Out of the way

I am on another Opera University Tour, this time to Brazil. And to the general surprise of everyone (including me) I have done all the presentations in something which is tending towards portuguese...

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I work in a multicultural, multilingual environment. I understand that languages can be difficult to learn (you should hear me try to speak Russian if you want a laugh), and that it is worth trying not to offend people. But sometimes...

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I'm in Madrid and it's in the high 30's (about 100º in the old money - or for Americans and Englishmen), so I am glad I have a fan. I am trying to teach myself Russian, because I am going to Kyrgyzstan for ...

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I read in my email yesterday one of those things that goes around and around until everyone has seen it 979 times. In this case, it was one of those dopey "how Australian are you?" tests - a little more complicated than the "Are you a real Norwegian" test that I had in my Norwegian class yesterday, but roughly as silly and slightly more offensive (Aussies are like that ).

Then I read the newspaper this morning and discovered that the people currently governing Australia think that it makes sense to apply this test for real (have a squiz if you like). In the interests of bringing about something very like the end of the world, to wit helping people to waltz in, set up and settle down a bit and say "Mate, I am Australian now", like they have done on and off (there was this little White Australia policy thing, and a few other squeezes) for the last couple of centuries, I present the cheat sheet for the upcoming citizenship test.

(Also, it's so Stace doesn't make a more of a play for Sar's Tim Tams. She got enough of her own already...)

(Warning. There are some rude-ish words in it. Nothing that makes my Mum squirm, but the sort of thing that would have brought a Very Stern Look from my Granny, and a rap over the knuckles from my uncle).

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The SVG event of the year is the SVG Open. At least some years - unfortunately last year's conference was cancelled. This year, it was in Tokyo...

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Yet more books. And admitting that I had a week where I didn't read a book at all.

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These were the lyrics to an obscure Beatles song. Since I had it on a cassette tape that had a mostly black cover, it took me ages to realise that it was the "White Album", which was actually titled "The Beatles".

But here, they are because I finished books number 8 and 9.

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Wow. That took a while. It means "hello" - annyong haseyo. In Korean. For the first time in my life, I am in Korea - the first new country I have visited in almost a year.

Arriving from Japan, where it was pretty warm for the last few days, I found the cool weather arriving in the evening refreshing. This morning I woke up early and went for a swim (97.9 km to go - I am still way behind). Without goggles my eyes turned bright red, but I went to breakfast anyway. I hope they thought I looked tired, because otherwise they might have assumed that I had managed to take a LOT of drugs and yet walk straight in. (Or maybe they are used to people who go swimming in the morning with no goggles).

I took a short video before I went swimming. When I was back the sun had come up and was shining over the scenery, but when I came back from breakfast it was snowing. Hooray for nice weather. (It will be nice to get back to Oslo, where this week seems to mostly vary between freezing and ten below - maybe I will get to go skating yet ).

I'm here for a conference on "Next Generation Web - Web 2.0 and Mobile". We are seeing a lot of talk about Web 2.0, and slowly the idea is taking hold. When the CEO of Yahoo! Korea stands up and says this is not about replacing the web, but about evolution, in terms of quality, it makes a lot more sense than when people stood up so long ago and said "we can replace the existing internet with [whatever their favourite buzz was], if only you all decide to buy product [something]...".

So, 48 hours to talk about Web 2.0, learn something about Korea, try to learn more words in Korean. One thing I have learned, because my phrase book repeats it a half-dozen times, is that you should end almost everything with -yo (요), to make it clear that you are being respectful. I have already learned how the alphabet works - characters as written are usually a combination of two or three basic characters, so there are only a moderate number to learn. Although I haven't got them all down yet, and I haven't learned the keyboard positions even for the handful I do recall.

Not enough time. And a third of it is already gone. But I hope to come back...

When I read things written by people I know, I often hear their voice saying it. So it surprised me to notice that when a french friend of mine writes in english I normally don't hear a voice with it.

Je me demande. SI j'écris en français, est-ce qu'on m'entend comme je parle français? Je n'ai pas publié mon blog, donc c'est bien possible que personne ne peut dire, en fait.

Y si hablo español? La mayoria de los españoles sí suenan cuando escriben, aún en inglés.

Jeg leser blogene av mange scandinavsker, men de er på engelsk uten softwolf og jorunn.