Try to have a conversation with an Indian about doing something differently. Especially something connected with religion, as many things are. See how far that conversation gets.
This isn't theoretical, by the way. I have these conversations from time to time.
I don't know why I keep having them. Possibly a form of mild masochism.
I think as a child I also thought European attitudes more "vital" and open and free. Not of which I would care to try to substantiate.
Anyway, I still don't know what the problem was. And I don't think I've ever met anyone else who could relate to it. So I guess it must just be me. Most people passed their Hindi exame without fuss. And they weren't exactly geniuses.
I've thought of putting some effort into improving my Indian language skills, which would certainly be doable. But I lack motivation. Also, people don't speak very well here, so I'm not sure how well I would be understood if my language skills did improve.
I've never been much good at languages, so that probably didn't help. I also have a poor memory.
My impression of Indians I worked with was that Hindi was more of an Esperanto that few people spoke much, favoring their own particular dialect much more.
I had this girl as a guest last year. She said that she thought that the speakers were politically influential, hence the rise of the language. Sort of a court language that hit the big time.
You need people, scholars, to move to a new place and do their thing there. This is almost always done due to some political requirement as far as I've seen. So even if the "official" language is still in the minority, it'd be the only way to do science or trade or something like that. Eventually, the parents would want the kids to know their way around the world and prefer the official language over their own
My English is sounding clunky at the moment. Reaching daily English quota
Well, the masochistic discussions you have with blindly patriotic Indians I have everyday, when I care to, with Iranians who trash their identity because of some utopian vision of the west
You commonly hear "I had the misfortune to be born in Iran", as if every westerner is a millionaire with yachts and pretty women
There are higher standards of living of course. And a stronger correlation between talent and hard work with success.
But we are, if I'm not wrong because I was single digits years old then and didn't experience it, essentially in the 90's in Iran.
@FaheemMitha One of the Indian women I worked with, from your area, said she couldn't wait to get back to India, where she could work for an American company from home and hire servants for like $10 a day.
@Robusto Every once in a while there's a leak that shows government officials live like multimillionaires would except maybe with less money and fewer yachts. Then they have the nerve to show up on TV and claim "it is what it is" to soaring prices and the increasing wage gap.
A lot of these leaks were on Telegram I hear, so it was censored and replaced with an Iranian rip off of Telegram with the extra functionality of your special intelligence agent spying on you
You know, it's governments that are the problem. When I meet people from other countries and cultures I'm usually struck with how friendly and open they are.
BTW, someone actually suggested to me that Iran would be a good destination for cataract surgery (I've very bad eyes). Is that a reasonable idea, a bad idea, or a very bad idea?
There are other initiatives that help patients with rarer diseases. For example, as a dialysis patient, I never paid for a single blood test, and besides some very small fee, never paid for the dialysis treatment
@FaheemMitha We are apparently first place in "brain drain".
I was thinking either Singapore or Israel would be my best regional options, assuming I wanted to try outside India. Though India is a big place with a lot of hospitals.
Well, Tabriz has generally more doctors than Kurdistan. So many Kurds would turn up here for medical treatment. Does that entail the definition of medical tourism or are there additional criteria?
@M.A.R. No. I clearly need cataract surgery. I just want people I can trust to not mess up. I think my surgery would also not be completely straight-forward.
The healthcare system here is often under scrutiny. As far as I've seen doctors adhere to certain protocols and always inform the relatives of the risks of certain surgeries vs. the risks of not performing them
@Robusto Quite. For example, I asked a local doctor (a reasonable guy, actually), to give me details of his proposed procedure. He was proposing something slightly non-standard. He flatly refused. Seemed slightly affronted. He said "You should leave the details to the doctor".
Horrible accents, they obviously studied the medical phenomena in English (who doesn't), but basic communication skills, hmm. I guess they're sort of like the vocab machines you mentioned
We initially considered I take the transplant in Tehran or even foreign countries. We just did it here in Tabriz. Kidney transplants are very common though, compared to other rare stuff.
I actually talked to someone on U&L, who is in AU. He also had a kidney transplant. He was very positive about it. He said that if he'd been in India or the US he would have died.
@M.A.R. Were you being controlled by someone? I'm not familiar with the history, other than the Shah, of course. And the subsequent Islamic revolution.
@FaheemMitha well, sure. Like, I saw many poor people during the dialysis treatment. The real tragedy was they couldn't afford a kidney transplant because kidney donation in exchange for money has been legalized here. Most were very old people that were even almost content with being there though.
But the horror stories I hear about US healthcare seem rather implausible to me.
@FaheemMitha I'd say pretty successful, but I'm very young anyway. I was instructed to exercise early and often, and I do. The only thing that was kinda lacking was the social worker who'd console me psychologically or tell me since when it would be okay to toss and turn in sleep
Apparently due to UVJ, but one of the surgeons was skeptical at that. It didn't really matter much anyway, as long as it was not gonna interfere with the transplant
@FaheemMitha Yeah, it all depends. When I was working I always had good coverage, because I was a higher-paid employee. Now that I'm retired I'm on Medicare, and for the most part that is very good as well.
A gargantuan task, considering one side is xenophobic commie-leaning (even if they claim otherwise) unscientific old people that seem immune to reason and the other is, well, the zeitgeist.
@FaheemMitha Well I'm almost certain there are a lot of hidden gems in Islamic philosophy that never translated all that well into English and were largely ignored. Our 19th and 20th century scholars were taught abroad and returned with a Western framework, largely ignoring the huge potential that existed in centuries of religious philosphy
Whenever I try in that direction, I almost always hit a wall because the language is so incomprehensible to me, unless I study a few years of philosophy
Even our own clergymen seem to ignore them for the most part. Maybe considering the general population to be too simple for such ideas to become accessible, which is a grave mistake. Or maybe they've mostly forgotten them too except for a few copies in old libraries.
Shrug
They're still old xenophobic communist anti-science men though.
Hmm, confused myself with the order of modifiers on that one
@M.A.R. Philosophical language is really a deep dive. When I was in school sometimes I'd read the same paragraph three times and still wonder what I was reading about.
I am an author who have been writing a book for the last 6 months, that I consider my greatest work yet. There’s a word that I was going to use to describe a character who was going to become one of the main-characters in the story, that I totally forgot. It was supposed to be used to describe a ...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…