xayollar.net is the personal thought blog of Jess, a 30-something-year-old from Australia. It will be a place where venting is done, ramblings made, and discussions prosed. Many of these posts may be private – for my eyes only!

In a nutshell –
I am a geogeek, a bird-lover, and a Wikipedia addict. I am conceptual, expressive, and planful. I am passionate, and a perpetual procrastinator.

So, why ‘xayollar’?!
It looks like a made up word, right? The word is from the Uzbek language (of Arabic origin), xayol meaning ‘thought(s), dream, imagination, idea, memory, opinion’, and -lar being the plural suffix. So essentially, xayollar means thoughts, ideas, opinions, which I felt was rather appropriate for a personal blog/journal.

Why a word from the O‘zbek tili (Uzbek language)?!
I have been interested in the Uzbek language for quite a while now, the official language of Uzbekistan, a country of over 30 million people in Central Asia. Uzbek is part of the Turkic branch of languages, which includes (but not limited to) Turkish, Azeri, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Uyghur and Tatar. Uzbek is unique in this branch because it lacks vowel harmony. However, like the others, it as an agglutinative language by means of suffixes, lacks grammatical gender, and has a subject-object-verb word order. Uzbek is heavily influenced by Persian, Arabic, and to a lesser extent, Russian, making it a rather poetic and beautiful language. I enjoy listening and singing along to Uzbek music and my favourite artist is a group called Shahrizoda, whom I have a fansite for.

Who is that guy in your header image? What do those words mean?
The gorgeous man featured in my header is Bollywood actor and singer, Ayushmann Khurrana. I’ve watched four of his films and have really enjoyed his acting (and won’t deny it – his looks :P). He has been a playback singer on several songs in his films which is a rarity in Bollywood. The lyrics in the header are from the song “Pani Da Rang” (The Colour of Water) that he sings in the comedy/drama Vicky Donor. A rough English translation of the line is: ‘All the rain flowed away, and still you did not come my love‘.

And that about sums it up! Any questions/comments, you can either comment below or email me at jess@xayollar.net.