10Q (Apr 8, 2024)

1. Tune Group Sdn Bhd (Sendirian Berhad, meaning 'private limited') is a corporation founded in 2001 by [A] and Kamarudin Meranun. It has subsidiaries in the telecommunication, financial services, hotel, airlines, sports, media and other creative industries. We know [A] mainly for his involvement in one of those subsidiaries. The son of a Goan doctor and an Asian-Portuguese mother, who is [A]?

2. [B] is credited with the earliest known use of the word 'neologize': “Necessity obliges us to neologize,” he wrote in an 1813 letter to the grammarian John Waldo. “I am a friend to neology,” he told John Adams seven years later. “It is the only way to give to a language copiousness and euphony.” Name this US President, who contributed such words to  the English language as 'belittle', 'Anglophobia', pedicure, and 'odometer'.

3. Having conducted business in much of southern India in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Australian horse breeder Henry Madden bought a mansion in Melbourne in around 1906-7. He named his estate after a region in India with which he had business ties, which is why there is in present-day Melbourne a suburb named for a now non-existent Indian princely state. The pic below shows a few of the streets there (the name of the area is blanked out in one of them). What is the name of the suburb, that has been listed as a heritage site by the Australian Government called the __________ Conservation Area?

4. Shown below is a Persian dish called tah-deeg, which consists of rice that has formed a golden crispy crust but hasn’t burnt – made possible by factoring in the right amount of oil, the right amount of time, the right temperature, the type of rice, etc. A reference to the location in the cooking vessel where it forms, what does the term 'tah-deeg' mean?

5. Considered a form of ancestor worship, this ritual performance, also known as Kaḷiyāṭṭaṁ or Tiṟa, differs from village to village in terms of masks and costumes, movements and chants. Some households have their own specific variants. Studies have documented up to 456 types of performances. What is this ritual art form of nothern Kerala and southern Karnataka?

6. In his groundbreaking essay ‘Zur Psychologie des Unheimlichen’ (1906) – conventionally translated into English as ‘On the Psychology of the [X]’ – German psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch  made the case that when we regard a thing as creepy, it’s because we are uncertain about what kind of thing it is. Jentsch’s most compelling example turns on uncertainty about whether a thing is animate or inanimate. Jentsch’s theory of creepiness faded into obscurity until Masahiro Mori, then a professor of engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, rediscovered it more than half a century later. Mori wrote a short but immensely influential article entitled ‘Bukimi No Tan’ (1970), which later appeared in English under the title ‘The [XY]’. What phrase [XY], associated with both robotics and animated films, came into existence thus?

7. Smitten by the beauty of tatreez embroidery from the very first time she laid eyes on samples some 20 years ago – as worn by Maali Siam, the wife of the then ___________ ambassador to Japan [in photo below] – Japanese designer Maki Yamamoto started the ___________ Embroidery Obi Project in 2014, a social enterprise in which she collaborates with women from the relevant region of the world to embroider tatreez-inspired obis to be worn with kimonos in Japan. What demonym fills the blanks (both blanks are the same)? Tatreez is the name of the style of embroidery used in the region in question.

8. (a) The first part of the word '____stone' comes from an Old English word which means 'way, journey, course'. What is the full 9-letter word that refers to magnetite, an oxide of iron that forms a natural magnet, but is also used in a more general sense for anything that strongly attracts?
(b) An associated 8-letter word with the same first part originally referred to Polaris, but is used in a metaphorical sense for anything that serves as an inspiration, model, or guide. What is that word?

9. The ______ghosh-class submarines are Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines in active service with the Indian Navy. The individual names of all the subs begin with the part blanked out. The class has been particularly disaster-prone.
-- On January 10, 2008, the class lead ship ______ghosh [pic below] collided with a cargo ship and was out of service for a month.
-- On February 26, 2010, a fire on board INS ______rakshak, caused by a defective battery, killed one sailor and injured two others.
-- On August 14, 2013, an explosion followed by a fire occurred on the ship above (the ______rakshak),which sank in the dock.
-- On January 17, 2014, the ______ghosh ran aground while returning to the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai.
-- On February 26, 2014, smoke was detected on board INS ______ratna resulting in 7 sailors being rendered unconscious and 2 killed.
What word – a Sanskrit word for the environment in which the subs operate, but perhaps most familiar to us as the name of a player of racket sports – fills the blank?

10. First published in 1866, "Chanson d'automne" ("Autumn Song") by Paul Verlaine is one of the best known poems in the French language. Nearly 8 decades later after it was written, the opening lines from the poem were used to 'forecast' what? The lines were:
"Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne..." (meaning "The long sobs of violins of autumn...")
and
"Blessent mon cœur / D'une langueur / Monotone." (meaning "Wound my heart with a monotonous languor."

Answers
1. Tony Fernandes, the subsidiary in question being AirAsia
2. Thomas Jefferson
3. Travancore
4. Bottom of the pot
5. Theyyam
6. Uncanny Valley
7. Palestinian
8. (a) Lodestone
(b) Lodestar
9. Sindhu
10. D-Day – the lines were broadcast by the Allies over BBC Radio Londres as coded messages to the French Resistance to prepare for the Normandy landings