bo-tay-do...

About two weeks ago I was sitting in Classical Chinese class. It was an insular afternoon. The door to the semi-subterranean room may or may not have been open to the moody weather outside. I'd done my translations already, so it was just marking off imprecisions and syntax to Prof. S's golden standard... Suddenly, I wondered what was the Japanese word for potato. Given my beginner's exposure to the language, I could only guess that in katakana, it would be something like: "bo-tay-do", with elongated vowels in the dashes. I amused myself by saying this newly materialised word over and over again in private... BO-TAY-DO... BO-TAY-DO... ...

Yesterday, there was quite a congregation in the department computer hovel. I asked M, whose trousers matched the hue of her floral-patterned shirt exactly, how one says "potato" in Japanese. Some dreams ARE prophetic: it was BO-TAY-DO after all!