Americans are anti-topiary, averse to pruning trees in any drastic fashion: I have never seen rows of rigid and boxy trees lining the streets of an American city.
But trees clipped to within an inch of their arboreal souls are quite the style on this continent. It's a sure sign that summer can't be far away when the square black skeletons of the linden trees on Strandvägen start to fill out with brilliant green leaves.
It sounds as if I'm critical, but I really don't see anything wrong with keeping trees in line with the judicious use of a knife. It's pleasing to the eye.
I am really bad with the false cognates. After all, it's hard to remember that "pathétique" does not mean pathetic. Even more difficult seems to be "terrible," which by putting in different contexts, can either mean terrible, or awesome.
I've made mistakes that have come back to haunt me on numerous occasions. I've tu'd vous people, and vous'd tu people. Phrases have left my mouth only to become jokes our friends seem to think never get old.
But I will never, ever, forget the time I was asked to "rape some carrots."
It was getting close to dinnertime, and the other half and I had decided to do a veggie salad, with tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, what have you. The other half was tired from a long day at work, and although he had agreed to make dinner that day, poked his head through the doorway to talk to me (butt firmly planted on the couch), and asked, "Could you rape some carrots?"
I can only imagine the look I must have gotten on my face after receiving this request, before bursting out in laughter. And so all the times I'm cursing those evil words set out to trick poor little english speakers like me, I will always thank god that the verb "to grate" is "râper."
What are your favorite all-time blunders?
(sorry sweetie, I'll get sick of telling this story one day)
Austria's entry came in 6th in this year's Eurovision Song Contest, the best showing for Austria in a long time (just behind Sweden, but ahead of Poland and France, I see). The contestant, Alf Poier, is a comedian who didn't appear to be taking the contest seriously. But hey, sixth place.
I have a degree in Germanics and have lived in a German-speaking country for almost two decades, but the German language can still kiss my butt. Not only does my pronunciation of Rumpelstilzchen still harvest bushels of laughs from my wife and girls when I try to read the story to my kids (somehow that consonant combination totally throws me off, musically, rhythmically, and pronunciation-wise) but I cannot reliably remember the gender of nouns.
A few years ago, after years and years of deliberations and study, a committee of German language gurus instituted a reform of the German language in German-speaking countries. But rather than simplifying the grammar and eliminating genders of nouns, they adopted German phonetic misspellings of foreign loan words and moved commas around in sentences.
My gender bending does come in handy when I get flustered, but only for the rest of my family, who like to make me even more upset by correcting my errors when I'm trying to express something serious in heated discussion.
Before I came to live in France, one of the things about the mythology of this country that appealed to me to no end was that it had been a refuge for black jazz musicians for many decades.
I imagined the whole country moving to the plaintive wail of divine clarinet.
So, double was my dismay when I discovered not only that the best live music to be heard in Paris was echoing through the endless labyrinth of the metro, that live clubs were few and far between (coming from a place where any two-penny band can get a gig in a bar mid-week), and jazz lamentably near absent except on the radio and in concert, but, more than all this, the sincerely perplexing elevation to near god status of people like Johnny Halliday and Serge Gainsbourg, to name but two.
The former is a pseudo biker (greased-back dyed blond hair, tight leather, tattoos, young wives) who sings ooo-ooo-wooo-aaah-baby-baby in a gravelly off-tune voice that makes thousands of middle-aged women weep, and the second a sleazy little man who bedded everyone from Bardot to Deneuve - all of whom over the years recorded one of his songs in identical breathless from sex style - smoked 8 packs of Gitanes a day and is considered a genius for lyrics like Sea, sex and sun and 69: erotic year, and for burning a 500-Franc note on live TV as a sign of protest against taxation.
In all fairness, there are some French musicians whom I adore and would never have known had I not lived here - Claude Nougarro, among others, comes to mind - but I confess that too many of the most revered leave me baffled.
I can't say how many times I've found myself at an all French but me evening, and a song from everyone's past but mine suddenly comes onto the box. A collective moan of nostalgia, giggles and snippets of recall, and the screech of chairs as everyone rises in a trance to dance and sing along - minds no doubt flooded with bittersweet memories of first kisses, half-lit dance floors and old friends near forgotten.
Having realized over time that there is music I still love only because it holds so many memories, I wouldn't dare point out the obvious: beh, this song is crap.
But instead sit there alone, feeling conspicuous (thinking, beh, this is song is crap), and too suddenly reminded that I'm a foreigner here.
So my wife had accumulated some frequent flyer miles and the elderly relatives are falling in the bathroom and not getting up or running pools on what will get them first, the aneurysm or kidney failure or congestive heart disease, so although we can't afford it my youngest daughter and I are traveling at the end of the month for a quick week to see a generation while it's still possible. She's packed some books for her grandfather to read to her. She'd been looking forward to seeing my brother's baby crocodile, so when it choked on some crickets he put it in the deep freeze for her. She's six and counting the days. She has our seat numbers memorized.
Michael always tells me that Americans would never adopt the game of cricket because they would not be able to comprehend the appeal of a game which lasts five days and can still end in a draw. Well, I don't know what that says about me, because I have grown to love the game.
I have learned to tell the difference between a leg spinner and an off spinner, to talk of googlies and wrong 'uns and yorkers. I've learned all the field placements, and the words "three slips and a gully" roll easily off my tongue. I could talk to you at length about the shameful underarm incident of 1981, and explain to you why Donald Bradman was the best batsman ever in the history of cricket. And, if you were inclined to listen, I could go on and on about how cricket is the perfect combination of strategy, skill and luck.
Last night I fell asleep to the sound of cricket commentary on the radio. New Zealand versus Sri Lanka, second innings, New Zealand batting. That sound is so comforting to me - the gentle pace of the game, the quiet account of each ball as it's bowled, the way the commentators ease the play-by-play description into the flow of the conversation with barely a pause. It makes me feel so secure and peaceful.
I did not grow up with cricket. There is nothing in my background which should evoke such a feeling in me, but listening to it and watching it just seems so normal to me that it seems like I have always done it.
It makes me feel like I am home.
Generally I'm a nice guy.
But every now and then I feel like giving someone a smack upside the head. Despite that I've lived in Hong Kong for so long and should be used to it, the inconsiderate behaviour of some people still rankles.
This afternoon I was standing outside a mobile phone shop, looking at the different models. I was about three feet from the glass so I could get an overall picture of what was available. A man that had also been looking at phones a few feet to my left suddenly walked over and plunked himself directly between me and the window, though it was painfully obvious I was there.
It was all I could do to restrain myself from grabbing him by the collar and pushing his head through the glass.
It's easy to forget that you're a foreigner. There's so many Aussies over here that you can blend in quite easily. But the other day I was repeatedly reminded that I sound "a wee bit funny, hen" by members of the blue rinse set...
Here in Edinburgh, I'm temping at a place that provides emergency alarms for elderly people. I call it the I've Fallen And I Can't Get Up Hotline. The other day I was given a list of 150 wrinklies and told to call them up and arrange appointments for their alarms to be reprogrammed.
SHAUNA: Hello! Is that Mrs Wrinkly?
GEEZER: What? Speak up!
SHAUNA: IS THAT MRS WRINKLY?
GEEZER: Oh yes hen. I'm deaf. What do you want?
SHAUNA: This Shauna from Blahdy Blah, I'm calling about your alarm.
GEEZER: My what!??
Once we'd taken ten minutes to establish what I was calling for, I'd launch into my spiel. But over and over, they kept interrupting me to ask about the accent. Some highlights:
"I'm not paying for this am I? I've not got a lot of money, you know."
"Sooo, you're Australian then, luvvie? Will you personally be fixing my alarm? I'd like to meet you. Ooh yes."
"But I don't understand. Why are you working for them if you're in Australia? How are you going to help me from over there?"
"Is it like Neighbours over there? It's like Neighbours, isn't it. I watch Neighbours."
Okay, we've covered the whole nakedness sells subject already. Granted, I am yet to see any hot, naked guys talking about how effective their jock itch remedy is, but injustice is everywhere... I'll get over it. However, there is one area where French men reign...
Peeing. Everywhere.
Granted, I realize there are times when you've got to go, and waiting for a more appropriate location just isn't feasible. Long road trips in the middle of nowhere are perfectly acceptable peeing occasions... find a nice shrub on the side of the road, and let it go. Camping out in the wilderness? No problem.
While I wouldn't say 2am in the morning in the middle of the city on a building because, well, the bars just let out and now it's time to let all those beers in your bladder escape as well is the best of occasions, as long as you don't pee on my shoes or anything, I'll turn my head and make sure my muttering is kept at a level where you won't hear it.
But you, Mr. Old Guy that just decided to make a yellow river in the petanque court near our house at 5:30pm? There is a bar like two feet away... go pee there!
Perhaps I was just too young and naive to notice this sort of thing in my US days, but somehow I'm thinking that europeans are just a more free-spirited people in many, many ways.
Here's a service we don't have in back home in Kazakhstan: movers. Although perhaps now we do. I hear they finally opened sushi restaurants in Almaty so how difficult an undertaking would it be to get some guys with big trucks, shifty eyes and sticky fingers to take other people's stuff? The concept certainly is familiar. The names may differ--movers, Teamsters, La Cosa Nostra--but the idea is universal.
They came in today, thundered through my apartment and left with most of my possessions, which was very little. In the end, the foreman granted me the complete moving experience by trying to rip me off. He claimed I was 102 cubic feet over the limit (the feet again; I can't think in feet, especially if I'm frantically trying detect a swindle!). I pressed for a recount in my presence, which yielded, despite the foreman's fearsome scowling, an overage of not 102 but 50 cubic feet. Still inflated but better than before. I'm sure they also ripped me off on packaging costs, but I let it slide. Being anal saved me $265 dollars. Not bad for an hour's work. I'm not even really angry. After all, these guys have a reputation to uphold.
Last night was another Whist evening, over at the perfect house. I came in second place, I do play a mean game of Whist, but Han is truly gifted, and always 'wins'.
All in all, it was a typical evening of card playing, except for one event. Now, when we are playing cards, everyone justs speaks their own language, so you have three people speaking Dutch, me speaking English. After all of these years I can follow normal, ABN Dutch without even pausing for thought. Of course, Bureaucratic Dutch is another matter.
And so it was odd when a word came up that totally floored me. I had no idea what it meant. None.
We had just dealt the cards and as we put them in order in our hands, Tom mentioned that in a few days he would be going to a big party. 'Oh', I said, 'Isn't that Bitsy's cousin ? Do you think Bitsy will be there ?' ( note : Bitsy used to be a part of our 'group' 20 years ago and right now, I will confess, I am not a saint, I never liked her ).
He said yes, he rather imagined that she would be. Why, he hadn't seen Bitsy for years, most likely she's become quite a mukka.
Mukka, I asked, what's a mukka ? The way that you are using the word, it sounds like you mean a whale.
Have you ever gone to a concert given by a group that you are not familiar with ? You know, how when the first note of the next song is played and everyone around you stands up and is clapping and cheering and you are left sitting in your chair, smiling politely, wondering what is going on ? That is what happened next.
'Moby Dick, great White Mukka' said Han, and the three of them collapsed in laughter.
' Relax to the sounds of Mukkas singing, a two CD set' he continued.
'Mukka Watch'
Then, looking at Tom and Cecile, he said 'Free...', and all three of them joined in : ' Mukka !'
Tears rolling down their cheeks, I tell you, as I sat there holding my cards in my hand, smiling politely.
Mukka, or more correctly Moeke sort of means 'motherly person'. Like an Italian Mama, Han added helpfully. Large, wearing an apron and a flowered dress, Cecile said. She makes her own soup, said Tom, and it always tastes better the second day.
Yes, and they did agree that Bitsy probably had become a classic Moeke.
The last entry on strikes made me think suddenly about how they happen in Japan. From what I understand, and this could be a little upside down, strikers wear armbands to let us all know that they are striking. But here's the kicker, they keep on working. Their armbands: bright yellow plastic with angry black kanji at the post office. Each one lets us all know how defiant they are. Not only are they functional, they are a somewhat interesting fashion statement.
I wonder what the success rate is.
There’s been a lot of talk here recently about holidays (what with it being May and wars once ending and workers uniting and stuff… I’m still trying to get them all straight), and it reminded me of how gobsmacked I was when my kids began school here in France, discovering the sheer quantity of vacation time they enjoyed.
If memory serves, when I was a schoolgirl back in Canada (toast had just been invented, and everyone was very excited about this “wheel” thing) we had three school holidays in the year: Christmas, spring break and summer, with a sprinkling of long weekends that allowed us to indulge in the joys of leaf raking and hunting for chocolate eggs in the garden.
Here in France, the kids have 2 weeks holiday every two months (sometimes less), plus a great scattering of long weekends. Plus… there’s no school on Wednesdays for primary (half day for secondary), although there’s still class on Saturday mornings for some.
Originally devised to placate the Church and farmers, it’s completely out of whack with how most people live and work these days – and still most look askance when talk of a change arises (one of my only frustrations here is the subjugation to old habits).
That said, recalling the juggle of trying to spread out my 10 precious days off from the grind across the year (in my era as a grumpy office worker in North America) made me very impressed with the fact that grown-ups here get a minimum 4 weeks paid holiday per annum. It’s so lovely and humane and, dare I say, merely a worker’s due.
(Of course, being a freelancer now, all this holiday talk is mere dreamy speculation.)
There's a general strike on in Austria today in protest of plans by the conservative christian democrat government to make massive pension cuts. Although the government denies the strikes will affect its plans, strikes in Italy and France have, it is said, recently caused the governments there to withdraw plans for similar, but less-extensive, cuts.
Since there is no public transportation within Vienna today, I left an hour early for work, at 6.30, expecting large traffic jams, but things seemed pretty calm on my way to work. There were a lot more pedestrians, and people on bikes, motorcycles, scooters, in-line skates and anything else along those lines. Traffic was more congested once I reached the city, but that was more a result of simply more cars than any attempts by strikers to block traffic.
Weather is hot and sunny today - the hottest 6 May on record - so I'll go stroll about at lunchtime and see if anything interesting is going on, but so far there is no sign of the chaos everyone was afraid of.
Mongolian taxis are one of my dangerous indulgences. I don’t often take taxis, especially now that it’s warmer, and the city is so small anyway, but I do almost get run down by them at least once a day. It isn’t much safer on the inside...but always excellent fun.
Ulaanbaatar taxis only cost about twenty cents a kilometre and are worth every togrog. There are green taxis, yellow taxis, red taxis, and then there are the cars that stop for anyone who puts their hand out or even walks slowly by the curb. Late at night if you even look slightly indecisive (or western) you’ll get cars slowing down beside you.
When I first got here, I assumed that all the cars with tatty red flags on their bonnets were for politicians or VIPs, but now I know they’re just all-purpose transport. If you get in one of these at night the driver usually has his girlfriend in the front seat, along for the ride.
Politicians and VIPs have policemen hold up the traffic for twenty minutes before and after they’ve passed through the intersection in their black mercs.
At Christmas all the taxis had tinsel wrapped around their aerials, fairy lights on the dashboards. Unfortunately they also had that god-awful George Michael Christmas song on high rotation.
The first, and often the only, Mongolian expatriates in Ulaanbaatar learn is how to give directions to the taxi driver – chigeeree (straight ahead), zuun tiish (turn left) and baruun tiish (turn right). Occasionally problems arise, because in Mongolian zuun also means east and baruun west.
Ulaanbaatar taxi drivers are some of the most interesting people around, and I usually have amusing conversations with them, using bits of whatever languages we both know. They are also some of the kindest people in town – if I get a taxi home late at night, the driver almost always watches to see I get into my building safely. If you find a reliable driver, you can get his mobile number and have him take you to the train station at 6am on a Sunday, for no extra charge.
But they are total maniacs on the roads, no doubt about it. The roads themselves are horrific; obstacle courses of open manholes, potholes that grow while you watch, and random pieces of metal sticking up out of the ground (all of which were covered over by snow in winter). And then there are the pedestrians. I honestly can’t tell who are more kamikaze, the drivers or the pedestrians. People here just saunter out into the middle of the street – little old ladies link arms, hold up their hands and step into the vortex – and they don’t wait until there’s a gap in the traffic, they just stand in the middle of lanes and dodge between cars. Traffic lights, lane markings, one-way streets – these ideas seem not to fit into the Mongol way of thinking. Having lived in Europe, I was used to looking left instead of right when stepping off the curb, but here you have to look in every direction, including down and behind you. Inherent trust in traffic lights takes a long time to overcome, believe me.
I am now an expert in that potentially gruesome 3D dodgem game of crossing the street, although I’m trying to maintain a certain level of fear. The other day I watched a guy on a dusty brown horse weave through four lanes of screaming metal, his horse more chilled out than I could ever be. Old ladies and brown horses, they’ve got guts here in UB.
My favourite thing about taxis here is the amazing mechanical skills of the drivers. At least four times, I've been in a taxi when a strange noise was heard coming from the engine. The driver gets out, walks around to the front of the car, and kicks the front right tyre a couple of times, gets back in and voila. No more strange noises, problem solved. No kidding - it's always been the front right-hand tyre and the kicking approach always works.
But the only time I’ve really been scared in a taxi here was last week, after I got in and for the first time in history, the driver put on his seatbelt.
I remember innocently watching television, probably some sort of dubbed over american show (we've got it all, from Dawson's Creek, to Party of Five, to old Who's the Boss reruns), and during the commercial break, something caught my attention.
Boobs.
There was a woman, jumping and splashing about in a tropical lake, promoting some sort of showering product, with her naked breasts getting in on the action too. This shocking experience would be found again and again, with commercials of showering women (never men, go figure), and most recently on a billboard for some sort of shower gel.
Now, granted it is realistic. When I take a shower, I am most often naked, and I assume most others are as well. However, if there was to be an entire camera crew in my bathroom, I may very well think twice about stripping down to ye olde birthday suit.
However, you realize just how far you've come when later, watching a french rap video on tv (and don't even get me started about the idea of french rap), you find yourself wondering why the hell they blurred out all the boobies.
As well as being Mike's 8th birthday, yesterday was Memorial Day, a national holiday here, complete with flags flown at half mast and a few minutes of silence, in remembrance of those who died during the War. And today is Liberation Day, celebrating the end of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
When I first arrived here, 20 odd years ago, I was surprised to see just how 'alive' World War II was, not the closed and dusty chapter that it was in America. When one of the numerous television documentaries about the War ended, there would always be a short advertisement, giving a telephone number one could call if the program had brought back memories, bad memories from the past.
Even Han's family, tucked away in tiny villages in the boonies, has their stories. Han's mother still relates how annoyed her father was when the Nazis took his horse and Han's father's family tells tales of the cousin who was taken away for forced labor and never returned.
Han's father, Piet was the youngest of 4 brothers and remembers hiding between the sliding doors of the parlor when the round-ups for the labor camps were being made, of tucking Granny under the staircase during the bombings, and the great kindness one of the young german soldiers quartered in their home showed the family.
Once Piet was a grown man, he spent many years tracking down that one german soldier and in 1983, the first year that I was here, they finally met again. In fact, I was there when they met and listened in as they talked about the old days and what had happened afterwords. The german soldier had been sent to the eastern front and ultimately ended up in a POW camp in the UK, where he stayed, eventually becoming a UK citizen.
Four years ago, they met up again, this time in Plymouth, and once again they went over those gone days. They knew it would be the last time that they saw each other, the german soldier was dying and so they said their goodbyes. A few months after their reunion, we received notice that he had died.
Last night in our village, flowers were placed on the memorial to those who died when the city hall was blown up, collapsing upon the hundreds of villagers who had taken refuge in the cellars below. And in the crowd which gathered, were brothers and sisters, cousins and children of those who had died.
Today was Children's Day here in Korea. Thursday is Buddha's Birthday, another national holiday, which makes this a more-than-normally beery week for me.
/me rejoices a bit.
They have a lot of these sorts of holidays here - Grandparents' Day and Teachers' Day and Wounded Chinese Food Motorcyle Delivery Guys' Day. The university where I teach honors each and every one of them. I love my university.
By a happy coincidence today was also one of those rare days when the blanket of Seoul smog parted long enough to show some deep blue, and I celebrated by dragging a chair up onto the roof of my low-rise and basking. Women occasionally emerged onto the roofs of nearby buildings, did double takes, dropped whatever they were carrying and scurried back indoors, but I'm used to the shock-and-gawk reaction even when I'm fully clothed, so this was nothing particularly new, for me at least.
What was strange though, was the complete absence of children, today, on, you know, Children's Day. Any other day, the alleys ring with the shrieks and shouts of the little bastards sweethearts, all day and late late into the night.
Today - nothing. I don't know where they've been shipped off to, but I'm hoping this is permanent.
Man, it's quiet. Too quiet.
/me rejoices, nervously.
Yesterday, a Thursday, was 1 May, a national holiday in Austria, and when I drove to work this morning the freeway was nearly empty. I got to work in half the time it usually takes. Vienna is a ghost town today, because it is a window day.
When a holiday falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday, the respective Monday or Friday is known as a Fenstertag here in Austria, which would translate as "window day", in the sense, I suppose, of a window of work in between the holiday and the weekend. People often take the window day off to give them a long weekend, and this is so common that employers often give them the day off automatically.
