Today's tea is again a fusion of green and white tea. What tea would you like to have?
One night, I went for dinner with a friend of mine and we were discussing ideas about what should be the theme for this year's International Carnevalle. I remember that we had great ideas which we were really excited about.
International Carnevalle is a festival we have on our campus throughout the Spring Semester. It celebrates cultural diversity through events like international fashion shows, international market place, etc. We form a committee in the Fall semester to discuss ideas, organize these events, and advertise them. Last year's theme was "Unmask the World".
When this friend of mine came over to my place yesterday and she was asking about whether I wanted to join the International Carnevalle Committee this year I said:
"I'm not sure....by the way, remember when we both went to P.F. Chang's at the Pru the other day?"
"....yeah..." she replied,
"Well, I think we had a great idea for the theme for this year's carnevalle....I completely forgot about it though...do you remember?"
"No....I don't think so"
"something about....webs...."
"Hmm....." she says, "as in spiders??"
"No no!!! I'm sure we didn't say anything about spiders! But I am very sure that there were webs involved!! Cultural webs??"
She looks at me clueless and I say: "You know! As in how cultures have some common ground and are connected yet different....like the pattern of a spider web....but I don't remember what name did we decide to call it!!! The name was what got us all excited. That is what's bothering me now!"
"uffff......Reema, why didn't we write it down!! I think it was your idea 'cause I remember hearing it myself...."
"I think you first proposed an idea then out of that I may have been inspired to propose this...well now that we forgot about the idea we can at least propose a new one, at least we have an 'idea' of what the forgotten idea was..." (lol)
"hmmm, when I think of webs I think of internet..."
*silence*
"Now that I think about it," I finally say, "some cultures now a days do have their own chat language...or at least Arabs in our generation made up an 'arabic chat language'."
"How is it like?"
"You see, Many people our age can't type Arabic fast or don't have an Arabic keyboard. Instead, we use a combination of English letters, numbers, and apostrophes. Since there are many letters not found in English, we use numbers and apostrophes to symbolize those letters! For example, the letter 'haa' (with a very guttaral 'h') is replaced with 7 since it looks like the written form of the letter." (for example, the phrase Salam alaikum is actually written as Salam 3alaikum, since the first letter is not actually found in English and is different from the 'a' sound)
"Haha that's so cool!"
"So maybe this year's carnevalle can be something about chat languages in different cultures? But I dunno any other language that uses this kind of chat language..."
"You could try to tell the new e-board about it."
*end of dialogue*
Well, I guess we are kinda getting somewhere here...you guys have any ideas yourself to help me out? Just noticed that this post reinforces the point I was trying to make in my previous one!
From your Tea Mate,
Reema B. :-)
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