Entschuldigung.....

Guten Tag, Herr Balan.

Guten Tag, Herr Agrawal.

Wie geht es Ihnen?

Danke, sehr gut. Und Ihnen?

Auch gut, Danke.

Course Content : A CUSTOMISED GERMAN COURSE

Date : 22nd Jan08 to 27th Feb08.

Timing : 9:30a.m to 11:45a.m (session will be 3 times a week on mon, wed and fri)

Trainer : Vijaylakshmi from Max Muller Bhavan

Venue : Conference Room 11, 6th floor, Campus 1B

After mastering the art of speaking five languages fluently, never expected a chance for the sixth one to come up so soon. But when the chance came by, didn’t wanna let it go. Not because it was something I always wanted to do and stuff, but just cos sitting in office idle for long periods was turning out to be hell even though I’ve made sure I am not spending more that 5 hrs at work on any given day. So German it was, A self nominated training which was luckily approved by my manager which I thought will never get approved in the first place. Always knew knowing German will be helpful in someway in the future. Still its more fun, just to blabber out a few words in German to the kids in Drdo for whom all this is Greek and Latin. And then laugh out loud. Cheap Thrills you see.

Reached the first class late by ten mins, courtesy forgetting to carry my ID card for the first time in my corporate career. Guess I was too excited about what was scheduled for the day. Was expecting to see a Tall Curvy Phirang in her late twenties with blonde straight hair dressed in formal shirt and a mini skirt welcome me with a smile when I say Enschuldigung and enter the classroom. But that was asking for too much. An Indian in her mid thirties was there addressing the class which was already crammed up for lack of enough space.

The crowd was mainly the experienced lot of P3’s and P4’s coupled with a few of us P1’s. Always wonder, why is it that this so called senior crowd mostly consist of dumbskates who act and behave worse than school kids as Herr Agrawal puts it. Possible that we are the smarter lot. Or guess, indeed we are the smarter lot.

Session starts off with our introduction, then the Guten morgen’s and the Guten tag’s followed by Ubungen {which means a few exercises by the way}. The P4 next to me who was my partner for the day always seemed to have innumerable doubts. In between Herr Agrawal also succeeded in pulling off a Yapan trick on me in one of the exercises we were having. And to finish it off the ZEHLEN session and a few mouth exercises which were bare necessities cos words sounded more difficult to pronounce than it had ever been in Malayalam. All in all a good two and a half hrs of time pass in office and then we can always spend the next two and half hrs trying to converse all possible nonsense in German to our dear colleagues. So hopefully by the end of it all should be able to update my Orkut profile and add a sixth language to the languages known column or atleast should be able to produce a few small blogs completely in a language which both my blog mentors will no clue about. On 28^th February, u’ll find a hoarding near the basketball court in Drdo which says…………..

40 days……. 40 phrases…………..

I don’t like to show off, but its only natural to feel proud about.