Thursday 5 February 2009

Important!

I searched for "German phrases" thinking I would get to the bank one of these days and wanting to know how to say "Does anyone here speak English?"

I found this page - because you never know when you'll need to know the word for "anti-tank gun" or how to say "Don't try any tricks!"

Tuesday 3 February 2009

I'm not dead - and rabbits!

I was going to do an update the other day, but going into Blogger from my usual bookmark was giving me a page in German where the only options I could make out were "Change Password" and "Create Account".

First, the really important news - rabbits! I was walking back after having gone to the supermarket down the road (where I completely failed to find bin bags despite it being quite obvious what they look like worldwide) and walking up between the blocks of flats on the next road over - the blocks have their small/thin/side end to the road and there are raised grassy areas between them with areas to hang laundry, etc. And right at the end of one, I saw a tiny shadow with long ears! And as it shot away towards the road I saw another, larger, one on the raised grassy area. Happiness.

I didn't see any last night, as I was out until silly o'clock doing karaoke. It's amazing how many rock songs are perfectly suited to it - someone always does Hotel California, and Immigrant Song and Paranoid (both the Garbage one and the Black Sabbath one) are wonderful as well.

Tonight, came back from work late as usual, and walked back from the station but seemed to lose half the muscles in my legs about 4/5 of the way back and had to clump along noisily and gracelessly for the last bit. Certainly scared off any rabbits around.

Not much else to report really - working away, trying not to eat just because I'm lacking energy, enjoying the work and hanging around with colleagues. Very much looking forward to being back in Reading next weekend for Valentine's day - so much so that I had convinced myself during the week that it was this weekend, and was worried about my flight being cancelled due to snow. sigh

In other news, I think I've found a text for my annotated translation, a chapter from 近代天皇制への道程 (The Road to the Modern Emperor System)by 田中彰 (Akira Tanaka). He is an established historian so a safe choice, and I've always been interested in the role of the emperor - be it real or imagined - in the Meiji Restoration and subsequent events. So, should be interesting both to translate and to research around. More work to be done...