It’s All About the Context!

I learned the hard way that when you see bottled water in a supermarket in KR, don’t assume it’s still water. The more common form of drinking water here in sparkling – which I hate. So now I’ve learnt (thanks to my buddy volunteer, Faiz) that if I need to buy water, I should check the label to see if it has what I read as “He” in front of what looks like “Ra”. The sparkly one only has the Ra on it. And naturally, both bottles look pretty much similar - just for the sake of irony!

It’s very interesting to buy things purely by context. The other day, I bought what I think looks like cooking oil. It has sunflowers on it, which makes sense, and it was next to something that I could read as “olive”. I assume with the context, it must be oil. I’ll let you know if the next time I make unda, it tastes funny!

But it really does make you think right? When I was young, I wanted to imagine what it’d be like to be blind, so I blindfolded myself and tried to find my way around the house. Lasted 30 seconds, and I ended up a bruised knee. Makes you wonder who the real handicaps are right? 

This is the first time I’m in a place where literally, I have NO CLUE what’s around me or what people are saying. Thanks to Faiz, I’ve so far been able to get food etc. On Saturday I’m hoping to venture out on my own – let’s see what that brings. But I surely can now sympathize – neigh, empathize – with people who don’t understand English in our world of elitist English-ism.

Today, when Faiz and I were walking back into the office after lunch, he complimented one of the staff workers about his haircut. Now this dude is pretty animated and likes to use his hands. I have no idea what he was talking about, but at some point he pointed to my hair, and then gestured something resembling cutting with his fingers, and a few minutes later, the gestures went wild. I heard “keel” and he made a fist and started pretending to stab his neck. I still have no freakin clue what the hell that conversation was about (and why it was my head he pointed to before “keel”ing!) but I burst out laughing at my situation in general!

Almost at the end of week 1!

PS: If you're reading this on FB, you probably can't see the pictures! So visit unplanned30s.blogspot.com. Hopefully some more interesting pictures to come over the weekend!