Tête-à-tête

Hey People!
I'm so excited! Today's the day that the old and new members of the RS meet for the first time. Now, I'm sure I haven't told you this, but when we were interviewing candidates for the new RS team, one of the questions that the interviewers asked the interviewees was: "Name an RS writer you admire." Almost all of them mentioned Hamdu Mia. Now, since our Hamdu has been MIA (=Missing In Action) for the past couple of weeks, this is going to be the first time that the newbies will get to see him, and I, for one, can't wait to see their reaction.

Well, since I didn't get any more feedback on our discussion forum on "Dating in the 21st Century: Who makes the first move?", I'm closing the discussion polls. What I do have for you are some pearls of wisdom from our friend Shamma, who gives us some tips on how to learn to pochafy people:

Rule 1) Pay attention to conversation around you. Take notes of quips and comebacks you find particularly witty. Then, when you're getting ready to sleep, rewind your memory tape for the day. Try to remember instances when someone got pochafied, and then try and figure out a snippy comeback you could have used. As you drift off, your subconscious takes over, so that a few sessions later, you're a natural with witticism.

Rule 2) Turn folly into glory. Learn to criticize yourself. You must have been teased at some point in your life, for tripping on something, or spilling something, or even saying something silly. The best thing to do in such cases is to join in and turn the situation into a joke. That way, you lighten the atmosphere, and have everyone laughing with you, and not at you.

Rule 3)Appreciate the personality you have. Diana King once sang "You've got to love yourself if you want somebody else to love you." Even if you're not looking for someone to love you, appreciate your assets. Get that "I am the best" attitude. That way, you're cheerful, and if someone does try baadifying you, you don't take it too personally.

Rule 4) Never, ever get angry. Bullies and teasers enjoy it when you get angry or show irritation. Remember that you're too good to let their comments bother you.
Shamma, thanks for your tips. I know I could put them to good use. Guys, if you have similar tips to share, feel free to send them my way. We could all do with some enlightenment.

Well, I have to blaze. Until our next tete-a-tete, take care!
Send your polls, opinions, and queries to thegirlnextdoor1@hotmail.com

By: The Girl Next Door

George W. Bush is a Jew!

Hahahaha……fooled ya. Now that you have focused your mind here, you might as well read the following:
What did John say when he picked up the phone?
Hello!
What does an egg bulb give out?
Dim(egg)light
Knock, knock.
Who's there? Amos.
Amos who?
A mosquito.
Why couldn't the skunk pay his bill?
Because he had lost his last scent.
What did the sick patient say to the doctor?
I'm sick!
What did the flying pig say?
I can fly! I can fly!
How did the farmer cross the Atlantic Ocean?
With his Sheep.
Knock, knock.
Who's there? Krispan.
Krispan who?
Krispan Crunchy Potato chips.
Why was the fisherman so selfish?
He used to sell his fish.
Why did Spiderman fall down the building?
Because he got disconnected from the web.
Why did Jill throw the butter out of the window?
She wanted to see a butterfly.
Why did Batman climb up the tree?
To find Robin's nest
Prank caller: Hello…is your refrigerator running?
Victim: yeah
Prank caller: then you better go and catch it.
(N.B.: All the bad jokes in this article are our original work, laugh after you read them and if you think they are funny then e-mail us or keep them to your selves.)

By Saiyan Monkey and ^mE[n]TaLHeAD^

Q: What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Aaatel answers:
Well, philosophically, you see, the chicken and egg symbolize the cyclical quality of life, how everything propagates everything and how there really isn't any beginning or end to events.

Scientifically, however, the egg came first. Here's how:
Chickens, like all birds, are thought to have descended from a group of small dinosaurs known as therapods, much popularized in the Jurassic Park movies as the vicious raptors. Now, unless you slept through the entirety of Jurassic Park, you must have noticed that dinosaurs lay eggs. Hence, the first bird with enough features of a chicken to actually be considered a chicken and not another bird or reptile, hatched from an egg.

Another case for Dr. Aaatel!
Now I must dash. I only have 500 more pages of the Chemical Encyclolpedia to read.

Yours knowledgeably,
The Aaatel

Got a burning question? The Aaatel knows all. Send your queries to: aatel101@yahoo.com

“ENGLISH IS A TOUGH STUFF”
Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organisation headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language ... until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Compiled By Meher Nigar

A journey by train
(This Ain't Your Average School Essay)

I was on my way back to Dhaka from Sylhet by train after having spent Christmas holidays there. It was Iztema time, when thousands of religious Muslims flock to Tongi to offer prayers and do other things. We were on our way back just before the final day of the Iztema and found the train loaded with pilgrims. My family was the only normal passengers on our compartment; everybody else was wearing a punjabi with a complementary beard.

Train journeys are seriously boring if you don't have a book with you. I had one, which I had unfortunately finished earlier. And I wasn't brave enough to take my Discman out and stick its headphones into my ears. Why? Well, judging the glances our co-passengers were throwing me, it seemed they were irritated to see a boy not wearing a tupi. Besides, some of them may have been fundamentalists. In that case, there might have been knives and other sharp objects hidden right underneath their lungis.

So the boring journey went on and all through it I had to bear the racket and chaos my "compartmentful" of musolli bhais were creating. Added to that was the crap that was being played on the train speakers. They had turned on a tape with some piir's sermons on it, just like the ones that are always played around Baitul Muqarram. The sermons were all about why Bangladesh is going to hell because the women here don't wear burkhas and are now working outdoors without giving any consideration to the so-called "fotowas" (rules and regulations) of Islam. Just imagine, my Discman had a Metallica CD in it, and here I was listening to some "holy" piir shouting his lungs out.

Just when I couldn't bear it anymore, the train arrived at Tongi. This was where almost all the pilgrims got down, except for a few that would probably go to Dhaka first. I gave out a sigh of relief. It felt I had just walked out of a gorur haat after having gone through the trouble of buying a cow. The irritating tape had been turned off too. The few pilgrims left on our compartment seemed to be cross at that. While I was having fun seeing the vibrant expressions of irritation on their faces, the unthinkable happened. A Hindi tape had been turned on. All the latest dhisting- dhisting Hindi songs were going on at full blast! I was shaking uncontrollably while I was desperately trying to silence my laughter. Meanwhile, our co-passengers had great signs of helplessness, frustration and anger on their faces. As for me, listening to Hindi songs at full volume would have seemed torturous to me under normal circumstances, but now, even Hindi songs seemed like Metallica to my ears.

By Hamdu Mia