Ftsenarzemi?

Chareon,

When I first came to the company and started using email all the time, I struggled to find something appropriate to put at the end of my notes.

• 'Sincerely' sounded too trite and too formal. Although I was usually sincere, most of my writings were not very formal.
• 'Cheers' irritated me when it came from anyone other than a Brit or an Irishman, as I saw Americans who used it as posers.
• 'Best Regards' was similar to 'Cheers' but not as bad, I just didn't feel comfortable using it
• Using nothing at all seemed rude

I finally settled on 'Take Care', as an expression that conveyed sincerity, and was intended to convey a sense of well being, good journeys in life, etc.

The only problem with this is that after working with many Europeans, Asians and Israelis who do not use English as their primary language, it occurred to me that they probably had no idea what I was intending to convey.

'Take care' literally translated probably came across as 'don't drop' 'be careful' 'watch out' 'caution', etc.

So I'm training myself not to use it, but slipped and put it at the end of your email by accident.

I have been saying 'Best Wishes', but find this can still be misunderstood.

From now on, I am going to simply use the following:  'Ftsenarzemi', which means absolutely nothing in any language known to man.  However, since it occupies the space at the end of the note, it will allow the reader to decide what is meant by the expression 'Ftsenarzemi', based upon the tone and content of the email as well as the punctuation.

For example:

Ftsenarzemi!!
Ftsenarzemi.....
Ftsenarzemi??

See what I mean?

Thanks for asking,

Ftsenarzemi!!

Tom

*******

Hi Tom,

What do you mean by "Take care"?