I love looking at how ridiculous some expressions sound as an outsider, but also the fantastic ways we find to express certain things. Why say “I’m changing the subject” when you can say (all risqué translations aside) “I’m going from the rooster to the donkey”?
We have more than our fair share of these expressions in English, and the late George Carlin (a favourite comedian of mine) does a few excellent bits on expressions and euphemisms, like this one.
Enjoy!
Okay, this pun is particularly bad since I didn’t actually get anywhere near a sea, but on a (train) trip to Milan, I did (en route) get some amazing views of lakes and mountains from the train. The Thunsee caught my eye in particular because I had just sat back in my seat to take a break from thinking, as I have quite a bit of work unrelated to the trip to worry about, when the guy at the other side of the train started filming out the window. Indeed, the scene was nothing short of magnificent. I asked another passenger where we were in a German choppy enough that he immediately said that I could speak English (sigh; however I did manage to communicate pretty well in German every now and then with the (Italian?) across from me). Anyway, it was the Thunsee, and he also told me what the next stop would be (although I didn’t catch it) and that I should look out my side to see a very famous mountain (I didn’t catch that either) but he wasn’t wrong. In fact, the next several minutes showed some beautiful peaks (that is when we weren’t in tunnels). I am reminded on my last (and first) trip to (outside of) Milan for a meeting. A terribly trying trip, we drove round trip in a single day, about 15 hours of driving for ultimately for a total of about 1:30 of meeting. The worst (in a car at least) is the tunnels, coupled with the unreasonably narrow (particularly when there’s construction) lanes on the highway throughout Switzerland. The tunnels are a whole lot easier to bear in a train (as is the trip in general for that matter).
I tried to take a picture of that first peak that the guy had suggested, but the camera phone didn’t do it justice at all. I probably should not have let that discourage me and taken a few more, but while I will still have plenty of work to do on the trip home, I will try to take the time to get a few shots on the way back. Note to self: it’s shortly after the crazy-long and surprising shaky tunnel (the Gothard? or the railway equivalent at least given how long it took to see daylight again).
Hmmm. After a brief check by the Swiss Militarpolizei at Brig-???, we headed into another long tunnel (I guess it wasn’t the Gothard back there), but what was interesting is that because there was a fairly significant curve going into the tunnel, I saw the mouth of the tunnel, over which 1921 was engraved in very large letters. I can’t decide how I feel about a 90-year old ?? km long tunnel, but I think that I think it’s neat.
Less neat. We are now stopped in said tunnel. A train just went by in the other direction: I’m hoping we were just waiting for it to pass. Ah yes, that seems to be the case. Phew. As it turns out, we were just at the mouth (I’m in the last car, so I suspect that the vast majority of the train was outside. It looks like I’m in Italy! Cool! I won’t have much more time to enjoy it than the last time, other than that I’m staying overnight, but since I’m arriving more or less just in time to head for bed, it’s not that exciting. At least this time I’ll be in Milan, rather than out in the sticks near Milan!
Why do I always feel nervous when police talk to me and, on the other hand, take pleasure in showing them my passport (and, in this case, my titre de séjour, when he looked at me funny when I said I was only going to be in Milan until tomorrow, and then I was going “back to France”). I don’t think I’ve ever showed my carte de séjour to anyone before. It was hard enough to get, I kind of like showing it!
Hey, if this were baseball, I’d be the star! But it’s not baseball: it’s me trying to set goals that I can achieve. Since there is “always something” (isn’t there?) I’ve decided to aim for biking to work 50% of the time. This allows me to account for days when I have client meetings (today I had 4!), really bad weather, and (for now) getting the right muscles to the right level without overdoing it. Frankly, I’m not proud of that decision, but feel ok about it. Luc’s brother, though, made me feel a whole lot better when I spoke to him earlier tonight. I simply told him that I was trying to bike to work every other day, and he was very impressed and said so. That made me much better about things, and helped me rationalize my decision (for better or for worse). In the end, I’ve been comparing myself to my friend and colleague Wendy, who jogs to work from the train station (she used to bike, until the SNCF decided not to allow bikes on the rush hour commuter trains) and is now training for a marathon. In retrospect, I might have been shooting a little high for someone that doesn’t recall biking anywhere since I had the Red Max (I tried to find a photo online, but couldn’t) that I won in a draw in elementary school. So now I’m comparing myself to baseball players, and thinking that batting .500 ain’t too bad at all 
ps. I’m only batting .500 if we accept that biking into town on Saturday makes up for not biking to work Thursday or Friday (indulge me, please!) AND means that I have to bike tomorrow (I think I can, I think I can, I think I can).
I skipped the bike again on Friday, because I wanted to take Luc to the train station for a weekend away with some friends, but I made up for it (partially) Saturday. I got up early, got on my bike and headed out to run my errands. As it turns out, that ride was little more than a round trip to work (I just checked on Yahoo maps), so I only made up for one of the two days I missed. Had I realized that earlier today, it might have been enough motivation to get me back on the bike today, but it’s a bit late for that now. Guess I had really better get my act together for tomorrow!
Between really crappy weather this morning, and a few muscles not very happy with my new plans for a greener earth and a healthier me, I caved (yes, already) and drove to work today. I’m hoping that the weather is better and that tomorrow morning will hurt less so that I can get back to it…
My car (which, while green, is only green in colour, although arguably green-ish since it’s small and relatively fuel efficient) stayed home today. Thanks to the long-term loan of a bike (which made it’s first appearance in my blog here), and the acquisition of a lock covers the biggest impediments to not driving to work, but the final one has been my inability to get up early enough. Today that was taken care of because Luc had to be at work early, so I got up early too, and used the extra time to final get myself the kick-start I needed.
It was not easy. The last time I biked as a mode of transportation was around junior high (or earlier; I just realized that I’ve never actually owned an “adult’s” bike). Plus, Mulhouse isn’t exactly flat, and I I clearly didn’t pick the best route to minimize hills. I rediscovered muscles that I had forgotten existed, but I felt great when I arrived at work, and just generally felt good all day. The way home was a bit easier (a different route with less steep hills).
I admit that I’m happier about the positive effects on my health than on the planet, but the environmental benefits make me happy too. One step closer to green…now to make it stick!
With the aforementioned sales on, Amazon.fr has been sending me lots of emails to let me know that the sales are on online as well. I have been cruising through the offerings, and am currently looking for a couple of inexpensive mystery novels in the “livres en anglais” section to fill out my order (and feed my permanent craving for reading). After adding one to my basket, I was presented with the “people who bought this also bought…” with an eclectic selection that looked remarkably like my own shopping cart / books set aside for later. Either there are lot of people in France that like English children’s books, French television shorts, and Japanese logic games, or I’m the first person ever (in France) to put this book in my cart.
A year after finding the sofa that appeared to fit all of our criteria (and believe me, there were more criteria than you might expect for a sofa) we finally took the plunge. Why did it take a year? Well, we first looked during the summer sales last year. Side note: there are major sales in most – all? – stores in France twice a year, for a time limited by legislation. The rest of the year, promotions are limited, and legislated, to ensure (among other things) that big companies can’t undercut mom-and-pop shops until they all go out of business.
I was quite proud of our preparation: to avoid giving in to the first decent couch that came along, we put our heads together and listed what we wanted in a sofa first (most importantly: a corner-sofa, where the corner could be reversed, with a pull-out bed that would comfortably sleep 2 tall people). Frankly, we were suprised when we found one that met those criteria and more, but (of course) it wasn’t on sale, and it wasn’t cheap. To make matters more annoying, we found similar ones elsewhere, that weren’t quite as good, but also weren’t as expensive, and made us hesitate enough that we decided to wait until the winter sales (a sofa wasn’t top priority, just a big “want”). The winter sales did little to facilitate the decision, and it was again pushed to the summer sales. This time we dug our heels in. We first looked at the competing one that seemed to be winning out, until we decided to take one last look at the first one that had really caught our attention. Still not on sale, but still as tempting as ever, and an extremely productive Saturday yesterday finally saw the purchase, transport and building of our “Niagara Bordeaux” coloured sofa (the name of the colour made it seem that much more appropriate – a great mix of Canada and France!).
All I need now is for it to be a reasonable hour to vacuum on and around our new pièce de resistance and we’re all set!
Yes – you: the person reading this post. What brought you here?
I’ll be perfectly honest with you: I don’t tell anyone about this blog (with a very few exceptions) and prefer to sit back and see what brings people (I mostly blog for me, but it gets much more fun when others get involved!). I like watching traffic peaks when I use certain key words (all things language tend to do it, and Babbel seems to be increasingly important. In fact, one of you got here yesterday by typing in “heatherforce babbel”. I find that endlessly cool.
My main access to how people got here comes from the search terms, which only make up a fraction of my actual visitors. Even those, though, get me pondering. What were they really looking for? Did I help them in any way? How did typing in that get them here (such as “I have made a pledge of sorts to stick…).
I hope that you will humour me and leave a comment to tell me who you are, what brought you here, and what you think about my random musings and ponderings. Oh yeah, and if you are subscribed to RSS, I’d love to know.
In the meantime, here is a taste of what brought others here over the past while:
crazy snails
end of school year thoughts
rocks and tress
trees and rocks
european charm
evolving customer service
happy words
french fusion
prune vinaigre
cooking social networking
german rotisserie chicken
euromineral 2008
heathers ponderings
georges est doux, georges est frais…
learn german
how i love les fish
look at that escargot s car got
Nothing short of eclectic, but then, so are my posts (I think).
While using Babbel over the past several months, I noticed a feedback button that appeared a while back, with which I could, well, provide feedback. Use it I did, sending notes over time for a number minor errors or bugs. A couple of weeks ago, before I started my summer break from language learning (which has stuck to some extent, because lots of other things have filled in the time otherwise spent on languages after work and on weekends) I sent them a message via feedback that if there was anything I could do to help them fix bugs and such, I would be happy to help. I soon forgot about it. Last week I got an email from Thomas at Babbel, letting me know that some new features were in the works, and would I like to test them when they were ready. Cool. The email was addressed to me (no mass email) and when I responded to say that I would be thrilled to help, I got a message back within half an hour thanking me, and letting me know that while they were not ready just yet, they would keep in touch. Now, even though it means another pull on my free time, I can’t wait for the new features to be ready not only because it will give me another good reason to keep learning, but also because I feel special to have been asked.
Every time I mention Babbel I get a “comment” (read: blog-ortiented marketing message) about Edufire a competing/complementary language learning service. I was put off by their “covert” tactics that assumes all bloggers are idiots, but eventually (when they modified their tactics a bit) gave in and let them post their occasional comment (it is complementary after all, and this is about learning, so who am I to prevent people from finding tools they may find useful). I just hope that before sending me a poorly-disguised marketing-generated comment, they take note that far more important than getting their name out is making people really, truly happy with their services (great customer service makes me happy, regardless of which side of it I’m on!), and focusing their energy on them, rather than annoying me.
