Lost in transit

Firstly, thank god someone updated this blog; it's been a long time between drinks!

Secondly, great post. One of the things that intrigues me about the UK is the retail trend to sell THREE things for the price of TWO. Every shop, from Boots to Waterstones, has 3 for 2 offers on the go all the time. I want to know how that started? And will it ever stop? And why don't they sell 2 for the price of 1? Why does it always have to be 3? Questions, questions . . .

That's just the bookshops, kimbofo. Go to a supermarket and it's always 2 for 1. They hardly ever offer a simple reducation, 20 percent off or something... it's always 2 for 1, so you end up having to carry two kilos of clementines home instead of one, and half of them go rotten.

This is exactly what I was thinking Friday night while driving "home" from Slovenia to Vienna. How used you get to the difference.

Rory, yes, you're completely right - but I think even the supermarkets are branching into the 3 for 2 thing. I work on a magazine, and even we're doing it - 3 classified ads for the price of 2!

Shauny, something else I thought of: getting used to conversions -ie. kilometres into miles; dollars into pounds. These used to really throw me; now I can do the calcs in my sleep!

The thing about feeling at home with numbers here - postal codes have 5 digits, phone numbers anywhere from 6 to 8 digits - is much more about the fact that my phone numbers I somehow only know in Swedish. When I have to say them out loud to someone, I have to think about them and translate them into English if I'm telling a reporter or someone I have to use English with. That's how I know it's not such a strange land anymore.

Two for one? Two for one? There is no damned "buy one, get one free" deal here. You're lucky if it's "buy one, get one."

Or that's the way it was, anyway. You used to test each light bulb in a socket at the cash register to prove to you and the cashier that the thing worked when you bought it. Things improve. Now you just assume the bulb will work. And you no longer have to pay extra to get a shopping bag at the grocery as if it's some afterthought, some crazy whim, and not a part of buying stuff from the damned store. ("Oh, and maybe I'll get a bag to put these two dozen things in.") They no longer close all stores at 7:00, and you can actually shop until 9:00 every day of the week in the shopping center near us (though one large city in this country recently re-banned shopping on Sunday, in part to discourage shopping at the foreign-owned hypermarkets).

But numbers. 999, 998, and 997 are for police, fire, and ambulance, though I don't recall which is which, luckily having never (mutter mutter) to have used them. But this is just the sort of place where that might matter. "I'm sorry sir, but this is the police department. Yes, I realize that your head is on fire, but we are a police department, not a fire department. If you'll just hang up and dial 999 [or 998 or 997 or whatever it is]... no, I realize that it may be difficult to see the numbers when your eyes are on fire, but this is the police department. No, sir, I cannot do anything unless you are doing something prohibited. Are you calling to report a head fire in a prohibited location?"

Fire, police and ambulance are um 122, 133 and 144 here. I could never remember which is which until my kid told me they went in alphabetical/numerical order, in German, so in case of any emergency all I have to do is, you know, "heart attack... that's ambulance, which is "Rettung", so let's see, F, P, R, F=122, P=133, R=144. Dial 144. Gurgle gurgle."
To be on the safe side, I remind myself several times a week, when life is slow, which numbers correspond to which emergency service. So when you see me watching clouds or gazing at falling stares, such as last night, my mind is not entirely blank, but instead going, "P=133, etc."

well, this isn't exactly on topic, but it does concern numbers, a bit:

when i came here, phone numbers were either 6 or 8 digits (they're all nine now). when giving out their phone numbers, people tended to group them according to how they were the most easy to remember: 565721 would be read as: 56-57-21, but 362352 would be read as: 362-352. i came to see my american habit of always giving 3 digits, pause, four digits, was really not the most effective way to remember some numbers, and apparently ticked off a number of people by giving numbers so that they could (in my mind) be remembered.

now everybody here and there seems to have a cell phone with all the numbers a person could possibly wish to dial programmed in, so we don't have to waste those valuable brain cells remembering a single thing. whoo-hoo, for progress.

There are some numbers you can never forget...

Why is it that I remember my phone number from 20 years ago, when I was barely old enough to know how to write "telephone" but after 5 years in France I STILL can't remember whether it's 12 or 18 (or maybe something else) that I should dial if ever there is an emergency...

891 383! You could have called me there 20 years ago!

What's with the idea of having different numbers to call in case of an emergency? Call the fire brigade for a fire, but who's going to look after the poor smoke-intoxicated granny who couldn't get out quick enough? Do you have to first call the fire brigade and then the ambulance?