The tigress awakens

You will not believe the kind of ribbing I faced when I moved to Canada. There I was, a product of an Indian boarding school where the syllabus was still dictated by the British. Spellings, pronunciation and even enunciation - all British-bound. When you land in another Commonwealth country, you expect things to be similar. They still had the Queen on their currency. So why the curmudgeonly insistence on omitting vowels that were put in for a purpose? Color instead of colour.

And the ludicrous use of the letter z, as in zed, not zee: analyze or analyse? Why would a country that still held on to so many other British-isms do such things? It was the proximity to the United States of America, the land of Americanisms. Practices south of the border had spilled into its northern neighbour. For more than a decade, after I arrived in Canada in 1997 on a scholarship to study journalism at university, I slowly converted my lexicon. Working in the print media, it was a painstaking process of uprooting every spelling and sentence formation to include the new style that was obviously a shortened, less sophisticated version of what I had been taught (in my opinion, anyway).

I still reach for the learning from my youth and call a swimsuit a swimming costume, a stroller a pram, and an eraser a rubber. Then there are football and American football. (Soccer is a term best left to the new world. We do things the good old-fashioned way. ) The other day I was watching a National Football League (NFL) match of (American) football. A team called the Cincinnati Bengals were playing against the Baltimore Ravens.

The Cincinnati Bengals fashion themselves after the royal Bengal tiger. In the middle of the field lay a giant image of an orange tiger with black stripes. I wanted to point out that the endangered species is actually yellow, dark brown- and white-striped, but in the spirit of things and knowing how Americans like to redefine everything, I held my peace until the announcer pronounced Bengals as "Bengels".

It was sheer butchery of a word known the world over, and not just for its association with the ferocious beast. "You know, even the tigers are called Bengels in America," said my friend. Really? That much defiance over a 1,000-year-old word that also describes an Indian state and a few million people who call themselves Bengalis. All now reduced to an Americanism that primarily defines a sports team in the US?

Somewhere, out there, I hope they hear my cries of protest. Pronunciation, indeed.

The Brutalist

Director: Brady Corbet

Stars: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn

Rating: 3.5/5

If you go

The flights

Emirates flies from Dubai to Funchal via Lisbon, with a connecting flight with Air Portugal. Economy class returns cost from Dh3,845 return including taxes.

The trip

The WalkMe app can be downloaded from the usual sources. If you don’t fancy doing the trip yourself, then Explore offers an eight-day levada trails tour from Dh3,050, not including flights.

The hotel

There isn’t another hotel anywhere in Madeira that matches the history and luxury of the Belmond Reid's Palace in Funchal. Doubles from Dh1,400 per night including taxes.

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Sustainable Development Goals

1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere

2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation

10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its effects

14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development

Analysis

Members of Syria's Alawite minority community face threat in their heartland after one of the deadliest days in country’s recent history. Read more

Wydad 2 Urawa 3

Wydad Nahiri 21’, Hajhouj 90'

Urawa Antonio 18’, 60’, Kashiwagi 26’

MATCH INFO

Argentina 47 (Tries: Sanchez, Tuculet (2), Mallia (2), De La Fuente, Bertranou; Cons: Sanchez 5, Urdapilleta)

United States 17 (Tries: Scully (2), Lasike; Cons: MacGinty)

COMPANY%20PROFILE

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The biog

Born: near Sialkot, Pakistan, 1981

Profession: Driver

Family: wife, son (11), daughter (8)

Favourite drink: chai karak

Favourite place in Dubai: The neighbourhood of Khawaneej. “When I see the old houses over there, near the date palms, I can be reminded of my old times. If I don’t go down I cannot recall my old times.”

UAE currency