Dead Ringers and Big Kahunas

Well this was my Phrase for the week, and I thought of posting it cos this is a common phrase I've heard often.

Meaning
An exact duplicate.

Origin
We use phrases all the time without really giving their meaning a great deal of thought. You probably know that dead ringer means exact duplicate, but why is that? To a non-English speaker the two terms appear to have nothing in common. So, why dead; why ringer?
Let's first dispense with the nonsensical idea that's sometimes put forward as the origin of this phrase, i.e. that it refers to people who were prematurely buried and who pulled on bell ropes that were attached to their coffins in order to attract attention, how does the premature burial derivation of 'dead ringer' explain why it means 'exact duplicate'? There's no evidence for this idea.

A ringer is a horse substituted for another of similar appearance in order to defraud the bookies. This word originated in the US horse-racing fraternity at the end of the 19th century. The word is defined for us in a copy of the The Manitoba Free Press from October 1882:
"A horse that is taken through the country and trotted under a false name and pedigree is called a 'ringer.'"
It has since been adopted into the language to mean any very close duplicate. As a verb, 'ring' has long been used to mean 'exchange/substitute' in a variety of situations, most of them illegal. From the same period is the term 'ring castors', meaning to surreptitiously exchange hats. Castors, or casters, were hats made from beaver fur. From the 20th century we have the Australian phrase, 'ring in the gray (or knob)', meaning to substitute a double-sided penny for a genuine one. Coming more up to date we have 'car ringing', which is the replacing of the identification numbers on a stolen car with those from a genuine (usually scrapped) vehicle.

So, that's ringer; what about dead? Dead, in the sense of lifeless, is so commonly used that we tend to ignore its other meanings. The meaning that's relevant here is exact or precise. This is demonstrated in many phrases; 'dead shot', 'dead centre', 'dead heat', etc.
So, 'dead ringer' is literally the same as 'exact duplicate'. It first came into use soon after the word ringer itself, in the US at the end of the 19th century. The earliest reference I can find that confirms the 'exact duplicate' meaning is from the Oshkosh Weekly Times, June 1888, in a court report of a man charged with being 'very drunk':
"Dat ar is a markable semlance be shoo", said Hart looking critically at the picture. "Dat's a dead ringer fo me. I nebber done see such a semblence."

OK 'Big Kahuna' has nothing to do with 'Dead Ringer' but I came across the origins of 'Big Kahuna' and thought of posting it too and I liked the pic of the Kahuna. :0) Blogger is giving me trouble with the pics again, so I guess I'll post it later. :0(

"Big kahuna" is a common slang term for the person in charge of something. It comes from the Hawaiian word kahuna, meaning shaman or wizard.

Another Bomb Blast…

Just heard about another bomb blast in Pannipitiya 04 people including Deputy Chief of Staff, Sri Lanka Army, Major General Parami Kulathunga, were killed due to the explosion. More details about this can be found here.

I’m seriously getting worried about what’s happening to our country… Just last week a HR personnel came to our building to get the list of people in here so that incase of a bomb blast in the building they will know who is missing… When we leave home in the morning we don't know whether we'll be coming home in the evening...

I only realized how much the situation in the country is affecting my thinking and how paranoid I’ve become when, recently I saw a package on the ground at church and for a second I actually wondered if it could be a bomb and started to think of what would happen if that bomb were to go off with all of us in church… (thankfully after mass, a man near by picked it up and left)

Right now we're supposed to be in a Cease Fire Agreement with the terrorist group LTTE, but even when they had declared war I don't remember 3 bombs going off within one month... I think it's about time we declared 'war' and got it over with.

God will find you!

This story was emailed to me and it's supposed to be true according to Truth or Fiction a sight dedicated to finding out whether the common emails we receive are true or fiction. (It's pretty cool)

Father John Powell, a professor at Loyola University in Chicago, writes about a student in his Theology of Faith class named Tommy:

Some twelve years ago, I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith. That was the day I first saw Tommy. My eyes and my mind both blinked. He was combing his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders. It was the first time I had ever seen a boy with hair that long. I guess it was just coming into fashion then. I know in my mind that it isn't what's on your head but what's in it that counts; but on that day I was unprepared and my emotions flipped. I immediately filed Tommy under "S" for strange... Very strange. Tommy turned out to be the "atheist in residence" in my Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father/God. We lived with each other in relative peace for one semester, although I admit he was for me at times a serious pain in the back pew.

When he came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a cynical tone, "Do you think I'll ever find God?" I decided instantly on a little shock therapy. "No!" I said very emphatically. "Why not," he responded, "I thought that was the product you were pushing." I let him get five steps from the classroom door and then called out, "Tommy! I don't think you'll ever find Him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!" He shrugged a little and left my class and my life.

I felt slightly disappointed at the thought that he had missed my clever line -- He will find you! At least I thought it was clever. Later I heard that Tommy had graduated, and I was duly grateful. Then a sad report came. I heard that Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came to see me. When he walked into my office, his body was very badly wasted and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy. But his eyes were bright and his voice was firm, for the first time, I believe. "Tommy, I've thought about you so often; I hear you are sick," I blurted out. "Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It's a matter of weeks." "Can you talk about it, Tom?" I asked. "Sure, what would you like to know?" he replied. "What's it like to be only twenty-four and dying?" "Well, it could be worse." "Like what?" "Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real biggies in life."

I began to look through my mental file cabinet under "S" where I had filed Tommy as strange. (It seems as though everybody I try to reject by classification, God sends back into my life to educate me.) "But what I really came to see you about," Tom said, "is something you said to me on the last day of class." (He remembered!) He continued, "I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, 'No!' which surprised me. Then you said, 'But He will find you.' I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time. (My clever line. He thought about that a lot!) "But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, that's when I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven. But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try anything for a long time with great effort and with no success? You get psychologically glutted, fed up with trying. And then you quit Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn't really care about God, about an after life, or anything like that. I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable.

I thought about you and your class and I remembered something else you had said: 'The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.'" "So, I began with the hardest one, my Dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached him. "Dad." "Yes, what?" he asked without lowering the newspaper. "Dad, I would like to talk with you." "Well, talk." "I mean . It's really important." The newspaper came down three slow inches. "What is it?" "Dad, I love you, I just wanted you to know that." Tom smiled at me and said it with obvious satisfaction, as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him. "The newspaper fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things I could never remember him ever doing before. He cried and he hugged me. We talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning. It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tear s, to feel his hug, to hear him say that he loved me." "It was easier with my mother and little brother. They cried with me, too, and we hugged each other, and started saying real nice things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years. "I was only sorry about one thing --- that I had waited so long.

Here I was, just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to. "Then, one day I turned around and God was there. He didn't come to me when I pleaded with Him. I guess I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop, 'C'mon, jump through. C'mon, I'll give you three days, three weeks.'" "Apparently God does things in His own way and at His own hour. But the important thing is that He was there. He found me! You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for Him." "Tommy," I practically gasped, "I think you are saying something very important and much more universal than you realize. To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to find God is not to make Him a private possession, a problem solver, or an instant consolation in time of need, but rather by opening to love. You know, the Apostle John said that. He said: 'God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him.' Tom, could I ask you a favor? You know, when I had you in class you were a real pain. But (laughingly) you can make it all up to me now. Would you come into my present Theology of Faith course and tell them what you have just told me? If I told them the same thing it wouldn't be half as effective as if you were to tell it." "Oooh.. I was ready for you, but I don't know if I'm ready for your class." "Tom, think about it. If and when you are ready, give me a call." In a few days Tom called, said he was ready for the class, that he wanted to do that for God and for me. So we scheduled a date. However, he never made it. He had another appointment, far more important than the one with me and my class. Of course, his life was not really ended by his death, only changed.

He made the great step from faith into vision. He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of man has ever seen or the ear of man has ever heard or the mind of man has ever imagined. Before he died, we talked one last time. "I'm not going to make it to your class," he said. "I know, Tom." "Will you tell them for me? Will you ... tell the whole world for me?" I will, Tom. I'll tell them. I'll do my best." So, to all of you who have been kind enough to read this simple story about God's love, thank you for listening. And to you, Tommy, somewhere in the sunlit, verdant hills of heaven --- I told them, Tommy, as best I could. If this story means anything to you, please pass it on to a friend or two. It is a true story and is not enhanced for publicity purposes.

With thanks, Rev. John Powell, Professor, Loyola University, Chicago

Barrier Free Communication

I just watched a movie called “Who gets the house”, I don’t think it’s a very famous movie but it had a really interesting concept.

In it this kid develops a theory called “Barrier Free Communication”. He believes that we only hear what we want to hear and that in the first instance itself if we don’t like someone or have some kind of prejudice against that person, we’ve already decided that we won’t like what’s being said and don’t really listen. So he decides to test this theory by blind folding two people who hate each other and changing their voices through a ‘voice emulator’ to sound like someone they like. Then he tells them to get to know each other and try to find things in common, just no personal questions which would give-a-way the identity of the other person. Since they heard the voice of someone they liked they started on a positive note and went on to realize that they had things in common. So finally when the blind folds are removed the enemies became friends. Using this method he managers to get his parents who are on the verge of divorce to really listen to each other and make up…

Obviously this wouldn’t work with everyone and sometimes there are real reasons for people to dislike each other, but I feel that as the father said at one point “We see what we choose to see”, if we’re looking for reasons to dislike someone we’ll find them and vice versa. Often I have made up my mind about people way before really getting to know them, and stuck to those prejudices in spite of this person doing things proving the contrary.

Of course you can’t go through life wearing “rose tinted glasses” I learnt that lesson the hard way soon after I started uni and realized that everyone is not genuine in their intentions… At the same time you can’t got through life in “black tinted glasses” either. I find myself sometimes failing to acknowledge the good things that people I don’t like do… I guess the secret to a happy life is to find the correct balance and try to look at the world objectively…

I was just reminded that I should start to look at the bright side of life again. I know that my profile says this about me but I seem to have forgotten it due to the frustrations of life…

What kind of Rocker are you?

Well at Granny's I came across the "What kind of puppy are you" when I followed the link, I found this quiz and had to try it. ( after all I've had a secret desire to be a Rocker for a so long :0) )

So this is what it said about me...

You Are a Chick Rocker!

You're living proof that chicks can rock You're inspired by Joan Jett and the Donnas And when you rock, you rock hard (Plus, you get all the cute guy groupies you want!)

What Kind of Rocker Are You?

Cool... So now I can give up engineering and start up a band :0) Unfortunately I have no idea who Joan Jett and the Donnas are!!!! I think I'm inspired my Bon Jovi!

While checking this out I remembered a photo I took at Madam Tussad's UK which I like to call "Rock chick me" and thought of posting it here :0) Oh I'm standing next to Freddi Mercury from Queen and Jimmy Hendrix unfortunately they can't be seen clearly here.

Water

I went to see the movie “Water” yesterday. It’s a Hindi movie filmed in Sri Lanka, set in the 1930s during the rise of the independence struggles against British colonial rule. The film examines the plight of a group of widows forced into poverty at a temple in the holy city of Varanasi. We see this world of widows in the ashram through the eyes of Chuihya (Sarala), a eight-year-old widow sent to live there after her husband dies. (I just checked on the net and was appalled to find that even today people still give girls as young as 7 or 8 in marriage to much older men in many parts of the world… Often due to poverty the parents of the girls agree)

I had a few nice pics from the movie but had trouble attaching them today, I'll try that later. You can click here for a few photographs.

Eight-year-old Chuyia (Sarala) first appears at the moment her father tells her she's been widowed. Though she hardly even remembers being married, she is suddenly cast into an awful lifelong limbo, sent to live in an ashram with 14 other widows, all dispised by "respectable" citizens. Sarala’s acting was Brilliant. She´s cute, energetic and the perfect choice for the role. In real life, Sarala is a Sri Lankan and cannot speak a word of Hindi. Her work in Water is the complete memorization of lines from their sounds. Water was so very moving and at one point I had tears in my eyes. Despite the depressing theme of the movie, there are moments of comedy and great love.

It really did make me think of how far we women have come… I know that still there are many women suffering in silence due to the many injustices of society, but I was thanking God that I was born in this century and place where we are given almost equal status. I say almost cos still especially in the field of engineering, I feel that there are many who think that we cannot measure up.

There is one quote which really struck a cord. As Chuiya enters the Ashram, one of the widows tell her "A wife is part of her husband while he is alive, and when husbands die, god help them." What I noticed was that these women themselves had just given up and accepted their fate. It took the arrival of little girl to ask questions as to why they were treated this way… That’s how it is with many injustices in society… It always gets set because the victims choose to submit unquestioningly. I know that this is much easier said than done and if I had been born in a different century in a different place I wouldn’t know what exactly I would have done either…

Live Life to the Fullest...

Start living now. Stop saving the good china for that special occasion. Stop withholding your love until that special person materializes. Every day you are alive is a special occasion. Every minute, every breath, is a gift from God. - Mary Manin Morrissey

You've got to sing like you don't need the money, love like you'll never get hurt. You've got to dance like no one is watching. It's gotta come from the heart, if you want it to work. - Susannah Clark

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. - Helen Keller

Corporate Ettiquette

Yesterday I participated in a Corporate Ettiquette Workshop held at a local hotel organized by my company.

I found most of it very useful, especially how to eat a 4 course meal. Being from a country where we eat our rice and curry with our fingers, I’ve always got confused with all the knives, spoons and folks. Now those of you who are from other countries, please don’t look shocked, even eating with the fingers is an art. I’ve seen people who are not used to it eating with their fingers with a disastrous results!

We even had a hour on wines and how to choose them and tasting of course :0) (they unfortunately didn’t give enough to get drunk ;0) )

What is good manners anyway? I guess it’s the accepted norms of doing things… It’s good to know the proper ettiquette when at formal business occations, but overall I believe if you’re considerate about others and do things most of the manners would come naturally anyway.

Something our presenter said got me thinking… She was talking about how we’re always acting, especially in unfamiliar surroundings and how good manners is simply getting used to acting in a role. We do ‘act’ different roles around different people don’t we? In my case I act professional, serious and business-like at work, with close friends I just ‘let go’ and do the craziest, wildest things :0) I behave myself a bit more around other and am the ‘baby’ at home… Hmmmm… so which is the real me? Is this acting or simply just different parts of me? (I prefer to think it’s the latter)

Lowest paid CEO

While on the topic of Steve Jobs I thought it was rather interesting to note his salary as the CEO of Apple. $1 per annum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and I thought my salary was low...) Of course he did get other perks such as a $90 million jet :0)

You can read more about him here.

Connect the Dots...

I recently came across the Address by Steve Jobs, CEO of AppleComputer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at the university's 114th Commencement on Sunday 12th June 2005 in Stanford Stadium... I felt I could really relate to part of it, and so decided to post it here incase you haven't seen it.

"I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and hiswife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get onegood meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Let me give you one example:Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful,historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never droppedout, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

Looking back on the few years that I've been on this planet, even I am able to "connect the dots" some of the worst experiences I had when looking back seem to have helped me be who I am today... (ok maybe not on the same scale as Steve Jobs by in my own way)

So now I'm giong to trust in God about this MBA and believe that whatever happens will be for the best. :0)

Dirty Dancing

I just got the collector’s edition DVD of Dirty Dancing the movie, which is an all time favourite of mine. Thanks M. I love the soundtrack of this movie, especially She's Like the Wind," written and sung by Swayze; "Hungry Eyes," sung by Eric Carmen; and "(I've Had) The Time of My Life," sung by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, which won an Oscar for Best Original Song. Actually 'Time of my Life' is an all time favourite of mine.

What I love about the movie is the music and dance sequences. The plot is good but I think this is the best dancing movie ever. This time I just noticed that they’re diong the Salsa. So yesterday was a day of Salsa… on my own. :0) I was dancing with the movie and was trying to remember the steps I learnt some time back. I miss dancing, (only dancing I do these days is in my bedroom to loud music) must start classes again.

I remember watching this as a kid and going crazy over Patrick Swayze (Johnny Castle) I watched the last dance sequence over and over again.

This movie brings back many memories... This was the movie which turned me into a dancing maniac :0)

Cambridge Gates Schol Application Rejected

I just got to know that I have not been short listed for the Cambridge Gates Scholarships. Ok I knew this was a big strech and I didn't really expect it, but I couldn't help feeling a bit disappointed after seeing it in Black and White. :0(

Still waiting for loan approval and College place from Cambridge...

Better Late than never…

I have a confession to make… I never learnt to ride a bike… until a few weeks ago that is. As a kid I was very unsporty and when I fell off the bike I never got back on again.

So imagine my dismay when I realized that it’s the main mode of transport for students in Unis and especially at Cambridge. So I thought ‘better late than never’ and started to learn with my cousin next door. I was quite happy with my self cos within a month I was able to keep my balance and had not fallen once…until yesterday. My problem area is my turns, I take them too early or too late. Yesterday when attempting a turn a car came from no where and in my excitement, I landed in the flower bed near by. (luckily I’m still in one piece and so were the plants. My body does ache a bit though.) Imagine me sitting in the flower bed and bike on me… My coach was just laughing his head off, not helping me, ofcourse I don’t blame the guy I was having a fit of laughter too. That was definitely a ‘funniest home video’ moment! Thankfully no one had a camcorder and the road was deserted.

I got back on the bike and we continued with no more mishaps for the day. :0) Just thought of sharing this funny moment with everone.

Management Lessons

This morning I met one of our company's cleaning ladies in the tea room. She asked me if I was a Catholic and said she had noticed the time Infant Jesus statue on my deskwhile cleaning. We had a little chat I learnt her name; Josaphine...

This actually reminded me of an email I had read entitled Management lessons and thought of posting it here.

Brittany, a college sophomore working toward a degree in business administration, was one of those people who tested well. So, when one of her professors opened class by announcing a pop quiz, the honor student wasn’t worried.

She always came to class prepared—and as usual, she breezed through the questions. Until she reached the last: “What’s the first name of the woman who cleans your dorm?” Surely, she thought, this must be some kind of trick question or crazy joke. How was she supposed to know the name of the cleaning lady? She’d seen the woman around, knew she had dark hair, thought she was probably in her fifties. But she’d never had any reason to talk to the woman, or to learn her name. Finally, Brittany turned in her paper, leaving the question blank.

The other students were equally puzzled by the strange final question of their quiz, and one finally asked if it would count toward their grade. “Certainly,” the professor replied. “Many of you aspire to be corporate leaders or owners of your own companies, and as you climb the ladder, you’ll meet many people. It’s important for you to learn that all of them, the great and the not-so-great, are significant, and all deserve recognition for the roles they play—ev en the people who mop the floors.