Words & Language – Parse [New Category]

So this will should be a relatively short post. We’ve all been occasionally (or frequently as the case may be) come across words and been struck by how amazing words, languages and the human mind are. Every time I end up talking about this topic with DH, I end up sounding like an overenthusiastic loony. Yet I can’t help marvelling at how big a part words and languages play in development of cultures. The languages and words used by a culture and its people can tell one so much about what is important to them, how they think, their way of living, religion, philosophy etc. So many times a word from one language has no equivalent in another and this is most often true in case of words codifying a concept, an idea or a way of life.

See, I got all loony again 😛 Anyway, I’ll be adding random language and word related short posts focusing on one word/idea at a time. The word/idea need not be unique or amazing in any way, just something that triggered generic feeling of ‘words are so amazing!’ and ‘languages are so damn cool!’

So after all this context, the word for today is (definition courtesy dictionary.reference.com)

PARSE  [pahrz, pahrz]

verb (used with object), parsed, parsing.

1. to analyse (a sentence) in terms of grammatical constituents, identifying the parts of speech, syntactic relations, etc.
2. to describe (a word in a sentence) grammatically, identifying the part of speech, inflectional form, syntactic function, etc.
3. to analyse (something, as a speech or behaviour) to discover its implications or uncover a deeper meaning: Political columnists were in their glory, parsing the president’s speech on economy in minute detail.
4. Computers. to analyse (a string of characters) in order to associate groups of characters with the syntactic units of the underlying grammar.

verb (used without object), parsed, parsing.

1. to be able to be parsed; lend itself to parsing: Sorry, but your concluding paragraph simply doesn’t parse.

Why was this so cool? I was just thinking that it’s amazing that the meanings and connotations from different contexts (here formal grammar, programming) layer on top of each other to give us a richer, deeper feel for the word. Does that even make sense? To be honest, I’ve first come across parse as a concept via programming, but now using it in daily life makes so much sense, and then I wonder if that makes me sound like a nerd/geek 😛 and even if it did, would it be a bad thing? And then I start imagining who and in what circumstance first came with the concept of parsing..

Language and words are so damn cool! So are humans 🙂

Last 3 weeks and more. [Warning – Post gets slightly strange towards the end]

I almost turned back into that old version of me – the one who starts things and then doesn’t follow through. “I will write a blog,” she said, “and this time I’ll update it regularly too!” Bold intentions indeed 😛

So apologies to the new ‘me in progress’. In my defence, I truly was busy. Minion had a persistent cough and cold which lasted almost a month off and on. He gets better and then it rains, and he gets the sniffles and the coughing attacks again. What kind of messed up weather are we having this year anyway? Indian summers (especially in the northern plains) are supposed to be all about unrelenting heat that goes from dry and oven like to sweaty and humid. And this time it keeps raining every 10 days or so.

Work’s been busy too. I’ve been working on a web app solution which monitors miscellaneous devices over web. Last project, I mostly worked on the backend side, but this time due to some resource crunch, I’ve been learning some frontend skills as well. So I’ve been exploring and adapting a Twitter Bootstrap theme to use as the app frontend. It’s been interesting, though also a bit frustrating at times.

Secretaire has been temporarily put on hold. Rather, active work is on hold. My mind still keeps going into ‘oh wouldn’t xyz be a great/useful/cool capability/feature for Secretaire’ mode. But I’ve (finally) realised that attempting sudden transformations of personal habits does not work. So for now it’s enough to jot that ‘awesome xyz thingy’ down into a catch all document on Google Drive. Fortunately, the office projects are already turning out to be super useful in terms of helping me figure out different options, technologies and processes for Secretaire. So it’s all good. I’m really looking forward to picking this up again in maybe another 2-3 weeks time. The office project should be in a better situation by then. Let’s see…

On the fitness front, I was all excited about starting taekwondo classes starting from beginning of this month. Unfortunately it seems like that plan will need to be abandoned. The classes were supposed to be held on Saturday and Sunday mornings in our apartment society. But every Friday the trainer postpones the start by another week citing various reasons. And now it turns out he hasn’t had anyone apart from me show any interest, which basically means I’ll not be able to start classes since personal coaching costs too much. I even put up flyers asking people if they would be interested in case we increased the frequency to thrice a week and adjusted timings so that people needing to leave early for work could attend. But nothing yet. I’m sad and disappointed. It’s not easy to figure out ‘exercise’ I’ve liked and would be likely to stick to.

On the plus side, Minion and I got to spend two days at my mom’s place. My maternal grandparents (nana-nani) were also in town, and so was my aunt’s family (mausi-mausa). It was nice catching up and I also have a cousin’s wedding in the first week of May to look forward too :). On the negative side, DH is out of town till Wed. So that makes it a long absence of six days…

I really do need to post regularly. Obscurity of Coffee, Spice & Ink is no reason to let it gather cobwebs. I like writing, though I seem to prefer being lazy. Plus, those random thoughts and ideas that just disappear need to be corralled and put to useful work. Silly things need a firmer hand if they are to amount to anything.

On a side note, have you ever felt that writing a blog feels remarkably like talking to yourself? I have had some trouble figuring out if I should be mentally addressing a fictional friend or myself. I think it should depend on the content. After all it doesn’t make sense to tell yourself what you’ve been up to. Yet all the wonderful advice I spout is clearly intended for myself. So it’s settled.

My blog has two type of readers. First – the brilliant, sympathetic (and interested) friend who doesn’t mind if I occasionally crow about stuff I did/achieved. My friend might find me a bit strange at times, but I don’t care. She’s the best. Doesn’t matter if she’s shy or a chatterbox. If she’s 20 or 50. She’s genuine and nice and does the best she can. We connect.

The second reader is my alter ego. The one I need to scold into doing stuff it ought to be doing without being told (that make sense?) The one I need to occasionally provide excuses for. The one I’m still getting to know after so many years and whose way of thinking still surprises me. She needs to learn to be more tactful and forgiving. She needs to stop worrying about things she can do nothing about (it’s soooo hard though). And she needs to stop being lazy. She needs to learn that she all by herself can make herself, and those around her a tiny bit happier. Even if she’s really irritating at times I like her. After all she is a work in progress.