Hindi and Airports

I trawled through the language section in my lonely planet for India and Sri Lanka and couldn't find words for homesick so looked for simply home or sick. Suprisingly couldnt find the word 'sick' in my Sri Lanka guide, or the word 'home' anywhere, which isn't very useful! However there was the phrase 'I'm lost' which i thought might be quite fitting for our piece.
So here goes;

Hindi

• Namaste - Hello
• Mai Bimar Hu - I'm sick
• Mai Rasta Bhul Gaya/Gayi Hu (f/m) - I'm Lost

Tamil

• Vanakkam - Hello
• Naan Valee Tavuree-vittehn - I'm lost

Sinhalese

• Maa-maa Nativelaa - I'm lost

Secondly i just wanted to comment on Alices' blog about liminal spaces. Theres a bit where she talked about signs, like signs in airports, which reminded me of a section in the book I researched from which is The Art Of Travel by Alain De Botton.

On disembarking at Amsterdam's Schipol Airport...I am struck by a sign hanging from the ceiling that announces the ways to the arrivals hall, the exit and the transfers desks. It is a bright yellow sign, one metre high and two across,
simple in design...Despite its simplicity, even mundanity, the sign delights me,
a delight for which the adjective 'exotic', though unusual, seems apt. The
exoticism is located in the particular areas: in the double a of Aankomst, in
the neighbourliness of a u and an i in Uitgang, and in the choice of practical
modernist fonts, Frutiger or Univers.

If the sign provokes such pleasure, it is in part because it offers the first conclusive evidence of having arrived elsewhere. It is a symbol of abroad. Though it may not seem distinctive to the casual eye, such a sign would never exist in precisely this form in my own country. There it would be less yellow, the typeface would be softer and more nostalgic, there would - out of greater indifference to the confusion of foreigners - probably be no subtitles and the language would contain no double as ... a plug socket, a bathroom tap, a jam jar or an airport sign may tell us more than its designers intended, it may speak of the nation that made it ... If i called the Schipol sign exotic, it was because it succeeded in suggesting, vaguely but intensely, that the country which had made it and which lay beyond the uitgang might in critical ways prove more congenial than my own to my temperment and concerns. This sign was a promise of happiness.

Although this quote might seem random and actually comes from the point of view of wanting to shake off ones 'home' in search of the 'exotic,' if you look at the opposite view it begins to make some sense.

I think i am trying to relate it to the idea of globalisation and homesickness, like the blog about being able to walk into a Burger King in La Paz and, I imagine, it looking exactly the same as the one on your high street back home (as is unfortunately the same with McDonalds the world over). I may be slightly ashamed to say it but the same thing happened to me when I spotted a Pizza Hut in Calcutta.

It is the idea that even the smallest, simplest things can make you feel at home, even if just for a moment, or totally 'lost' like in the quote. Also I like it cos it's random and looks a little too deeply into a simple object which is something that I am often accused of!

Rachael Smith