Today was a fairly lazy day, which is fine. That's what holidays are for. In the morning we went to the local Market. It was not very busy, and quite miserable, but I think that had more to do with the rain than anything else. A lot of the stallholders had gone home by the time we arrived at 10:00. But there are still quite a few there, so I got a good idea of what's available at Elbląg market.
You can get 5 different kinds of preserved cabbage (not just any old sauerkraut) from the little van that sells only this. You can get any seasonal vegetable you like - mostly celeriac, parsnip, carrots, beetroot etc, and most standard fruits. No summer fruits, obviously, but plenty of apples and oranges and the like.
I was quite impressed with the quality - as long as you didn't want anything too exotic - and the price! Fresh eggs (probably free range from small market farm) Zł 0,60 - which is about 10p each. We bought three parsnips for Zł 0,70 and Agata tried to get them to keep the change from Zł 1, but they wouldn't hear of it!
My two favourites were the chap selling super-fresh dairy products, and the honey stalls. Milk in 2L soft drink bottles, and cream in jam jars. Poor bloke had 3 bottles of milk and 4 jars of cream left, and we could tell he really just wanted to sell the lot and go home. We ended up buying a small jar of cream, so he was a bit disappointed, but I'm definitely going back on Friday to get some to bring home! There were a few stalls selling honey, often paired with eggs. We found some we liked, but it was only available in huge jars - about half a kilo for Zł 12, so we found another place and were given full details of the contents of every jar, and the benefits of blends rather than single source batches etc etc. We left with a small jar of blended honey; I forget from which trees and bees. (more on honey later!)
Apart from the food section, there's the flea-market section. Here you will find all sorts of random stuff (as you might expect) Agata's Grandfather has a small stall in this part. He'd given up and gone home when we went, but he'll be there when we go on Friday! I'm quite looking forward to that.
When we got home it was time for 2nd Breakfast. The day is divided into four or five meals here: Breakfast, 2nd Breakfast, Obiad, and Supper. Sometimes you can fit another one in between Obiad and Supper. Obiad is usually the main meal of the day and is eaten around 17:00. Breakfast and 2nd Breakfast are basically the same - bread, cheese, meat, pickles etc. 2nd Breakfast is not like Morning Tea. Supper can be whatever you want it to be.
We had skipped breakfast to get to the market before 10, so 2nd Breakfast was really First Breakfast. After my excitement at the honey stall, Agata had promised to give me some of the honey they have at home. This comes in an enormous clay pot, a bit like the ones Pooh eats from. The honey itself is unrefined and simply delicious. It reminded me of the honey my Pop used to get from his bees at Wattle Park. With fresh crusty bread and butter - YUM!
I was also given a choice of three different kinds of home-made pickles! Kiszone, Konserwowe, and Pikle. Konserwowe dill pickles most people back home are familiar with, the one's you get in jars labelled Polski Ogorki. Kiszone are basically the same, but in salt water instead of vinegar, so taste quite different. Pikle are cut up into chunks with onion, mustard seeds and carrots in white-wine vinegar. They have quite a strong flavour and were easily my favourite.
Later in the day Lila was talking to the neighbour who had given her the various pickles. Upon hearing how much the Australian visitor liked the Pikle, she insisted Lila take two more enormous jars home. I do like them, but I hope I don't have to eat the whole lot in the next 3 days.
It rained most of the day, so we abandoned our plans to walk around the park and stayed inside instead. Agata went through her mother's wardrobe, trying on all the old 80's clothes. Some spectacular garments in there. Agata was most excited about a pair of dungerees. Unfortunately they were a bit small - ouch!
Around Obiad time, Agata's maternal grandfather (dziadek) came over. He's quite a character! He greeted me with Good Morning and I replied with cześć, causing much hilarity. He regaled us with various stories, none of which I understood, but he was great to watch and listen to. Apparently most of his stories are 40% truth and 60% embellishment, but everybody knows that, so it's become irrelevant. A collection of his somewhat dubious memoirs can be found in his book: Wschodnie Opowieści (Eastern Tales) published by Mer publishing and available on Amazon. It is in Polish, though, so I guess that counts most of you out.
Maria's sister Ella also came over with Agata's cousin Olek (Alex). He's only 11, and not very chatty. I wish we could have played football or something to break down the language barrier, but the darkness, rain, absence of a football, and lack of open space made that one a non-starter.
Everyone stayed for Obiad (more Bigos and salad) before more Good Morning/cześć fun followed by peace and quiet.
But the night was still young and Lila had a plan. She suggested that maybe I might like to learn to be a technician (ie: denture technician), and that now is as good a time as any to start. Being the nerd that I am, I was actually quite excited about this, so after donning a white coat I was led to the basement, where part of the workshop is. As you might expect, there were sets of teeth in various stages of preparation. The dentist provides Lila with a mould of the patient's mouth. Lila then makes a plaster likeness of the teeth & gums. This plaster mould is then covered with yellow stuff. This is to stop the wax in the next process from sticking to the plaster. It's a very thin layer, but it can get a bit lumpy, or at least pool in certain areas, so my first task was to use a variety of scraping tools to smooth out a plaster mould and make sure there were no unwanted yellow lumps. It's pretty fiddly work, and you need to have a good idea of what is likely to be weird bump on a patient's gums, and what is just a lump of yellow stuff.
The one I was working on was the upper jaw of a patient. From what I'd seen of other sets, this patient was doing quite well with at least half a dozen teeth still in place. Then I found out it was for a young woman, which I found a bit depressing. I don't know the background, but I kind of hope she had a horrible accident (from which she is otherwise unharmed) rather than it being simple neglect. Not sure why.
After a short time Lila left me to my own devices, assuring me I was a natural and that I was doing an excellent job. While she was out of the room I did my very best to prove her wrong by breaking off one of this poor girl's few remaining teeth! Agata found this completely hilarious, but I was mortified. I had visions of Lila having to start all over again and the patient being told that she's have to wait an extra week for her plate all because some idiot foreigner had broken off one of her plaster teeth. Supa-glue (in Polish: Supaglue) came to the rescue. Crisis over! Phew!
The next step (on a different set) was to put the new teeth into a way mould of the gums. The wax is moulded over the plaster mould in two layers: a smooth, rounded layer, and a square layer on top. Because the squared layer is put on afterwards, it is easy to remove, leaving the layer below ready to receive the new teeth. The two main tools here are a tiny pen-sized cylindrical drill for getting the shape of the root right, and a heated knife, which looks just like a soldering iron, but operates at a lower temperature. Put simply, it's a process of melting the wax, putting the tooth on, checking to make sure it's straight, then going on to the next one. In reality it's very fiddly and a bit of trial and error. You sometimes even have to remove ones you've already done if they lead to misalignment further down. One needs the patience of a saint!
I was itching to try this part myself, but I suspect it would have been way too much hassle to correct if I'd stuffed it up (track record not good on this front). So after a while we left Lila to it and headed upstairs to watch a video - yes, a video, not a DVD! Men in Black. Never seen it before. Loved it. Fortunately no Lektor this time. Phew!
Another late night, but that's also what holidays are for.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Elbląg - Interlude - An Introduction
(does that make the other entries "ludes"?)
Elbląg is located in northern Poland, some 80km from Gdańsk. There are six direct trains from Gdańsk each day, and a number of others you can take and change at Malbork.
The town lies just south of the Vistula Lagoon, having been established when the lagoon was a bit bigger than it is now. It is also at the northern end of the Elbląg Canal (fancy that!) which is a pretty spectacular piece of engineering (more later).
Poland had been through a several administrative re-divisions since 1991, and for a time Elbląg was the capital of the province. These days it's 'just another town' holding the dubious title of Highest Unemployment Rate in Poland.
There is no record of when Elbląg was founded, but it was first mentioned as "Ilfing" in The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan which was written in Anglo-Saxon in King Alfred's reign using information from a Viking who had visited the area. (thank you Wikipedia).
The Teutonic Knights founded the town proper (calling it Elbing) as part of their occupation of the northern part of Poland. This was also an interesting event: the King of Poland was in a spot of bother back in the 13th Century, so asked the Teutonic Knights for help, and offered them a little bit of land in return for ousting some pesky enemy. The Teutonic Knights said thanks very much and moved in, took over the whole region and generally made a nuisance of themselves for a couple of hundred years. They were eventually ousted in the 15th Century.
Being so close to Gdańsk, Elbląg has often been caught up in the territorial struggles surrounding that city. As it also has access to the Baltic Sea through the Lagoon (the mouth of which is still controlled by Russia), the town itself has been pretty hot property. To summarise, it has been passed backwards and forwards between German, Russian, Polish and Lithuanian rule.
After WWI Elbląg was made part of East Prussia (Ost-Preussen), so was officially German. It's strategic place with access to the Baltic made it a great place to build U-Boats. When the Soviet army liberated Elbląg in 1945, they did so by the tried and true method of reducing it to rubble, although, much of the work had been done before they got there by the Western Allied bombers. After WWII most of the German population fled Elbląg became part of the new Republic of Poland, and was repopulated with Polish people from the bits of Poland that the USSR had taken for themselves.
As with many places in Poland, Elbląg still feels a little like the Post-war reconstruction is still a work in progress, and one finds all over the world, a lot of the money seems to go to the wrong places. That said, there has been some significant investment in recent times.
A new Tramline was built (Sydney people take note - trams are NOT evil!) and brand spanking new trams purchased for the whole network. There are also a few medium-high density housing estates that look quite new. These are much more socially sustainable than the old tower blocks, but I don't know how much of that is public housing, so it's unclear whether the investment is really helping those that need it. There are still plenty of tower blocks around and as you'd expect, those areas are pretty much no-go after dark.
The Elbląg Canal
The Elbląg Canal is one of the Seven Wonders of Poland and a UNESCO Memorial to World Culture Inheritances (umm... ok). It's about 80km long, starts in Ostróda and runs south to Elbląg via a bunch of little lakes. It's significance and brilliance is in the way the problem of altitude difference is solved. In the upper sections (south) there is a series of locks, which is quite normal for this sort of thing. In the lower (northern) sections, however, they take the boats down the hill on rails! (Why didn't they do this in Fitzcarraldo??) There are five of these slipways over a 10km length of the canal. They still work, but only in Summer, and only for tourists. It's the only example of this method in Europe! The story goes that a German Engineer (for it was in Germany back in the 19th Century) came up with this idea for getting from the Port of Elbląg to the forests around Ostróda. Most people thought his idea was crazy and it took years for anyone to give him any money to build it. In the end it was the King of Prussia who funded it, not because he thought it was a particularly good idea, nor because the new canal would be vitally important for trade and economic reasons, but because nobody had done it before. Good on him, I say! For more info and pictures, check out this site, or this one. Anoraks might also like this video (I love it!) and this one!
This entry has been compiled with the help of Wikipedia, LonelyPlanet, Michael Palin, conversations and personal observations.
Elbląg is located in northern Poland, some 80km from Gdańsk. There are six direct trains from Gdańsk each day, and a number of others you can take and change at Malbork.
The town lies just south of the Vistula Lagoon, having been established when the lagoon was a bit bigger than it is now. It is also at the northern end of the Elbląg Canal (fancy that!) which is a pretty spectacular piece of engineering (more later).
Poland had been through a several administrative re-divisions since 1991, and for a time Elbląg was the capital of the province. These days it's 'just another town' holding the dubious title of Highest Unemployment Rate in Poland.
There is no record of when Elbląg was founded, but it was first mentioned as "Ilfing" in The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan which was written in Anglo-Saxon in King Alfred's reign using information from a Viking who had visited the area. (thank you Wikipedia).
The Teutonic Knights founded the town proper (calling it Elbing) as part of their occupation of the northern part of Poland. This was also an interesting event: the King of Poland was in a spot of bother back in the 13th Century, so asked the Teutonic Knights for help, and offered them a little bit of land in return for ousting some pesky enemy. The Teutonic Knights said thanks very much and moved in, took over the whole region and generally made a nuisance of themselves for a couple of hundred years. They were eventually ousted in the 15th Century.
Being so close to Gdańsk, Elbląg has often been caught up in the territorial struggles surrounding that city. As it also has access to the Baltic Sea through the Lagoon (the mouth of which is still controlled by Russia), the town itself has been pretty hot property. To summarise, it has been passed backwards and forwards between German, Russian, Polish and Lithuanian rule.
After WWI Elbląg was made part of East Prussia (Ost-Preussen), so was officially German. It's strategic place with access to the Baltic made it a great place to build U-Boats. When the Soviet army liberated Elbląg in 1945, they did so by the tried and true method of reducing it to rubble, although, much of the work had been done before they got there by the Western Allied bombers. After WWII most of the German population fled Elbląg became part of the new Republic of Poland, and was repopulated with Polish people from the bits of Poland that the USSR had taken for themselves.
As with many places in Poland, Elbląg still feels a little like the Post-war reconstruction is still a work in progress, and one finds all over the world, a lot of the money seems to go to the wrong places. That said, there has been some significant investment in recent times.
A new Tramline was built (Sydney people take note - trams are NOT evil!) and brand spanking new trams purchased for the whole network. There are also a few medium-high density housing estates that look quite new. These are much more socially sustainable than the old tower blocks, but I don't know how much of that is public housing, so it's unclear whether the investment is really helping those that need it. There are still plenty of tower blocks around and as you'd expect, those areas are pretty much no-go after dark.
The Elbląg Canal
The Elbląg Canal is one of the Seven Wonders of Poland and a UNESCO Memorial to World Culture Inheritances (umm... ok). It's about 80km long, starts in Ostróda and runs south to Elbląg via a bunch of little lakes. It's significance and brilliance is in the way the problem of altitude difference is solved. In the upper sections (south) there is a series of locks, which is quite normal for this sort of thing. In the lower (northern) sections, however, they take the boats down the hill on rails! (Why didn't they do this in Fitzcarraldo??) There are five of these slipways over a 10km length of the canal. They still work, but only in Summer, and only for tourists. It's the only example of this method in Europe! The story goes that a German Engineer (for it was in Germany back in the 19th Century) came up with this idea for getting from the Port of Elbląg to the forests around Ostróda. Most people thought his idea was crazy and it took years for anyone to give him any money to build it. In the end it was the King of Prussia who funded it, not because he thought it was a particularly good idea, nor because the new canal would be vitally important for trade and economic reasons, but because nobody had done it before. Good on him, I say! For more info and pictures, check out this site, or this one. Anoraks might also like this video (I love it!) and this one!
This entry has been compiled with the help of Wikipedia, LonelyPlanet, Michael Palin, conversations and personal observations.
Elbląg - Day 1
Monday morning 4:30am we left Tavistock Place on our trip 'do Polski'. I love walking through cities before dawn, especially on non-party nights, so the walk to King's Cross was a good start to the trip.
Wizz Air have redeemed themselves somewhat after the ACC tour of 2007 (in which we found ourselves waiting 5 hours in Sweden, followed by a 2 am train to Toruń). We departed and arrived on time! I sat next to a London policeman who sounded like a Scouser. Turns out he was Polish! Go figure. His favourite perk of the job... When drunk Polish guys in London try to get out of being reprimanded or arrested by asking for a Polish translator, and he replies in Polish "this is a service I can offer". The look on their face... Priceless.
Passport control was less of an ordeal than I expected. The just did the usual "first time in Poland??" "no" "when did you come before??" "July 2007" "hrmph" and checked all the pages of my passport to make sure I wasn't visiting dodgy drug smuggling type places. Easy.
As we waited for the bus there was a man putting up a new billboard poster. Fascinating to watch him work, but even funnier was the juxtaposition of the two halves. The top half of the old poster said: Mam mniej w portfelu... (I have less in my wallet). We think it was an ad for a newspaper. But what made it funny was the bottom half of the new poster: bo kupuję w Biedronce (because I shop at Biedronka). Biedronka is like a polish version of Aldi or Lidl. It means Ladybird, so their logo is a cartoon ladybird.
We think he should have stopped after putting up the bottom half...
Mam mniej w portfelu... bo kupuję w Biedronce. he he.
I wish we'd had the presence of mind to take a photo!
Naja, the trip from Gdańsk to Elbląg was very easy, involving only one change Malbork. The scenery along the way was interesting. Everything seems to have been built with Besser-bricks, and only about half the houses have been rendered, but the ones that are are often in nice bright colours. It makes all the difference in winter. It's hard to tell where the city stops and the country begins. There seem to be random clumps of buildings dotted across what would once have been farming land, and the fields seem very small. I wonder if this is a result of some kind of free-for-all land grab division after the fall of the Soviet Union. Maybe I'm imagining too much into it.
On the train from Malbork we decided to start taking some transport photos for our anorak friends, so I headed to the front of the train to get a shot looking through the driver's cabin to the tracks ahead. The driver's cabin door was open, but I didn't go in, but I didn't need to. In the first compartment were the two conductors, sitting having a smoke under the "no smoking" sign. My entrance seemed a little unexpected and one of them asked me something - I think it was "What's up?" but I could only reply with "przepraszam... umm... Angielski?". After a couple of very frustrating minutes for me, I established that it was ok to take a photo. Snap! Dziękuję, Dowidzenia. Phew!
Upon reaching Elbląg we managed to get on the wrong bus, but realised soon enough to change. Each bus stop has a Sklep Fortress where you can buy tickets. It's all bars and grilles with a tiny window for the transaction, all other windows are full of the available wares. It must be pretty miserable working on one of those.
We're staying with Agata's aunt Lila, who lives in The Family House. Agata and her parent's have the attic apartment, so we're up there fro the week. Lila makes dentures for a living. While I've never met anyone who does that before, the most fascinating thing I find is that it is a "cottage industry". Lila has a workshop divided between two rooms of the house, one in he basement, and one on the ground floor. Two colleagues come to work here. Apparently when the State run health system was overhauled, a whole bunch of people decided to 'go private'. But it's not just the denture-making industry! Across the street there is a normal looking house with a big "Solarium" sign out the front. It seems the land-use laws are less strict here. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be allowed to set up your solarium business in your basement in Australia or the UK.
For Obiad, Lila had cooked us a Polish favourite: Bigos. It's meat and cabbage, somehow transformed into something thoroughly delicious! Lila doesn't speak English, but I'm picking up bits of Polish and Agata is doing an excellent job of translating. It must get pretty boring for her having to say everything twice. My most useful phrase so far is "Przepraszam, nie mowię po polsku" I'm saying it over and over again so that when I'm unexpectedly confronted by some well-meaning interrogator, I don't forget it.
In the evening we headed to the local top hang-out, namely the shopping mall, the main tenant of which is Carrefour. It continues to depress me that shopping malls are the same the world over (insert Paul Kelly song here) but they do have things here we can't get in England - like basic graph paper! - and some excellent bargains. Having recently found my mid-range black shoes to have a huge split in the sole, less than 3 months after I bought them, I'm in the market for some black shoes, and this is the perfect place to find them. London destroys shoes, so I've decided not to spend too much on everyday pairs, and keep the good ones for special occasions. Deichmann in Elbląg, here I come!
After our shopping trip, we stopped off at the local - and I mean local, as in, at the end of our very short street - pizza place, La Capra, for a pizza and a much longed-for beer. The beer was Lech. They had run out of the good stuff. I'm told it's the preferred drink of football fans. Nuff said. The pizza was proper thin italian style. Delish!
When we got home we sat for a bit of a chat with Lila. She had the tele on and I was introduces to the idea of the Lektor. In Australia we have subtitles for non-English films, in Germany they overdub each character with a different "actor" (although the same six people seem to do every film!), in Poland, they leave the original audio running very quietly, and have one guy saying ALL the lines, and in the same tone of voice. The movie in question last night was Bad Boys (1995, Will Smith et al.). It was pretty exciting, with lots of shouting and shooting. But the Lektor delivered every line as though he were saying "I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me". What was even better was that the female characters were read by the same guy!! And if this weren't funny enough, apparently the translation is completely watered down! Bad Boys is pretty blue, but I'm told the translation for "F*** you, Motherf***er"" was along the lines of "go away now, you bad man". Classic.
When it came, sleep was very welcome. Coming up... Day 2.
Wizz Air have redeemed themselves somewhat after the ACC tour of 2007 (in which we found ourselves waiting 5 hours in Sweden, followed by a 2 am train to Toruń). We departed and arrived on time! I sat next to a London policeman who sounded like a Scouser. Turns out he was Polish! Go figure. His favourite perk of the job... When drunk Polish guys in London try to get out of being reprimanded or arrested by asking for a Polish translator, and he replies in Polish "this is a service I can offer". The look on their face... Priceless.
Passport control was less of an ordeal than I expected. The just did the usual "first time in Poland??" "no" "when did you come before??" "July 2007" "hrmph" and checked all the pages of my passport to make sure I wasn't visiting dodgy drug smuggling type places. Easy.
As we waited for the bus there was a man putting up a new billboard poster. Fascinating to watch him work, but even funnier was the juxtaposition of the two halves. The top half of the old poster said: Mam mniej w portfelu... (I have less in my wallet). We think it was an ad for a newspaper. But what made it funny was the bottom half of the new poster: bo kupuję w Biedronce (because I shop at Biedronka). Biedronka is like a polish version of Aldi or Lidl. It means Ladybird, so their logo is a cartoon ladybird.
We think he should have stopped after putting up the bottom half...
Mam mniej w portfelu... bo kupuję w Biedronce. he he.
I wish we'd had the presence of mind to take a photo!
Naja, the trip from Gdańsk to Elbląg was very easy, involving only one change Malbork. The scenery along the way was interesting. Everything seems to have been built with Besser-bricks, and only about half the houses have been rendered, but the ones that are are often in nice bright colours. It makes all the difference in winter. It's hard to tell where the city stops and the country begins. There seem to be random clumps of buildings dotted across what would once have been farming land, and the fields seem very small. I wonder if this is a result of some kind of free-for-all land grab division after the fall of the Soviet Union. Maybe I'm imagining too much into it.
On the train from Malbork we decided to start taking some transport photos for our anorak friends, so I headed to the front of the train to get a shot looking through the driver's cabin to the tracks ahead. The driver's cabin door was open, but I didn't go in, but I didn't need to. In the first compartment were the two conductors, sitting having a smoke under the "no smoking" sign. My entrance seemed a little unexpected and one of them asked me something - I think it was "What's up?" but I could only reply with "przepraszam... umm... Angielski?". After a couple of very frustrating minutes for me, I established that it was ok to take a photo. Snap! Dziękuję, Dowidzenia. Phew!
Upon reaching Elbląg we managed to get on the wrong bus, but realised soon enough to change. Each bus stop has a Sklep Fortress where you can buy tickets. It's all bars and grilles with a tiny window for the transaction, all other windows are full of the available wares. It must be pretty miserable working on one of those.
We're staying with Agata's aunt Lila, who lives in The Family House. Agata and her parent's have the attic apartment, so we're up there fro the week. Lila makes dentures for a living. While I've never met anyone who does that before, the most fascinating thing I find is that it is a "cottage industry". Lila has a workshop divided between two rooms of the house, one in he basement, and one on the ground floor. Two colleagues come to work here. Apparently when the State run health system was overhauled, a whole bunch of people decided to 'go private'. But it's not just the denture-making industry! Across the street there is a normal looking house with a big "Solarium" sign out the front. It seems the land-use laws are less strict here. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be allowed to set up your solarium business in your basement in Australia or the UK.
For Obiad, Lila had cooked us a Polish favourite: Bigos. It's meat and cabbage, somehow transformed into something thoroughly delicious! Lila doesn't speak English, but I'm picking up bits of Polish and Agata is doing an excellent job of translating. It must get pretty boring for her having to say everything twice. My most useful phrase so far is "Przepraszam, nie mowię po polsku" I'm saying it over and over again so that when I'm unexpectedly confronted by some well-meaning interrogator, I don't forget it.
In the evening we headed to the local top hang-out, namely the shopping mall, the main tenant of which is Carrefour. It continues to depress me that shopping malls are the same the world over (insert Paul Kelly song here) but they do have things here we can't get in England - like basic graph paper! - and some excellent bargains. Having recently found my mid-range black shoes to have a huge split in the sole, less than 3 months after I bought them, I'm in the market for some black shoes, and this is the perfect place to find them. London destroys shoes, so I've decided not to spend too much on everyday pairs, and keep the good ones for special occasions. Deichmann in Elbląg, here I come!
After our shopping trip, we stopped off at the local - and I mean local, as in, at the end of our very short street - pizza place, La Capra, for a pizza and a much longed-for beer. The beer was Lech. They had run out of the good stuff. I'm told it's the preferred drink of football fans. Nuff said. The pizza was proper thin italian style. Delish!
When we got home we sat for a bit of a chat with Lila. She had the tele on and I was introduces to the idea of the Lektor. In Australia we have subtitles for non-English films, in Germany they overdub each character with a different "actor" (although the same six people seem to do every film!), in Poland, they leave the original audio running very quietly, and have one guy saying ALL the lines, and in the same tone of voice. The movie in question last night was Bad Boys (1995, Will Smith et al.). It was pretty exciting, with lots of shouting and shooting. But the Lektor delivered every line as though he were saying "I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me". What was even better was that the female characters were read by the same guy!! And if this weren't funny enough, apparently the translation is completely watered down! Bad Boys is pretty blue, but I'm told the translation for "F*** you, Motherf***er"" was along the lines of "go away now, you bad man". Classic.
When it came, sleep was very welcome. Coming up... Day 2.
Sunday, 8 March 2009
Weekend Review
Saturday's Highlights:
- Family Working Bee at Sherard Mansions
- Pizza after Family Working Bee
- Receipt of Tax Return cheque. This is particularly excellent as I hadn't even submitted a tax return!
- Porridge for breakfast with coffee and OJ
- Discovering that my bed isn't as broken as I thought, and will be quite easy to fix.
Saturday's Lowlight:
- The bank ATM having run out of envelopes so I was not able to bank my cheque.
Today's Highlights:
- Bairstow Lamentations. I haven't done these since I were a lad. There are two verses worth the effort. 15 and... umm... another one.
- Making it to Chelmsford in time to take a leisurely stroll to get a coffee
- Watching the Choirmaster teaching the boys with a perfect balance of encouragement, praise, and ridicule
- Walter's sermon about post-modernism that seemed to tail off at the end, a conclusion reminiscent of Whitacre's "Sleep". Then again, maybe I just nodded off, so didn't notice him winding up
- Watching the fountain across the road being blown in every direction by the wet and windy weather
- Being the only one bathed in sunshine, just like that scene from Death in Brunswick. Unfortunately it also made it hard to read the music and see the conductor at the same time.
- Packing for an overseas adventure
Today's Lowlights:
- Spending 4 hours (and counting) in transit thanks to Planned Engineering Works
- Discovering in the most uncomfortable way possible that the soles of my £30 black shoes are not as sturdy as the soles of my £10 black shoes.
Coming soon... Highlights from Poland
- Family Working Bee at Sherard Mansions
- Pizza after Family Working Bee
- Receipt of Tax Return cheque. This is particularly excellent as I hadn't even submitted a tax return!
- Porridge for breakfast with coffee and OJ
- Discovering that my bed isn't as broken as I thought, and will be quite easy to fix.
Saturday's Lowlight:
- The bank ATM having run out of envelopes so I was not able to bank my cheque.
Today's Highlights:
- Bairstow Lamentations. I haven't done these since I were a lad. There are two verses worth the effort. 15 and... umm... another one.
- Making it to Chelmsford in time to take a leisurely stroll to get a coffee
- Watching the Choirmaster teaching the boys with a perfect balance of encouragement, praise, and ridicule
- Walter's sermon about post-modernism that seemed to tail off at the end, a conclusion reminiscent of Whitacre's "Sleep". Then again, maybe I just nodded off, so didn't notice him winding up
- Watching the fountain across the road being blown in every direction by the wet and windy weather
- Being the only one bathed in sunshine, just like that scene from Death in Brunswick. Unfortunately it also made it hard to read the music and see the conductor at the same time.
- Packing for an overseas adventure
Today's Lowlights:
- Spending 4 hours (and counting) in transit thanks to Planned Engineering Works
- Discovering in the most uncomfortable way possible that the soles of my £30 black shoes are not as sturdy as the soles of my £10 black shoes.
Coming soon... Highlights from Poland
Thursday, 1 November 2007
Liar Liar, Incendiary Trousers
The main thing that's prompted me to write after such a silence is a phenomenon I've been noticing for some time, but which seems to be more prevalent during the election campaign.
It seems that many politicians think that by saying something in public, it becomes true, even when it is common knowledge that the utterance is a complete load of sloblock.
The most recent example of this was from the Family First candidate in the Queensland seat of Leichhardt (aka Voss). My knowledge of this comes entirely from the ABC so I can't claim to be a first-hand eyewitness to the event, but neither can most people.
The FF candidate called for the Lib candidate to tell the electorate if she's a lesbian or not. Now, I don't want to get into a discussion about the relevance of sexuality to candidacy (my thought is that it's not relevant at all) or the fact that the very homophobic Liberal party has managed to attract someone who may be homosexual. What interests me is the follow-up.
Having been told in no uncertain terms that he was out of line, FF candidate issued an apology which included the following line:
"he regrets making the comments... [and] they do not reflect the views of Family First"
Excuse me?? Last time I checked Family First was even more homophobic that the Libs, they actively campaign against gay rights and anything that 'threatens traditional family values'.
It's as though by saying publicly that Family First isn't anti-gay, it suddenly makes the reality disappear and everything's ok.
Interestingly enough, though, I would expect most of FF's followers to prefer it if the comments did reflect the views of FF (which they do).
The other classic example trotted out recently (and regularly) comes from the PM himself. When Labor were going through all their dirt troubles with Kev, and he kept shifting blame, the PM tried to tell the Australian People (or Working Families if you prefer) that KRudd is a bad man for doing that, and that if something goes awry on the PM's watch, he takes full responsibility for it.
Oh! Like he did for AWB, Children overboard, Siev X, no WMD - to name but a few.
Does he really think that just by saying he takes responsibility, people will believe he does?
There are, of course, many more examples from both major parties, and many of the minor ones too. Tony Abbott is particularly fond of this technique, especially in relation to Christian Values.
All I can say is that if people believe this kind of bare-faced economy with the truth, they deserve everything they get.
It seems that many politicians think that by saying something in public, it becomes true, even when it is common knowledge that the utterance is a complete load of sloblock.
The most recent example of this was from the Family First candidate in the Queensland seat of Leichhardt (aka Voss). My knowledge of this comes entirely from the ABC so I can't claim to be a first-hand eyewitness to the event, but neither can most people.
The FF candidate called for the Lib candidate to tell the electorate if she's a lesbian or not. Now, I don't want to get into a discussion about the relevance of sexuality to candidacy (my thought is that it's not relevant at all) or the fact that the very homophobic Liberal party has managed to attract someone who may be homosexual. What interests me is the follow-up.
Having been told in no uncertain terms that he was out of line, FF candidate issued an apology which included the following line:
"he regrets making the comments... [and] they do not reflect the views of Family First"
Excuse me?? Last time I checked Family First was even more homophobic that the Libs, they actively campaign against gay rights and anything that 'threatens traditional family values'.
It's as though by saying publicly that Family First isn't anti-gay, it suddenly makes the reality disappear and everything's ok.
Interestingly enough, though, I would expect most of FF's followers to prefer it if the comments did reflect the views of FF (which they do).
The other classic example trotted out recently (and regularly) comes from the PM himself. When Labor were going through all their dirt troubles with Kev, and he kept shifting blame, the PM tried to tell the Australian People (or Working Families if you prefer) that KRudd is a bad man for doing that, and that if something goes awry on the PM's watch, he takes full responsibility for it.
Oh! Like he did for AWB, Children overboard, Siev X, no WMD - to name but a few.
Does he really think that just by saying he takes responsibility, people will believe he does?
There are, of course, many more examples from both major parties, and many of the minor ones too. Tony Abbott is particularly fond of this technique, especially in relation to Christian Values.
All I can say is that if people believe this kind of bare-faced economy with the truth, they deserve everything they get.
Disenfranchisement is us!
Well, folks, it's election time in Australia, and has been for some weeks now.
I've been following it as best I can from the other side of the world, which is actually pretty easy these days, what with video, audio, and print media all online.
I even watched the announcement live!
Which reminds me... in his election announcement the PM said that the writs would be issued on Wednesday the 17th of October and the Electoral Roll would close on the 22nd. The interesting thing here is that those were the OLD rules. Under the current legislation (introduced by the current govt. in a bid to stop young people from voting for the other team) the Roll closes at 8pm on the day the writs are issued.
Sure enough, when Wednesday 17/10 rolled around, the headline news item was: Electoral Roll closes tonight!
So what happened here? Did the PM get it Wrong?
Did not one of his mindas point out this enormous mistake in his speech?
But more importantly, why did no-one in the media pick up on it? or even on the other side of the house??
It's not like this legislation has had widespread, or even bi-partisan support!
Oh well. I suppose the PM got it wrong and hushed it up and the AEC stuck to the legislation.
So all those nearly 18 year olds and recent migrants, who neglected to sign on before the 17th will have to find another way to fulfill their democratic responsibility.
Maybe they can kick him in the pants on one of his morning walks.
I've been following it as best I can from the other side of the world, which is actually pretty easy these days, what with video, audio, and print media all online.
I even watched the announcement live!
Which reminds me... in his election announcement the PM said that the writs would be issued on Wednesday the 17th of October and the Electoral Roll would close on the 22nd. The interesting thing here is that those were the OLD rules. Under the current legislation (introduced by the current govt. in a bid to stop young people from voting for the other team) the Roll closes at 8pm on the day the writs are issued.
Sure enough, when Wednesday 17/10 rolled around, the headline news item was: Electoral Roll closes tonight!
So what happened here? Did the PM get it Wrong?
Did not one of his mindas point out this enormous mistake in his speech?
But more importantly, why did no-one in the media pick up on it? or even on the other side of the house??
It's not like this legislation has had widespread, or even bi-partisan support!
Oh well. I suppose the PM got it wrong and hushed it up and the AEC stuck to the legislation.
So all those nearly 18 year olds and recent migrants, who neglected to sign on before the 17th will have to find another way to fulfill their democratic responsibility.
Maybe they can kick him in the pants on one of his morning walks.
Apology
I would like to offer my most sincere apologies to those who were hoping for the ACC tour journal. Once I started editing it got a bit dull and turned into a 'then we went here and sang in such-and-such a church' Kind of thing. If you want to know where we went, check the ACC website.
Suffice to say there were some transport issues along the way, but we all survived.
From now on I'm hoping to write some more and keep y'all procrastinating.
Tinkerty tonk.
Suffice to say there were some transport issues along the way, but we all survived.
From now on I'm hoping to write some more and keep y'all procrastinating.
Tinkerty tonk.
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