Conversational English

I don't want to sound "peter-ish", but I do speak English far better than I speak Tamil, my native tongue. My vocabulary is very good and so is my diction.

But when I converse with native Americans, it makes me realize what not being a native English speaker means. They play with words in a manner that doesnt come naturally to me.

Here is an example. This is an email from some guy in my company to a graphic design intern: "I'm attaching the presentation I showed you. I’d love for you to take a stab at reformatting it, and cleaning up the graphics so it tells the story. I’d encourage others on the team to similarly send you any internal presentations that might need similar graphic love."

That 'graphic love' part....I would have never thought of putting it that way, but it is such a nice way to put it, albeit simple! And this was just one instance... I hear such bursts of word-plays very often from native speakers.

Point of all this being that it makes me feel there is no language that I can speak "really-really" well :).

Yet another start

I was pretty apprehensive about the whole move thing initially - just the regular inertia towards change. But once I actually moved, life has been busy enough to keep me from worrying. Like, I dont have the time to miss my Seattle friends, or reminisce about my life back there etc.

Things have been pretty smooth otherwise (oh apart from my handbag getting stolen in between!). Likey my new job. Moved to a new pretty 2-bedroom apartment. Don't have a new set of regular-hang-out friends as yet, and haven't started doing all the extra-curricular stuff I have been wanting to do. But I guess I'll get there...