Okra ~ Vendaikkai and fat fingered misake... !!!

A fried ‘okra’ is a delicacy….. ‘Vendaikkai in Tamil’ – it is known in many English-speaking countries as ladies' fingers, in India as – bhindi – is a flowering plant in the mallow family. It is valued for its edible green seed pods. ………………….. here is something on fingers ~ ‘fat fingers’ ~ nay not those of fat persons…..

Goldfinger (1964) was the third film in the James Bond series; the third to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Based on the novel of the same name by Ian Fleming, it also had Honor Blackman as Bond girl Pussy Galore and Gert Fröbe as the title character. The film's plot had Bond investigating gold smuggling by gold magnate Auric Goldfinger and eventually uncovering Goldfinger's plans to attack the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox. Here are some phrases associated with fingers !

‘a finger in every pie’ – would mean getting involved or influencing many different activities; often used to show disapproval of someone whose influence or power is too great

‘point the finger at someone’ – means to blame some one; to identify someone as the guilty person.

‘burn your fingers’ or ‘have/get your fingers burnt’ – means to suffer unpleasant results of an action, especially loss of money, so  one is not keen to repeat it again. 

Butterfinger is a candy bar made by Nestlé. Read that the butterfinger was invented by the Curtiss Candy Company of Chicago, Illinois, in 1923. The company reportedly held a public contest to choose the name of the candy. As an early publicity stunt and marketing plot, the company dropped Butterfinger and Baby Ruth candy bars from airplanes in cities across the United States which helped increase its popularity.

‘Butterfingers’ – is the name playfully applied to someone who fails to catch a ball or lets something slip from their fingers. Often our team’s fielders are ridiculed to have ‘butter fingers’ as they would drop simple catches [dropping sitters !]

Those of us who went to Typewriting Institutes and at some point of time worked as ‘typists’, ‘stenographers’ know too well, the difficulty and challenges involved in producing a neat, error-free document …. The keyboard made with keys arranged too close and the speed often presented the challenge of avoiding overlapping or pressing a wrong character… the challenge of typing the correct spelling presented a serious challenge too. The mistakes so made in the typing process were called ‘typographical error’ often shortened as ‘typo’.  Historically, this referred to mistakes in manual type-setting (typography) and included errors due to mechanical failure or slips of the hand or finger, but would exclude errors of ignorance, such as spelling errors.

Then there is ‘Fat finger’ -  a  colloquial term, referring to an unwanted secondary action when typing. When one's finger is bigger than the touch zone, there can be inaccuracy in the fine motor movements and accidents occur. This is common with touchscreens. One may hit two adjacent keys on the keyboard in a single keystroke. Understand that on e-selling sites there are thousands of items listed with spelling mistakes and often find no bids as prospective buyers could not find them.  

Here is a story that appeared in Daily Mail of a 'fat fingered' City trader who lost  £400,000 in 30 seconds when he accidentally bought HSBC shares.  The report of William Turvill mentions of a  ‘fat fingered’ City of London trader could have lost up to £400,000 in just 30 seconds after accidentally buying shares in HSBC.

The share price of Britain’s largest bank rose by more than 10 per cent after yesterday's trade, leading to a suspension of its shares for five minutes. According to reports, the estimated loss occurred because the trade was not spread over a long enough period – meaning HSBC was vulnerable to a sudden drop in share price. After shooting up from 630p to 688p seconds after the blunder, the stocks then closed at 630.2p. The spike briefly pushed the FTSE 100 into the positive, although it closed down 5.83 points at the end of the day at 6,538.45.

According to Reuters, traders blamed the trade on human error – a ‘fat finger’ trade.  The identity of the trader and the company they work for has not been revealed. A ‘fat finger’ trade was also blamed for an 11 per cent drop in Diageo’s share price on the earlier day.  A trader told Reuters: ‘People shouldn’t do it… getting penalised for doing it means they won’t do it again’.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar.

4^th Feb 2o14