Methodist service near her house in West Grove then she would walk with me to the Catholic church in the center of West grove. We probably only did this three or four times but it felt like a real tradition.

Anyway, midnight mass in Singapore. Totally, completely the same as midnight mass in West Grove, PA. Cultural intangibles really do translate, from the weird yearly audio visual experiment (this year, the pastor opened the service by playing a fifteen minute outtake from some tinny 1950’s nativity movie but the speakers were iffy so we got at best every third phrase) to the part where we all mumbled through the same songs. It was indescribably great. Midnight mass is one of my favorite yearly occasions. Simchat Torah is the other. Both start at night. All really great prayer services start at night, after the hectic day has ended, at a point where everything from the outside seems formless and void. My parents lived in France before I was born. In the evenings, my mom used to march up a long hill and go to nocturnes at an abbey in Paris. I’ve forgotten the name of the abbey but I’ll ask her. Some of it stayed with me, I think, since I was busy gestating while she was climbing the hill.

Anyway, Merry Christmas, y’all.

L’Hayim!

Posted by jb at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

December 08, 2006

Morning Notes

Ran two innovation teams from an elementary school classroom in a semi-rural factory town near Mumbai yesterday.

I’ve become just a little bit obsessed with classified ads. Each entry, each “typist wanted, fresher needed” points to a mini drama. Maybe the office is expanding or maybe someone left in a storm of acrimony. I can see an applicant waiting in the morning, creasing the edge of the folder, checking to make sure that their shirt sleeves are straight. A man might be distracted by his tie. I can see a woman looking at her hands or checking her blouse. If the interview works, eight to ten hours of each day will change for a period of two months to twenty years. “Girl secretary needed.” “Petroleum engineer sought.” Some of the ads in the Mumbai newspaper have a 1950’s feel.

Everyone that I’ve spoken to in Mumbai refers to Mumbai as Bombay.

I’ve met several people who either grew up or spent their high school/ college years in America. They speak with robust American accents when speaking with us only to shift over to Indian accents when talking to others. It is probably not even conscious. Accents are probably important for comprehension. It might be that our brains take accent cues to fill in words that are not heard correctly. Aural sentences are probably reconstructed after the fact, starting with stressed words which leave gaps to be filled in by the listener. Accents might help us to detect word stress. Alternately, they might provide small cues or details to the non stressed words—something that helps the listener to backfill. Listening to heavily accented English in SE Asia can be a pain until my brain shifts and adjusts to the accent. I can’t really differentiate between Indian accents yet.

Our office in Singapore is English speaking but we have, on a full day, two American accents, two Chinese/ Singapore accents, one Indonesian/ Singapore accent and one Hong Kong English accent. Both Americans mumble and remove almost all word stresses. It is almost impossible, without a fine ear for American speech, to detect where one word ends and another begins. The Indonesian, Mainland Chinese, and Hong Kong accents each structure word stresses differently.

Even though Singapore is extremely small, there are two dominant accents, one lower class and one that is University educated. The differences between the two are strong, la. The speech patterns are also different.

I leave for Singapore tomorrow morning. Catherine (Indonesia) left last night. Everyone else flies out tonight. Brad and I are meeting Hari for dinner in downtown Mumbai this evening. I hope the internet is up and running this evening.

Posted by jb at 01:36 PM | Comments (2)