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Showing posts from July, 2022

The Dangers of Dumbbells

Should teenagers train with weights? I’ve come to realise that many folks think teenagers, especially girls, shouldn’t train with weights. And it’s no consolation to have found that even my parents felt the need to regale me with ballads of the irreversible damage weightlifting apparently inflicted on teens Fortunately, it’s been sorted. My parents have been re-educated and the gym supervisor has been “brought” around.  It panned out like this. I started using my dad’s dumbbells around six months ago and then, after we moved house three months ago, began to frequent the gym inside our new apartment complex. My dad and mom kept reiterating that lifting weights might not be a good idea, since I was get to ‘grow up’ fully and my muscles might not develop fully they way they should. I ignored them. Then the gym instructor started telling me and my dad quite loudly that I shouldn’t lift weights and should restrict myself to the treadmill. It was all very annoying. Thankfully, my parents did

A Bazar of Words

Lately, I've been trying to cut down on my hours unproductivity (read: binge watching youtube), to focus on more rewarding pursuits.  The other day, while learning French, I came across the words “bazar”, meaning “mess”. C'est le bazar translates to ‘it’s a mess’ and “ mettre le bazar" would translate to  " make a mess” or “mess things up” Bazar or baazaar is a word I’m familiar with. In Hindi, a “bazaar” or “baajaar” means “market”, a word which has its roots in Persian .  Although the alternative meaning is foreign to me, a  baazar is usually a jumble of shops, and I can see where the French are coming from. This has got me thinking. Are there many more Persian or other Asian loanwords in French and other European languages? I searched on Google for Persian loanwords in French and didn’t find much, though I found a ton of French loanwords in Persian , which is only to be expected. Since European nations industrialised much ahead of Asian countries, it was natura