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Crikey, it's a curved ball

CRIKEY

“England and United States are two countries separated by the same language”, this wisecrack is credited to George Bernard Shaw. Now with English as the language of Global business, IT, Science  & Technology , Air Traffic Control and many other things where people across countries have to collaborate to deliver , more countries are separated by the same English than ever before!
I clearly remember my time as an offshore Lead  for a support project for a client based in USA. We used to have our routine weekly status updates over the phone with the client’s Project Manager on site. Even if his American drawl was tolerable, he always had me scratching my head with his slang. One favorite exclamation of his  used to be “it’s a curved ball !”.  Exasperated, I called up an Indian in his team to ask what this darned  ‘curved ball’ was.  I was told that this was akin to our “googly” or the “wrong’ un” and is drawn from baseball lingo!!.
Handling such curved balls in face-to-face meetings with senior management from the clients’ side is different  from telephonic conversations however. You have to perfect the art of keeping your face  neutral and look searchingly at the others’ faces to get some clue as to what is being said. It is an art and certainly  not for the chicken-hearted. 
Unlike India where the Assistant  cannot joke in front of the Manager and the Manager cannot joke in front of the General Manager and none in front of the top dog,  humor is common in office conversation and in meetings in the west __what is humor in conversations without the slickly deployed slang?
Even before I started my recent stint in Australia I had decided to  make clean breast of the fact that  I do not get the slang and not allow any to pass without getting to know its full import and context.  I would promptly write down in my notepad any such Australianism and would follow up with my Australian counterpart if it did not make sense to me.
At the end of the Project I had quite a collection. This list of always-wanted-to-know-but-was-afraid-to-ask will come in handy for anybody Australia bound under a Work-Visa.
-         - Dinkum :  Fair. 
-          -To push shit uphill – do something useless
-          -Like the King of Siam said – something somebody said in meetings early in the Project  but  had now become vague without any follow up.
-          -Fungus face -  hairy faced
-          -Knock down – getting introduced  . ( Haven’t  knocked down with him yet )
-          -Fun bags – Women’s breasts
-          -Liquid laugh – Vomit
-          -Like a pickpocket in a nudist camp – confused
-          -Make feathers fly – cause a commotion
-          -Misery guts – unhappy person.  “Put a smile on your dial, you misery guts”.
-          -Writing War & Peace – long documentation . We end up writing War & Peace.
-          -Tickets on oneself – to have a high opinion of oneself.
-          -Like a pimple on a pumpkin – very obvious
-          -Keen as mustard – very enthusiastic
-          -Bottleshop -  shop selling liquor
-         - Long neck – large bottle of beer , 750 ml.
-          -Lob in – arrive. He just lobbed in.
-          -Piece of piss – easy task.
-          -Piss & wind – no substance. He is all piss & wind
-          -Knock back – refusal.  It was all knock backs today.
-          -Knocked off work -  stopping work. “I am knocking off now” , meaning I am stopping work for the day.
-          -Laughing gear – the mouth
-          -When the crow shits – payday
-          -Veg out – not to do anything, just sit in front of TV
-          -Out designing the Arch -  Working on something that would eventually end in disaster.  Where is Peter B? He is out designing the 'Loch Ard'.   ‘Loch Ard’ is the ship that set sail from England in 1880s and perished in the treacherous coast south of Melbourne. It just had two survivors.
And finally
-          - Crickey ( made famous by Crocodile  Hunter Steve Irwin) … an expression of exclamation.

Of the Indian-isms that they find funny, the top spot goes to,

“Go for a toss” , like in “The design will go for a toss. “

The word ‘bifurcation’ is something they had not heard before. Not surprising in a country where there is no clamor for power hungry politicians to bifurcate states

When I mentioned in passing to my Aussie friend who was inquiring about my family that my daughter was married off last year , he found the expression ‘marrying off’ funny , again not surprising in a society where children stop living with their parents at the age of 18 and start live-in relationships.

I am sure they would be just as confounded with words and phrases like ‘Dearness Allowance’, ‘time-bound promotions’, ‘regularization’ etc.















  






  




Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 20, 2021 at 1:22 AM

    Loved this article, Ramanan! Very informative, and humorously written🙏🏻🙏🏻

    ReplyDelete

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