2002-07-05 11:54 (UTC+1)

Weather report

Poetry is the royal-road to language learning, in Desbladet's considered opinion, so here's the inaugural French Poem of the Elastic Month (like an ordinary month except that I decide when it starts and finishes). It's by Verlaine, a dead French person who here just manages to stay on the dignified side of sentimentality:

Il pleure dans mon cï¿œur
Comme il pleut sur la ville ;
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pï¿œnï¿œtre mon cï¿œur ?

ￜ bruit doux de la pluie
Par terre et sur les toits !
Pour un cï¿œur qui s'ennuie,
ￜ le chant de la pluie !

Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce cï¿œur qui s'ï¿œcï¿œure.
Quoi ! nulle trahison ?...
Ce deuil est sans raison.

C'est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi
Sans amour et sans haine
Mon cï¿œur a tant de peine !

(I have added JavaScript subtitles for words I didn't previously know (from memory, since I left the relevant notebook at home), and made full use of the oe ligature, ￜ, which the French somehow managed to persuade the ISO 8859-15 committee to include. It's shouldn't be there, of course; unlike the Scandiwegian ￜ it's a ligature rather than a genuine letter, and its use is a convention of typesetting rather than spelling. But since I use ISO 8859-15 for the ￜuro symbol in any case, my geeky desire to know how such things are done and subsequently to show said knowledge off overcame the ideological scruples that I pretend to have with an ease which was quite frankly embarassing. Needless to say, I've put in the appropriate headers; if your browser barfs on these characters then it's broken.)

Anyway. My mission, which I have chosen to accept, is to memorise these poems for their value as phonetic ï¿œtudes.

Tune in in Elastic August to see how I'm getting on!

2002-07-04 11:55 (UTC+1)

"To a random friend

I scold you seriously
Fuck you!"

[ seen on a T-shirt. Really! ]

Me and K. wondered into town one time to see if we could find a pub to watch one of the Japan games. The pub we were aiming for was ticket-only, though, and sold out, and nobody else seemed to be showing it.

W. and S. had briefed us that in the build-up to the World Cup the prospect of hooligans and strategies for dealing with them had been the top story on all media for, like, months. Pundits had even been assessing the implications for Japanese society of the spike in birth-rates that would result from the inevitable outbreaks of rape. (I kid you not but I rilly, rilly hope someone was kidding me.)

It was thus presumably an Official Policy that there should be no public TV displays of matches, rather than just public indifference. By contrast I saw plenty of footage from Korea, and they had huge screens everywhere, and friend-of-a-friend accounts confirmed that there was not a man in the country out of sight of a big screen during the later Korean games - the nation just stopped to watch.

Meanwhile K. and I are wandering the streets of Osaka during a Japan game, and life is quite clearly going on more-or-less as normal. There are girls in Japan replica kits patiently queueing up for henna tattoes proclaiming there undying allegiance to their national team (or, more likely, David Beckham - he's huge in Japan) while the game is in progress!

The densest concentration of football mania is on the main pedestrian bridge in Namba. The bridge is packed full of people in Japan (and England and Italy) strips - patriotism is tempered with pragmatism, here, at least in footballing matters - doing call-and-response clapping and chanting and generally getting into the spirit of the occasion. There's a big screen built into the side of a building clearly visible from the bridge, but it's always there and it is not getting into the spirit of the occasion at all - it's defiantly showing something else. There's a handful of people with handheld TVs, but for the most part standing on the bridge and chanting is the main attraction.

K. and I have, by now, downgraded our ambitions from finding a pub with the football on to just finding a pub with beer in, so we head to a bar right by the bridge. It's getting towards the end of the game now, though, and the bar (which has clearly been open throughout the match) is planning to shut shortly afterwards (the logic escapes me) and we only have time for a quick one.

Afterwards we wander over to another bridge, parallel to the first, to watch the Jumping-In Ceremony. People have taken to jumping off the bridge into the river after games (there were 900 jumpers after one game) despite signs clearly stating that it is dangerous and the Stern Disapproval of the police (there have been no reports of injuries). I don't know about 900 people - it looks to me like the same guys are doing circuits. They stand on the parapet, setting up a big chant, and then they jump in, in varying states of undress. Then they swim to the banks, haul themselves out on ladders that have been lashed to the side for the occasion, get back onto the bridge and do it again.

No one is arrested. So far as I can see there are no police even on the bridge people are jumping off. Instead, all the police are on the same bridge as me and K., where there's room to park their police vans and armoured police cars, and they are expressing their Stern Disapproval through megaphones. People being what they are, there's quite a few people on "our" bridge taking in the show, and taking no notice of the police, so it seems safe enough to stand there. That's how K. sees it, anyway. I'm perhaps less fascinated by the naked men than she is (there were no women jumpers, not even clothed ones) and perhaps also somewhat more conscious of being the only male Barbarian (officially designated as the demographic segment most likely to be responsible for hooliganism) within truncheoning distance.

Besides there's something about having armed foreign police express their Stern Disapproval in a language I don't know (although they are very clearly speaking the International Language of Stern Disapproval) through a megaphone located just behind my left ear that I find somewhat less than reassuring, and I finally persuade K. that we should leave. (I think it was the whimpering in abject terror that clinched it.)

We never did find out what the score was.

2002-07-03 16:07 (UTC+1)

I yis what I yis

And no sooner do I announce my nï¿œrdighet to an enthralled world than Sofia proposes tï¿œnt as an alternative.

Nï¿œrd eller tï¿œnt? Tï¿œnt eller nï¿œrd? We're all about the Big Important Questions here at Desbladet, and I'm sure you'll agree that they don't come much bigger or more important than that.

We're also unreasonably proud of our Google-Fu which promptly turned up an article on precisely this question: (Hellre geek ï¿œn nerd, hellre nï¿œrd ï¿œn tï¿œnt.) in which we learn that:

Nￜrdar begriper sig pￜ datorer, sￜ att vara nￜrd ￜr inte helt fel. Tￜntighet har mer att gￜra med hur man klￜr sig, hur man ￜppfￜr sig och den sexuella erfarenheten, eller snarare avsaknaden dￜrav.

So I think I'll stick with nï¿œrd, if that's OK with my Varied Readership?

Incidentally, the article also introduced me to the word bajsa which my Norstedts Engelska Fickordbook straight-facedly translates as "do number two", without any further comment. Unfortunately the English-to-Swedish section doesn't include "puerile" or "toilet-humour" so you'll just have to imagine how amusing I find this.

2002-07-03 11:49 (UTC+1)

How cool is that?

The Guardian rounds up the cream of contemporary blogging, and Francis is featured in the "Personal blogs: non-UK" section!

Rightly so, of course. How To Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons is one of the few blogs that I'd like to see published as an actual honest-to-goodness book that I could buy and read and reread, and the fact I'm learning Swedish has nothing to do with it.

Grattis, Francis!

2002-07-03 10:47

Refusal

This englishi menu also completely has the one that is not possible to explain. Please acknowledge it humbly though it is when differing from the imagined commodity.

Jenglish is great, isn't it? That my Japanese isn't even laughable is a source of some regret to me. The last time I was in Japan I learned the hiragana (one of the syllabaries), but that's only used Japanese words and word-bits that don't fit into Chinese characters - it's not especially useful for Transient Barbarians, even if all the textbooks try to make you learn it first.

What you really want in that situation is katakana, a more angular looking syllabary used for onomatopoeia (there's more than you might expect in Japanese, I'm assured), for emphasis and (most importantly) for transcribing foreign loan words. The katakana are (is?) worth knowing - you might be able to find a Subway sandwich shop, but if you don't know katakana you'll won't be able to read the menu. I could, more or less, but even so I got an iced latte (ugh!), because I overlooked the magic word "hotto". In any case, katakana tell you how Japanese ears hear (say) English dipthongs, and what geek of linguistics could possibly pass up a chance like that?

Despite all that, the only two Japanese words I can reliably use are sumimasen ("Excuse me" is probably the best translation), which is used for everything from attracting the attention of waiting staff to apologising (which is almost never inappropriate, so far as I can tell) and arigatoo (the "o" is just long - English transcriptions vary) which means "Thank you".

I used both of them a lot, I can assure you.

2002-07-02 13:03

I yam what I yam.

Tjocka glasï¿œgen? Check!

Omoderna klï¿œder? Check!

Ackompanjerat med enorma kunskaper inom matematik, elektronik, datorer och programsprï¿œk? Well, enorma is overstating the case a little, and I don't know a thing about electronics, but on balance, check!

Jag ï¿œr en nï¿œrd!

[ with a tip o' th' blog to Tinka. ]

2002-07-02 11:16

Survive from the stereotyped culture!

After a last outbreak of hassle from The Man - we have a saying in my culture, "Never stand behind a Barbarian in a customs queue," - I'm in Japan at last, and my Big Sister, K., is helping me with my bags and escorting me onto the Rapito train.

Back at the ranch I am also reunited with my Mother (the Elder Barbarian), and our gracious hosts my little sister, W., and her boyfriend, S., (the Honoured Barbarians, who live here and Understand Things). I'm sure my Varied Readers routinely liven up their family reunions by picking a random continent to host them, but I blush to admit that this was my first time!

K. and I between us comprise the Ignorant Barbarians - the nick-names are mine, of course, and no offense is intended. Japanese culture often seems to be involve elaborate and subtle conventions of courtesy and politeness which I don't understand, and it is only natural to infer that I must often appear crass and boorish to the locals.

One thing I do understand, though, is eating. It's the Elder Barbarian's penultimate day in Japan, and she's invited us all out to dinner at her expense. S. understandably demurs in favour of the football, but the rest of us troupe off to Wagamama-ya. This roughly translates as "Go on, spoil yourself", and we do. I haven't had a Square Meal now for about 48 hours and I give a demonstration of the ancient Barbarian Face-Stuffing Ceremony that I imagine will live in family folk-lore for years to come. This kind of cuisine (W. describes it as "well, just stuff") involves communally ordering a bunch of stuff from the menu and treating it as a kind of time-lapsed buffet. People talk, more food comes, dishes accumulate, mouthfuls are savoured, beers are sipped - that sort of thing. Not tonight, though. Tonight the half-life of a dish of food is measured in seconds, and even if I set the pace, the others kept up. For a while, at least. It ends with W. ordering plates of rice-balls in a desparate attempt to sate my gluttony. K. is still keeping up, mind, but W. and Mother have long since called it a night.

I don't have the heart to tell them I'm still peckish...

2002-07-01 12:38

Nothing venture nothing have

So. There I was at the bus station for the 0330 (yes, that is a.m.) bus to Heathrow.

To my surprise and consternation (this is not how I would have put it at the time, but this is a family blog) the bus was fully booked. In the driver's opinion the 0530 bus was also going to be full. He recommended a very complicated, slightly cheaper, but much later bus. I walked to the train station instead. (No, it isn't close, exactly, but I'd packed a ryggsack rather than a suitcase, and my Sherpa Fu is unstoppable).

Train stations are always open - I've spent more nights stranded at train stations than I care to think about - even if their ticket offices aren't. I surmised from the time-table that I could probably get the 0530 train to Reading, and then the connecting coach to Heathrow, and bought a ticket off of the touch-screen thingy (these are fairly new, and fairly cool).

[Time passes]

So. There I was in the check-in queue at Heathrow, swaying gently in the breeze, but in good time for the flight. But the flight to Vienna is delayed. It will not meet my connecting flight to Osaka. I must stand in a very long and very slow-moving queue full of people having their travel plans comprehensively rearranged. When I reach the front I am given a piece of paper to take to Air France so that they will take me on a flight at 1600 to Paris and then another at 2100 (French time - it's 2000 in real money). And a three pound fifty voucher to spend at any of the airports many and varied entertainment and leisure facilities to while away the six extra hours I suddenly have to kill.

The Air France Bureaucrat From Hell is perhaps concerned that even so I may run short of entertaining activities to fill the time. Whatever his motivation, however, he finds fault with the paperwork, and sends me back to the very long and slow Air Austria queue to have it corrected.

I cheat by pushing in at the front and the paperwork is modified. When I take it back to the Bureaucrat From Hell he is displeased that the paperwork has been modified in place rather than being replaced by a fresh copy, but he very wisely thinks better of sending me back to the Air Austria queue again.

I hate airports. Airports aren't actually places as such - they're a mode of transport whereby you travel at approximately zero kilometres per hour. I did get a copy of Point de Vue at the airport, but it was mostly about Our Brenda, with only the tokenist of articles about the Scandiwegian Princesses of Choice, so that didn't really help much. (Language geek that I am, I had packed my pocket French-English and Swedish-English dictionaries. In my carry-on baggage. What can I say? They're only ickle!)

[ More time passes ]

Charles de Gaulle airport is just as much an airport as Heathrow, really. But my time there was enlivened slightly by

• realising I'd forgotten to bring my Euros from Nice (which I could have used in Vienna - which would have been cool).
• having a wider selection of French magazines and books to choose from (Science & Vue has a Hors de Sï¿œries issue on the birth of writing systems which I warmly recommend)
• getting drunk.
• forgetting to move my watch forward an hour. The bar shut an hour before I was expecting my flight to be called, so no harm was done.

By the time I got on the plane to Osaka I had been awake for about thirty-six straight hours, it had been nearly as long since I had eaten a Square Meal and I was already quietly drunk when the flight attendroids started offering beer, wine and food. I accepted all of the above, but left the Meal-o-meter running because airline food (like airport food) Doesn't Count.

[ Yet more time passed, but I'd be lying if I claimed to have much of a clue about what happened. ]

Tune in next time for what happened when I got to Japan. (I'm happy to say that things improved a lot.)