Say my Name

.... sang the now thankfully split-up Destiny's Child, and I am not going to write about my name, but my hometown's

Right. As some of you will know, one of my favourite hobbies is harassing poor Euan Notman on TayFM late at night... ANd of course I take part in competitions, one of which is "Battle of the Cities Forward Slash Towns".
And naturally, I don't fight for Dundee's honour, but for that of my hometown, Niebüll (sorry, they either don't have an English site or I need new contact lenses).
And yes, I'm bright and quick, so I got us points, a fact that landed Niebüll in the Leage Table - well, sort of kind of...

Almost. Given that Euan and I had only spoken on the phone, and I tend to pronounce the otherwise unpronouncable in a rather English way (nee- bul), fair enough.

But I wrote him an email, with pictures, maps, and all, to show him where the weirdo that calls him 3x a week comes from. Last night, I texted in the answer (which was mean, I know), and he announced me as
"Cornelia getting the right answer, but I'm not sure anymore how to pronounce her town..."

Sweet, and thanks for that. I've told him by now, just to let you know that I'm not rotten to the core...

And it has been fixed:

Am I a celebrity...?

I am Your Robot

... not that I particularly like Elton John, but it fits.

Right, as most of you know, my PhD is concerned with patent data, which I mainly get from the EPO. For some time, as I was establishing pure numbers, my work involved quite monotonous clicking through their online database.

With learning curves and the all this, I developed some speed in doing this over time. And was greeted with the following:

Apologies for the poor quality, but check the Error Message... >>Client has been determined to be a robot due to recent behaviour!!<< With two exclamation marks. So I am a robot - and definitely in the wrong film.

But! They've worked on the database to improve it, as we can read on page 34 of their recently published Annual Report 2005:

So they're proud of blocking poor little robots. *sigh*

I'm not going to complain. I just sometimes wonder what I've done to book the receiving end this time...

Bad Wisdom

... was once mentioned by Suzanne Vega.

I have just made up my mind: I want to die stupid.

At least if that means that my wisdom tooth stops moving. *look-up-dentist's-phone-number*

Smiley Faces

... is Gnarls Barkley's new song

When you read the news these days, there's not that much to cheer about...
But coming across things like this little panda really saves the day, don't they?

I think he definitely looks fairly stoned...

Speak my Language!

... sang The Cure. And I am going to take you to the Babylonian abyss that translation can create.

I bought toothpaste the other day. Whitening stuff, as I had a voucher (and am vain). And it had one of those leaflets that explain things. As I like them, I thought I'd give it a go. Here's what it said:

Years ago, during an expedition in the Arctic, a number of American scientists discovered that the secret behind the extraordinary whiteness of the teeth of the local population lay in rubbing them with lichens.

OK, fine, who cares anyway?
But then my gaze fell on the German part of the leaflet, which said the following:

... amerikanische Wissenschaftler bei einer Expedition in der Antarktis...

Now, you don't have to speak German to see that Antarktis is a lot more like Antarctic, isn't it? And besides, which local population in Antarctica could brush their teeth with lichen? Penguins don't have teeth.

Right, I thought, this toothpaste is from Italy, let's check the Italian version:

... una spedizione in Artide ...

Looks like Arctic to me. Or, more Arctic than Antarctic, at least.

The French?

... d'une expedition en Arctique ...

Spanish?

... al Artico ...

But the Slovenians prefer penguins again:

... na Antarktiki ...

The Greek?

... Αρκτική ...

Now, that looks Arctic to me.
It seems that only for German and Slovenian audiences the American scientists have gone south - in Polish (Arktykę), Turkish (Arktik), Russian (Арктику), Croatian (arktičke), and Dutch (noordpoolgebied) they go north. I admit I can't figure it out for Hungarian and Arabic, but I think the picture is clear.

I like Geography. *g*

Ironic

This Alanis song contains the line 'it's like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife'.

You feel as if you're in the wrong film, when, for once, you prepare this really wonderful salad for your lunch (instead of buying a sandwich) - pasta, dried tomatoes, spinach, olive oil and garlic, lovely! - and then you open your lunchbox and realise...

... you've left the fork at home.