2010-01-06: Oh noez!

 (Let me toss in a Shakespearean “forsooth” here to counterbalance the LOL-cat title.)

I didn’t post anything on January 5th. I thought I would, but got distracted (a) by a certain party (not me) who spilled her beverage onto a laptop keyboard (not mine), then (b) by cleanup (not particularly of laptop per se; Mr Mo kindly came back to Aix from Quinson, where he had driven just that very morning, to deal with this); then (c) by packing. But mostly, if truth be told, (d) by wanting to finish reading a book that I cannot take with me to Germany in a few hours. (I did not finish the book. It will keep.)

And thus it is. Amen. I will cut myself some slack if I manage to post another entry later today (at some sane time this afternoon, that is; this is a wee hours’ “I cannot sleep anyway” extravaganza).

Anyway, yes, back I go to Walldorf (the small one near Heidelberg where Johann Jakob Astor, aka John Jacob Astor of Walldorf Astoria fame, came from) to work for a few days. Too many technical questions to want to deal with off-site, given the tight deadlines. Fortunately, transport costs are surprisingly low and I will be able to sleep at Gerald and Gisela’s (the same people I’ve stayed with since the very beginning of my German gig; and also fortunately for me, while The Awful German Toilet is still there, other creature comforts, such as a shower curtain (!!) have gradually made their way into life at G&G’s).

The price of familiarity and convenience — the fact that I get to stay at G&G’s, who live fewer than 10 minutes’ walk from the Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof, and whose neighborhood I now know well, etc. — is somewhat offset by the fact that I will have to leave my room by around 7:15 every morning, because Gisela tends at least one baby early on in the day. (I think by the time I arrive in Heidelberg this afternoon, around 15:00 if my flight and train connections go as planned, daycare will be over.) Ah well, I am planning on putting in long days at my client’s. At least the room is entirely mine on Saturday and Sunday. I expect to mostly stay ensconced, given that the forecast for Baden-Württemberg calls for snow showers essentially every damn day I’m there. (I have bought long underwear and more warm socks in preparation for the evil. How is it that at my rapidly advancing age, I’m still not living in a warm climate year-round???)

The other price of familiarity and convenience is yet another round of “omg, I wish I (a) had taken more German in college, (b) had remembered the German phrasebook”(not that it really helps that much for the context of my trip and sojourn, really; I’ll see if Larry has one here at the apartment in Aix), and (c) had a prayer of remembering what I ended up learning the last time I stayed for awhile. My conversations with Gisela are extremely limited, to say the least, and Gerald doesn’t usually get home until late; and while his English is better, it is far from fluent. (Much, much, much better than my German, however.)

I can only hope that I will form a few dementia/Alzheimers’-off-staving neurological connections by all of these comings and goings. But now I should really try to get a bit more sleep. Gute Nacht (more like “Guten Morgen”; but hey, it will still be dark outside for hours yet).


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2014-12-24: So no, it turns out I’m not fluent in French

I have been living in Grenoble since the very tail-end of February 2014. Even when I lived in Grenoble before, and even when I was head of the American school at Europole, I was not quite as surrounded by and immersed in so much French language as I am now — and this is true even though I write technical documents in English at work. There I speak English only with the other technical writer (a completely bilingual Brit, and one of the kindest people I've ever met); all of my other colleagues speak (and generally write) in French to me, and I to them. The (three!) chorales I sing with are all French ( see \"[So no, I don't read music|/post/2014/12/24/So-no%2C-it-turns-out-I-m-not-fluent-in-French]\") . Ping-pong is also French. With one important exception, I speak French with nearly all of the people I interact with outside of work. I am not complaining, not at all. But the longer I live in this Francophone environment, the more I realize just how very far I am from
Read more

2008-02-21: The Awful German Toilet

Nod to Mark Twain for the title.  I have traveled to many countries (upwards of 30 by now), and have used many different models of toilet*, yet I have never, ever seen toilets like these outside of Germany. To be brief and blunt — well, there’s this sort of viewing platform : a large, almost flat area in the bowl. It is almost impossible to Evacuate one’s Bowel without the opportunity to critically examine the product. Despite the ease with which this design permits collecting a stool sample for one’s gastroenterologist, I found (and still find) this quite repellent. But being of a somewhat imaginative bent, I thought that perhaps it would make sense to incorporate some 21st-century features into this ubiquitous model — something I would be tempted to call the ViewMeister 2000, for example. The new model would incorporate all the (waterproof) hardware necessary to facilitate a biometric readout of salient stool conditions (weight, density, laser-based “topographical” measurements). The
Read more

2017-07-30: Waiting for “elle nous a quitté”

(Originally published on mofembot.com) I received a note the end of July from the sister of Odile, my grenobloise friend, telling me that Odile’s health had taken a turn for the worse and that she no longer fully recognizes her surroundings. And two months ago, C wrote to say that “parfois elle est consciente de son état, autres fois, elle espère encore” — “sometimes she is conscious of her state, other times, she still hopes” — a sentence I find so poignant that it still brings tears to my eyes.   I have not heard from C since, although she has said that my weekly emails are appreciated. As is so often the case for those suffering from long-term illness, no direct contact with anyone other than a tiny circle of intimate friends and family for many months means that it is easy to be — not forgotten, exactly, but no longer a focus of attention among one’s larger circle of friends and colleagues. This is normal. I feel I owe Odile so much that I want her — or at least her family — to kno
Read more