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2004-09-13 10:34
DatesSwedishes write "1600-talet" (approximately "the 1600s") rather than "the 17th century". This is a much better system, for sure, but Engleeshes will perhaps protest that it is ambiguous and could refer instead to the first decade of the century. So, I propose from now on to write of the 16--s or the 160-s, and the world will accordingly be a better place.
2004-09-10 16:24
On the road againYow! I made a careful note of the hotel I need to get to for tonight in my notebook, and then promptly mislaid the notebook. So I needed an Interweb caff, such as this, to get at my email. Thank heaven, though, for the putty ssh client! (My University's web-mail server is a substantial contribution to the world's ungoodness, and my standard email client is pine in an xterm. New software, as is well known, is mostly useful for reminding you how good old software was, and with Free software they can't make you upgrade to a newer generation of bloatware, and they lack even incentive to try.)
Back, now, it is to the road, the endless road, I hear it calling me, "Onwards! Onward! On!"
2004-09-10 13:20
Death by to-do listThere's cricket on today, if the rain ever stops, but I'm into panic mode. Trevlig helg till all, och vi ses n�sta vecka!
2004-09-10 10:17
Riga or Tallinn?Tallinn, to put it another way, or Riga? Both are vair vair nice Baltic capitals with lovely and amazingly well preserved medieval old towns, for sure. But if you had to choose just one (1), which would it be? Stalwart guestbladeteer Tatyana favours Tallinn, but the editorial staff at this 'bladet have a weakness for Riga. And so, it turns out, does Aftonbladet. We note with delight that it recommends particularly Radi un Draugi, bra mellanklasshotell i gamla stan, dubbelrum cirka 800 kr ("Radi un Draugi, a good mid-market hotel in the old town, double rooms around 60 zloties Sterling"), which is where the dowager Countess and I stayed last Twinkletree.
Riga �r en internationell storstad med kosmopolitisk karakt�r, ibland med k�nsla av Paris, Wien eller Barcelona. (Swedishes take their social consciences on holiday with them, apparently.)
2004-09-09 14:08
Towards a folk anthropology of gendered communication strategies, slightly hilariousHow slightly, you ask or enquire? This slightly:
Efter sex �r med sin flickv�n har den tyske komikern Mario Barth, 31, kommit till insikt om att m�n beh�ver hj�lp. D�rf�r har han skrivit ordboken som ska hj�lpa m�nnen att f�rst� vad deras kvinnor egentligen menar. The interesting things about this are two (2), especially in number, and they are this ("these"):
The hope that this will work in overseas markets, if it is not simply wildly misplaced, suggests that as common denominators go the one to be appealed to will by no means be high. (I'm not going to translate any of the proffered examples, so there.)
2004-09-09 11:10
Expatriate me harder!A fabulous (Danish) radio programme (in Engleesh) on "Being British in Denmark" (admittedly with some very few very brief Danish interludes, some of which featuring Engleeshes speaking Danish so badly that even I can understand them). Go listen! There are about twice as many Englisches other than of gender as of gender over there, incidentally. Anyone familiar with Danish wimmins will surely not find this surprising, unless they also have for some reason a favourable opinion of Danish mens. If you twist my arm for a sensible theory, it would be that Danish wimmins come over here, as au pairs and loot our glorious homeland of its menfolk, tsk tsk. (Danish wimmins seeking silly Engleesh booty are of course warmly invited to contact this 'bladet at the usual address.) [via Birgitte]
2004-09-09 09:53
For large values of "nobody", at leastHenry von Timber (n� Farrell) remarks:
Zermelo was never translated into English before Schwalbe and Walker's paper, so I imagine that nobody much bothered to try to read him (especially since his article was published in 1913 and was quite likely printed in Fraktur). If anyone needs me, I'm curled up in the foetal position under my desk.
2004-09-08 12:07
Sm�rg�spost�1. Bucketwatch! Kronprinsessmary of Denmark, where did you get that hat and especially why? �2. Being a prinsess and things which are easy - a study in disjunction Kronprinsess Vickan of Sweden has been in the Land of fire and ice and especially ice:
Kronprinsessan lyckades i g�r s�tta nytt prinsessrekord i att skaka hand. Under statsbes�ket p� Island h�lsade hon p� 500 personer p� mindre �n 40 minuter. Phew! �3. Oh, alright then, some languagey goodness And interactive quiz! Can you recognise all the languages based on a short extract of the instructions for a game included in a McDonald's Happy Meal? If I know my Varied Reader, you probably can. (I struggled with the various Cyrillics, I'll admit.)
2004-09-08 09:48
Old is the new newEasyjet's inflight magazine's Berlin featurette is online:
With an abundance of cool clubs, funky fashion, creative cuisine and hip hangouts, could Berlin be Europe's answer to New York? That depends, Ren� Blixer (FIIH!), on what the question was, isn't it? If it was "Where's your major financial centre?" or "Where's all the media that isn't based in LA based?" or "Where is that if you can (bah bah!) make it there you can make it (bah bah!) anywhere?" then the answer is still twice London and once "Huh?" (and even Germany's meeja defaults somewhat to Hamburg). But let us be charitable and assume Blixer is a congenitally vacuous trendster whose horizons do not extend beyond fashion and clubs (this is charitable, and I speak as a someone who has read the article), since Berlin still rocks:
Der Strand liegt nicht unter dem Pflaster - das Pflaster ist der Strand. Berlin is cool because the listings magazine writer can drop in a such allusion to the '68 Situationiste slogan "Sous les pav�es - la plage!" ("Under the pavement - the beach!", although it's often quoted as "Under the pavement lies the beach!" and apparently in German also) and we all get it because we're so vair vair hip. * The extra verb in "The pavement doesn't lie under the beach" makes it unacceptably flabby to my ear. Silly Englisch!
2004-09-07 16:58
Up, up and away, and especially away
I met a bloke in a bar in Riga over Twinkletree who said Ryanair was coming to Latvia, and now they are:
Passengers thirsty for cheap flights to the so-called New Europe booked more than 8,000 tickets on low-cost airline Ryanair's routes to-and-from Latvia's capital in the first week of sales, said a company spokeswoman. I will pay more attention to the assertians of blokes in bars in Riga in future, for sure. Riga is great, although it remains to be seen how it handles a flood of obnoxiously drunk Englisch stag parties. Expect to see "Riga is the new Prague" articles the minute as soon as they actually start flying, if not before. Meanwhile, I am a proud statistique:
UK budget airline Easyjet saw passenger numbers jump by 24% in August, compared with the same month of 2003. Flying from Bristol (Slightly) International airport is fabulous if you happen to live in Bristol, and Easyjet's forthcoming route from here to Budapest is certainly very tempting.
2004-09-07 13:27
Why I am so very backAmongst other things, my remaining unmarried sister is to cease to be my remaining unmarried sister, without in any way ceasing to be my sister, on Saturday. Coming back to provincial En-ger-lund from a city with functioning public transport infrastructure and sane licensing laws always comes as a shock to the system, isn't it?
2004-09-07 10:18
I did take a camera, after allMy comedy matchbox-size l'espion digital camera, in particular. This allows me to demonstrate why I prefer to work with words. Checkpoint Charlie:
A Spreewald canal:
NB: More about the Spreewald and its celebrated gherkins hos Margaret von Transblawg. |
