Sunday, 28 January 2007

Nothing to declare

Last year ended on a high with my trip to Italy, so of course this one has started on something of a low, with the unexpected death of a friend's husband. Then a typhoon passed through my 10th floor apartment breaking doors and windows. The windows company couldn't come for 9 days (another company I tried couldn't come for a month!), I had to abandon my open french windows for a few hours to sit an exam - and wasn't THAT fun! - and the rain got in, so now I have undulating parquet. But at least the internal door that came off its hinges - smashing a small display case on the way - is the right size to cover the broken back door until I can get it seen to. It is cold, Stu's blog has disappeared, and I still miss Midori/Greensleeves who gave up hers some months ago. Last night I had a not very nice meal in a not very nice restaurant with some friends whose conversation depressed me (is everyone but me trying to find a partner via the internet?) and this afternoon I set out to see a performance by my friend's daughter's dance class but the tram stopped half-way there "for technical reasons" and no replacement ever came, so I had to come home. I went via the "night shop", for consolation, but couldn't even find any chocolate I like so had to make do with cake! OK, next time I'll try to find something nice to blog about. Or maybe just a nice photo.

Wednesday, 10 January 2007

Flying dolphins

Flock of dolphins flying over the chilly post-Christmas streets of Treviso, courtesy of "Cracking Art Revolution", more (and better) photos here.

Saturday, 6 January 2007

Shutter-bug

Windows, Feltre

The house on the right is the one whose roof appears on the left in the photo of rooftops.

Thursday, 4 January 2007

Tin I help you?

I am still laughing at this example of machine translation from English to Italian, which turns "Can anyone suggest..." into something like "tin can suggests someone"!

My current reading pile includes "Lost in Translation: Misadventures in English Abroad", by Charlie Croker, which is a lovely collection of mistranslations, typos and punctuation errors. Given my internet name(s) I qannot but quote this chapter title from a book about the history of Garuda, the Indonesian Airline: "Total Quality Qontrol"!

But the one I like most so far is a sign at Heathrow Airport which apparently reads "No electric people carrying vehicles past this point" - what a difference a hyphen makes!

Wednesday, 3 January 2007

More from Feltre

Monday, 1 January 2007

EU27

Happy New Year