Donation week!

Made two donations this week. First, the second one. It was a rather "involuntary donation." And being not present at the occasion I couldn't do it very well. So, if you were the one to get my bike, I'll be happy to give you the key to the lock too. I know, I was being too lazy to use it properly, but I'd like it to be useful for you (or, if you don't have any use for the lock, I could take it back and put it to good use on my new bike).

That's the donated bike in colder times (and a light snow). Or see it here.

The other donation was on July 4.

Hello! Need Malayalam interpreter.

Déjà vu! This time, this happened over phone. Someone called me up, at my office, in the middle of the day, and told me that they are looking for a Malayalam interpreter in Brooklyn, New York. It was strange enough that I thought I'll help out by blogging about it (again).

If you're interested in serving as a Malayalam interpreter, will be in Brooklyn on August 14th or 16th (and I suppose you may have to be eligible to earn in the US), please consider contacting Mathew Salinas of aLanguageBank, at 212-213-3336.

And in another similar (but probably less strange) incident, someone mailed me out of nowhere (OK, from Princeton, which is not exactly nowhere), and asked me if I could translate a couple of lines of Malayalam poetry for her. Apparently she is working on a Ph.D. thesis which looks at subnationalism in Kerala (among other things). She's also interested in knowing the publication years of the poems. I did the translation, but if anyone out there knows the publication years, please let me know. Here are the lines:

> paaTam paaTam uRachchu naam paaTippaaTi pOvuka
> paarilaikya kEraLaththin kaahaLam muzhakkuvaan.
> nam navaraNangngaLil, nammaL than thyaagangngaLil
> naam rachikkumaapputhiya kEraLam manOharam!
And,
> bhaaratham enna pEr kETTaalabhimaana
> poorithamaakaNam antharamgam.
> kEraLamennu kETTaalO thiLakkaNam
> chOra namukku njarampukaLil!