excommunication

I've just fielded a phone call which went as follows:

PHONE: ring, ring.
ME: *suppressed muttershutup* Hello, extemporanea speaking.
PHONE: Fine, how?
ME: Um, sorry...?
PHONE: (impatiently) Fine! How??
ME: ...

I know that there's a tendency in southern Africa for second-language speakers to weirdly shorten and mistime the usual greeting litany, so that you'll often find someone telling you how they are before you've actually asked; this, however, has to be the most insanely compressed version I've ever encountered. I don't know if the effect is a desperate stab at conversational efficiency, or if they're simply confusing the words.

I suppose it's only fair to note that I'd probably do even worse if suddenly asked to take my part in the heavily ritualised and status-conscious Shona greeting, which I last practised when I was about 14. I vaguely remember it had "Ndarara. Kana mararawo" somewhere as a response to the standard "Mangwanani". (Good lord. Apparently I'm saying I slept well. I would, in fact, have pulled it out of distant memory without waiting for "Marara sei", i.e. the actual question. Which just goes to show.)

I spent the weekend doing absolutely nothing. Other than finishing up Season 3 of Farscape (woe! I was getting all fond of Crais!), I honestly can't think of anything I actually achieved. Oh, made banana bread for wolverine_nun. New Seekrit Ingredient in banana bread: dark rum. Lovely flavour.

Last Night I Dreamed: I was one of a party of children trying to defend their island home against pirate attack. Fortunately these were stupid pirates, and our somewhat simplistic ploys of sneaking around setting booby traps seemed to work quite well. I personally pushed several of them off a cliff before the huge swirly impressionistic storm rolled in.