Keeping up appearances

Alternative title: Very desperate housewife – British version.

Besides: The British Monarchy has 13330 followers on Twitter. Following: 0. This is style.

Oups

To this young Italian who asked me for directions today around 15:00 close to Art-Loi: I might have been physically present but what you couldn’t see is that my mind was elsewhere. You were actually at the right spot and it took me some time to realise that I sent you in the wrong direction. Sorry, it really wasn’t on purpose.

I love nerds

I spent a ridiculous amount of time today admiring the movie narrative chart for LoR; trying to remember when the Sam wears the Ring for a short time, and deciding to bring my one volume copy of LoR back with me from my parents place. It would be cool to have this for more movies and books.

All credits and rights for the chart above go to xkcd.com. Thank you guys!

Surprising logic

Tonight on the train from Amsterdam to Brussels somewhere around Dordrecht after getting slower and slower: “We have a problem with the train engine and will stop in the next station to reboot it”.

I think that the conducter was only giving it a shot because it would have been a hell of a hassle to get a replacing train or alike but after all; why should something that works for 8 out of 10 IT problems not work for a locomotive… And it kind of did, arriving in BXL only 25 minutes late.

Spielverderber*

That’s what we call in German people like those charity guys calling for a “healthy Halloween” without chocolate bars and sweets…

And though the food ideas they present do not sound that bad to me, I want to see the six-year old who jumps up and down at the idea of having

Celery claws – Celery sticks frayed at end and beetroot and yoghurt dip

Eyeball eggs – chopped boiled eggs, avocado homous, black olives and tomato sauce

instead of chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate.
* killjoy/spoilsport, rabat-joie

Impressions

Usually, there are these two to three weeks in Autumn which are simply gorgeous. The leaves showing all possible shades of yellow, gold, red and brown; colours of the city changing with the light…

Everybody is enjoying the sunshine. Even more than in summer because these might well be the last few sunny days before rain and grey will dominate the next months.

It’s the perfect moment to visit le musée d’Orsay or l’Orangerie with the many impressionist and expressionist paintings

or to hang out in the gardens admiring trees defying gravity

and wonder why middle-aged man wearing suits and walking strangely are not allowed to go on the lawn while everybody else may have fun.

But then again, there are stranger things to see

and finally one of the most impressive towers in the world to marvel at.

The crocodile in the canalisation

1984 – three égoutiers (canalisation workers) found a 85 cm long female crocodile in the égouts (canalisation) of Paris. Eleonora, by now a good two meters longer, is enjoying her live the Aquarium de Vannes.

This is certainly the most interesting fact to learn during the visit of the Paris canalisation. After this first surprise of one of the biggest urban myths being true, the second is is the smellnessless and cleaniness of the place. The last is the surprisingly low number of rats (2/inhabitant of Paris city = 4 million) and that the directors of Ratatouille came to visit the canalisation to learn more about this city under the city.

Indeed, just as the streets above, every canal has the street sign and the houses have their numbers assigned mirrowing the city above and allowing a perfect on-the-spot intervention in case of problems.

In case you have an hour to spare during you next Paris visit (and if you speak French), it is definitely worth visiting les égouts.

J’adore Paris

I’m not so sure any longer if I want to live there but for a few days it’s exactly the right city pour changer d’air.

More swine flu arguments

As Lydia wisely commented & Jon Steward pointed out: it is strange that it is the people who think that the government is completely inept are also the people who think it is capable of vast and complex deceptive machinations.

Hence, more time spend on the Daily Show website than it is actually good for my work but here’s the result:

It’s of course even more fun watching the show itself. Swine flu content as of minute 3:35.

Please excuse my dear aunt sally

I can’t calculate in any other language than German. Counting is OK but if I see some multipliers or alike, I first translate the numbers in German, do the calculation and translate the result back in the original language. After doing this for a few years, I got pretty fast in English and French.

Anyway, tonight in the Spanish class: numbers and calculations. Only that the teacher hadn’t heard of the good old Punkt- vor Strichrechnung; or as the English say: Parentheses / Exponents / Multiplication & Division / Addition & Subtraction (P=please, e=excuse, m=my, d=dear, a=aunt, s=sally)*.  Trying to explain that a mathematical rule doesn’t depend on el idioma was quite tough; I’m not quite sure that prioridad de operación did the trick. In the end, Ana-Maria is right, she always is, but I would have liked to give a proper explaination. Quand même…

*A very beautiful expample of mnenomic or “donkey bridge” as the Germans say.