left is right too...

Firstly, I am back after a trip to home sweet home, vijayawada. And twas the most amazing trip ever. More about it in other posts. Now coming to the point. While the english batsmen were boring the bloody hell out of me (and thousands of other viewers), i was wondering what else there was to do at home. And thats when i remembered a suggestion that Prof. Khosla gave this guy in my class. The fellow broke his right arm and hence wouldnt take notes. So the prof remarked, "This is probably a good opportunity to learn to write with ur other hand."
So i decided thats exactly what i was going to do. And it was no easy job. I will present my analysis along with the results below.

I practiced writing "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." (its got all the letters of the alphabet). And finally this is how well i cud write, at a reasonable pace:

Now, taking into consideration the fact that my right hand produces no pieces of art, the above piece of writing is pretty good even if i must say so myself. Hence i gained confidence and pushed the speed up a few units. Then this happened:

Cant say the same about this one can i. Still the fact that the speed messed up the writing made me wonder how bad it can get. So i wrote real quick (the way i usually wrote social studies exams in school). And thats when i realised how it must feel to write after getting drunk:

A total mess! But it was worth the effort. There were a lot of things i learnt. For instance, u will notice that your hands always go for symmetry. While writing an 'a' for example, ur right palm moves in the anticlockwise direction first. So the left tries to move clockwise, ie the mirror image. So while writing a 'q' with my left palm, most of the time i ended up writing a 'g' (look at my 'q's and 'g's and u'll figure out how/why).

Then it also seemed that people who write with their right hand, have an advantage. As u write u move from left to right across the page (unless u are writing in hebrew or urdu). So ur right palm is never blocking what has already been written. It isnt so with the left palm. I guess south-paws hold their page in a different fashion to overcome this problem.

Anyway, the point is that its a useful skill to have; to be ambidextrous (atleast as far as writing is concerned). You would have two totally different writing styles! (any guesses as to where that might come in handy;) ?) . Now all that is left is to test whether i will be able to use both hands at the same time, to write the same text/different text. Some other time maybe...till then more practice.