Saturday, April 17, 2010

Eyjafjallajokull

Eyjafjallajokull - Scrabblers out there take this one into your memory list, the 16 letter mammoth. The hottest word that had choked every body from President Obama to the layman. Exactly, All isn't well !!

With a monstrous cloud of volcanic ash closing down airports from across Europe, much of Europe is pondereing on: What do you do in a world without air travel? What really would you when the artifical birds can't take off ? Travellers - taking it as an excuse to spend another day or may be days at their respective destinations, bussines vultures turning to sea (not really), cars(London - paris 1500 Euros...lol), trains(cars preffered to show the urgency), e-world chit chats. The ash hovering at altitudes from 20,000 to 30,000 feet has grounded around 18000 flights since causing chaos to our day to day activites. Wonder how dependent are we on these Birds ??

Now if these troubles weren't enough this volcano has been named Eyjafjallajokull. Tongue twister. I have been reading enough about this cloud that has gulped the flying zone of 12 European countries wondering why is it named so?. I do know the bizzarre naming principle adopted in eastern world for the cyclones that keep battering the coasts (Each country that is a part of this group will get in its turn to name it as they like it -- rotational policy). 16 letter world - each european country contributing one letter from it - sharing policy, makes sense. The theory did hold good until a read in face book told me that it is simple. You need to learn how to break this icelandic word (i can't even break a hindi word properly at times). Anyways this is how it goes “Eyja” for island - “Fjalla” means mountain - “Jokull” for glacier. Fjalla and Jokull to an extent make sense but Eyja what is that doing in here ? I guess not all are named to make sense. I would rather pray to this Eyja-Fjalla-Jokull that its anger subsides down and when the ash settles down owing to Mr Gravity it doesn't cause major health problems. Praying and wishing is all that we can do as the experts have resorted to saying "We are not sure when it will stop, may be in hours, days or weeks". Hail science and technology. It again reconfirms my thought that we just can't predict the mother nature.

2 comments:

sarath madhavan said...

great research man..i wondered myself....sounded somethin lik dridharastrar.....

RG ! said...

not much of work man...whole europe was stopped...safety first meant that the safest zones for flying were not used... :(