I hate France and I hate the French.

Tomorrow, I will be embarking on my first trip to France since reaching adulthood. I’ve been twice before and was incredibly miserable both times.

This time, however:

• I am all grown up.
• I will have the freedom to go wherever I like due to having a hire-car.
• I am more confident - I will gladly speak French badly instead of clamming up because I can’t do it right.
• I am now an international jet setter.
• I will not be shown around by a machine-gun-toting government official.
• Nor will I be on a school trip comprising only* of people not in my year.
• I will only be in the country for approximately 25 hours.

Therefore, I hope to get back to you with a different opinion of both France and its people in the next 48 hours or so. And hopefully some photos of proper mountains.

(*ok… there were three of us out of 30-odd from my year)

Ok… update… my blog is now #1 hit in google when searching for Shahbaz Chaudhry.

An interesting weekend - being a long one I can’t really remember the start of it… let me think… ah yes… Friday evening…

(wibbly wobbly wibbly wobbly)

So, on Friday evening Fatha and Linda came to visit. We went for a Mexican but he hot-footed it back over the border. No… we went for a Mexican meal but the ever-popular Cactus Café had no room for silly people who didn’t book in advance (us) so we wandered over to the Taste of India where I nearly tried prawns for the first time in my adult life. I didn’t, though, and went for… erm… can’t remember. Lamb Pasanda, maybe. We were all knackered so went to bed after a short chin-wag, and they set off on their way early on Saturday.

Saturday… erm… I probably went to the shops. Not too interesting. Might have gone to pick up some books on clouds and the weather, but that might have been Sunday. They’re great books - incredibly technical from a ‘you need to know this otherwise you might walk/drive your ship into a storm and die’ kind of perspective.

Sunday… erm (again)… might have picked some books up. Erm…

Ah fuggit… had a great weekend during which we saw a man doing a Kiwi Haka…

click for full size

…which was nice. And yes, he was meant to be doing it - he wasn’t just a loony in the market square.

You know you’re into Big Brother too much when you are the 5th hit in Google on a search for Shahbaz Chaudhry.

Oops.

And some other Google searches this week:

• buy paneer in sainsbury - (1st hit!) - Yes, you can.
• pinaudrés Loughborough - Oh yes, the French dance troupe I chanced across.
• japanese characters appear as squares on my screen - Go and get the correct font which, if you’re using Windows XP is part of the ‘East Asian Language Pack’ in the languages part of the control panel.
• writeable chinese letters - An interesting query. As far as I know, they’re all writeable, but are generally known as ‘characters’ not ‘letters’.
• single wire car horn - I would have thought most car horns use a single wire, the other contact will usually be the body of the car - this is how most car electrical systems work, see ‘negative earth’.
• petrichor - Great word!
• leaf salmiakki - There are still plenty of searches coming in for pages which are now over here in the archive.
• not getting a p60 from employer - Sorry, I can’t help. I received too many.

And we’ll finish today’s session with:

• extreme stu - I’m not sure what they were expecting to find, but I hope they weren’t disappointed.

A double-sided beauty, found on the floor in the town centre.

On side 1, we have learnt that this person is studying modern languages and has a broken printer. They’re also environmentally conscious, choosing to reuse this sheet of paper, rather than using a notepad. They are, or would like to be, quite regular (dates, figs, alpen) but have quite a basic diet rich in complex carbohydrates - pasta, rice and couscous appearing, along with assorted veg. This suggests they are one of Loughborough’s many sports students.

2 x blue is an interesting entry - I’m sure it says that, but not sure why. Underneath is, I think, a related object also with 2 required, but what is a canah? Or are they really buying two canals?

Side two tells us that the weekend is a joy of pie (Mmmm! Pie!), snacks and salad. I’m not sure quite how the pen managed to get lost for [Unitelligable] - Casserole Steak yet be found again ready for pay in cheque.

fish 4 sun adds a note of interest. Firstly the use of the ‘4′ character instead of the word ‘for’, but also the fact that this doesn’t appear on the SAINS list overleaf. Maybe this person has a favourite fishmonger instead of relying on the supermarket?

I have no idea what Rudbeckiq is, but hygeine is definitely sorted with t’paste and shampoo.

So, in conclusion - a little disorganised and some bad handwriting, but overall a good list from an environmentally and health-conscious individual. Well done!

Where have I been?

I have had my world turned upside down today by a simple statement from a colleague:

“If bananas are all clones of each other and have the same genetic code, why are they different?”

Well, I immediately disputed his opening premise - I’m sure I’ve seen banana flowers, and everyone knows the little brown bits in a banana are the seeds… don’t they?

It seems not.

Bananas are a (mostly) sterile mutant of the wild banana which is not particularly edible but at least it reproduces normally. Cultivated bananas have been produced from cuttings and from cuttings of cuttings for thousands of years.

Apparantly - not recent news, this article comes from 2003 - they’ve decided that the banana diseases are evolving while the bananas aren’t, so they could actually be wiped out before too long.

What I did like was that Honduran scientists collected together four hundred tonnes of bananas which they peeled and sieved to find… are you ready… fifteen seeds. So, let’s say a banana weighs 100g - that’s one seed in every 266,000 bananas.

Oh… and my answer to the original question - must be to do with environmental conditions

What a surreal trip to the kitchen.

Since my overhearment* the other day in town, I was pondering creation and various beliefs thereabout. We have a tame Jehovah’s Witness at work, so I thought I’d ask him about his thoughts on the matter.

His opinion was that the world was created, but creationism is probably too literal. That is to say that the world wasn’t literally created in 6 days, and that the word “day” really means “era” like “in my grandfather’s day”.

Another colleague came in while we were having this discussion and brought up the subject of non-celebration of Christmas, and rapidly moved on to the apocalypse. The general idea here is that there will be a judgement of individuals, not necessarily a huge apocalypse which wipes everone out in one go. (The colleague had been suggesting that if there was a sign of apocalypse, we should all rush to stand next to the JW, so we’d be safe).

So in the space it took the kettle to boil and to make a cup of tea, I was enlightened from creation to apocalypse. Not bad going.

* I insist that ‘overhearment’ is a real word despite the spell-checker trying to change it to ‘overgarment’ which is clearly incorrect

There’s something wonderfully decadent about buying alcohol from the supermarket on your lunch-break from work. It’s not something I’ve ever done before, and not something I’d thought would give such a great ‘naughty’ feeling.

In other news, IsItFriday has now undergone an i18n and l10n process and now appears in English, French, German, Spanish or Finnish depending on your browser settings. If you can supply the correct phrases in your local language, please let me know in the comments. I just need “Is it friday?”, “Yes” and “No” - where “Yes” and “No” are in the correct context (for languages where it matters).

It’s interesting - if you keep up with Big Brother you may be aware by now that one of the housemates, Shahbaz Chaudhry, has left the house amid a mental-health kerfuffle.

It was quite clear during the first few days of the programme that he was not strong enough to survive the highly stressful environment he would encounter.

Now the Mental Health Foundation are complaining that he was ever let in. Full story here.

I believe there have been three complaints so far - Shahbaz with his unstable state, Pete with his Tourettes syndrome and a less-substantiated one regarding Nikki and anorexia.

I think these foundations are basically good for looking out for the vulnerable and supporting their interests - however it should be noted that each one of the contestants has put themselves forward for the show, and are free to leave at any time.

There is an element of consent - the contestant has consented to enter the house and have some of their rights taken out of their control. There is an escape - they just say the word and they can leave. On top of that, the housemates are vetted by psychologists before they go in to hopefully ensure they will cope with the situations which will arise.

This is actually quite a lot more welfare care than the harsh world outside will normally afford them, and I think that the producers should not be seen to have failed if they let an unstable person in the house - more that their safeguards, which they don’t have to provide, were not quite as good as they could have been, or were circumvented.

Consider white-water rafting. Sure, you can wear a hard hat and a life jacket, but you’re still throwing yourself down a dangerous river full of rocks in a glorified inner-tube. The individual must accept some responsibility for their actions and decisions.

Oh… and I think Pete is great. A really positive character and he has to be doing good for Tourettes sufferers everwhere. I often hear people express that Tourettes isn’t real, and is just a good excuse to swear. Well, I challenge you to watch him for an hour or two, seeing the amount of energy he expends on his problem, and then say that he’s making it up. It’s quite clear he doesn’t want to be ticking all the time, but fortunately has come to terms with it sufficiently to function in the real (or fake) world.

I went to B&Q this evening and as I parked in the car park, I spied a couple (right in front of me) emptying their petrol mower into a fuel can by inverting the former over the latter splashing most of the fuel into the can, but some out onto the tarmac. I watched for a while, not quite comprehending what I was seeing. Then, once the petrol can was full, they proceeded to empty the rest of the petrol out onto the tarmac. I continued to watch, still not comprehending. I then figured I would probably be able to get my camera out and take a photo and they’d still be oblivious, so that’s what I did.

I’m still not sure that I understand. Good job no-one walked past with a lit cigarette. And yes, it was petrol, that was obvious from the fumes.

I’ve just realised… this week is the last week I’ll do more than 2 consecutive days at work until the start of July.

Woohoo!

It was a hint from a colleague - take every Wednesday in June. That way you have a month of relaxation and two Fridays per week (one virtual, one real) and only use four or five days of holiday to do it. Great plan.