Regested beauty parlaur

I went to my grandmother's this Saturday. She lives with my uncle in a village named Sanaur near my city  of Patiala.

The thing that struck me the most, besides the primitive marketplace and poor internet coverage, was the near absence of English in everyday Punjabi. Also the dialect of Punjabi they use sounds rather queer.

Despite the near absence of spoken English and prevalence of desi Punjabi, the shops signs were nearly all in English. 

Here is the one I particularly liked. 

I clicked it while walking because I didn't want to get beaten by a bunch of villagers. I feared what they would think, and do if they saw me with a camera in front of a ladies' beauty parlour.

In Punjabi they write de instead of te in kiraye te mildi hai (available on rent). The English text shows a Punjabi influence. On rent basis.

Russian Wikipedia expands by 14,000 articles in the last month

One month. That's how long it has taken the Russian Wikipedia to close the gap of approximately 6,000 articles with the Spanish Wikipedia. RusWiki has expanded by more than 14,000 articles since Jan. 26 while the SpanWiki managed approximately 7,000. If the Russian tide continues, we will have another million-article Wiki within a couple of months.

Feb. 25 article count

Russian Wikipedia: Сейчас в Википедии 972 032 статьи на русском языке.

Spanish Wikipedia: 971 969 artículos en español.

现代汉语规范词典 - Modern Chinese Standard Dictionary

It was like any other day. No, this is not true. It was raining today and it didn't rain yesterday. It was like any other rainy day. No, this isn't true either. I did some writing today. Ack! There is no escaping from it! It was a very unusual Saturday. It was raining outside, I was taking a bath in the afternoon when someone shouted from the gate ਚੇਤਨ ਆਨੰਦ ਜੀ? (Chetan Anand ji?) I was in the bath but I knew what was coming. My little sister said "ਭਈਆ, ਬੁੱਕ ਆਈ ਹੈ।" (Brother, [your] book has come.) I instructed her to find money from my wallet and pay the courier person. Then finished the bath and came out to find this beauty lying on sofa:

My joy knew no bounds. I wanted to dance and I wanted to sing. But I had to go to the library. So there I went. 

Returned in the evening to find 现代汉语规范词典 on the book rack. I still don't speak Chinese well. So I have been playing with locating unknown characters since then. It's so much fun. 

Here is the tiny dictionary with its elated owner: