Regrets

Wish I had set up my domain elsewhere. I’ve had nothing but trouble with GoDaddy and Google Apps.

Words…don’t come easy!

If you’ve ever tried to learn a second (or even third) language, you know how easy it is to make mistakes…when a word looks almost identical to your own language. One tends to take it for granted that they mean the same thing and perhaps doesn’t even bother to look them up. «False friends» I believe they’re called.

When I first started chatting on the internet for example…there were two words like that — I took it for granted that they meant what I thought they meant and I often found the conversations very strange! In my case the words were «ignorant» and «eventually». I thought ‘ignorant’ had to do with ignoring somebody or something and ‘eventually’ I thought meant maybe/perhaps.

In any event…In order for the story I’m going to tell here to make any sense there is one word I have to explain..otherwise it doesn’t get any funny.

The English word «COOK» sounds like/reminds one of the Swedish words KOKA which means BOIL. To actually cook is a completely different word.

An old co-worker of mine back in Sweden had worked in St. Paul, Minnesota as a young girl. She worked as a so called ‘au pair’ or nanny…in a nice family where she took care of the kids and the household while the couple was both working.

With Thanksgiving coming up they told her, before they left for work, to cook the turkey. She looked at the turkey in the fridge…it was huge..and she had a really hard time finding a pot that was large enough for this enormous bird.

Finally she took the biggest pot she could find but still had to wrestle the turkey into it… the legs of it were still sticking up…she poured water over it and cooked it. In her mind.. when they told her to cook the turkey..she thought KOKA = boil the turkey!!! She managed to make some kind of sauce to go with it and it was all done when the couple got back home.

When they sat down to eat the husband said: «So…here we have a great example of Swedish cooking…! First you boil the h3ll out of it and then you pour cream sauce on it?!?! Grrrrr… »

FIKA

We have a word in the Swedish language that doesn’t really have a corresponding word in any other language — «fika». It can be both a verb and a noun and it simply means ‘to have a cup of coffee’.

Originally it was a special kind of slang word amongst travelling ‘merchants’ back in the 1700. They made up many words — had almost like a secret language — by reversing the syllables. Back then the regular word for coffee [kaffe] could be kaffi in certain dialects and hence it turned out to be «fi ka».

This word has really stuck and is nowadays fully accepted in regular speech, I would say. There’s also the word «fik» a noun, which means a very simple café…a joint/greasy spoon.

Nowadays, to have a «fika» could also mean a cup of tea, a soft drink, coffee with a sandwich or a pastry but originally it was strictly a cup of coffee with nothing else.

There are also constructions with «fika» in it, like when you’re working and have coffee breaks…that’s ‘fikarast’.

Many of those ‘travelling merchants’ were gypsies and when they couldn’t make up new words like the ‘fika’ word they took words from Romani or Finnish and several of those words have stuck too.

Oddly enough, in older times when the Swedish military used tin mugs for their soldiers, those were stamped/engraved with the letters F.I.K.A. (meaning Försvarets Inköpsavdelning = Defense Purchasing Department).

Fika is an important concept in Swedish culture because we’re one of the top countries when it comes to coffee consumption.

Browser

Not too long ago I wrote a blog here about how I’d switched to Firefox. Not that I had any issues with Internet Explorer but I thought it was fun with the add-ons, skins and stuff like that. After a while it was all as usual…didn’t find it any better or worse than IE.

The other day I read in Julie-Ann’s blog that she’d downloaded Safari! I knew for sure that Julie-Ann doesn’t have a Mac so I asked her what that was all about. Turns out that Safari now is available to pc users too! I’m always interested in new things online. What kept me from using Firefox before was pure spite. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when people try to shove some kind of «truths» down my throat. I keep a very open mind but I prefer to find out for myself than being told what to do.

In any event…just wanted to see, for fun, what it was like…never did I expect such a nice surprise! I’m very excited about this..most of all the clarity of all graphics and font…it’s so distinct! Now I finally understand what I’ve heard about graphics on Mac computers (I’ve never tried a Mac).

The speed was what I noticed first! That’s a HUGE difference to both IE and Firefox. Honestly, I never noticed that Firefox was any faster like all people kept telling me. This IS!

This evening I’ve been trying it out…doing all the things I normally do online…and so far I haven’t had any issues with it. Well..one, but that isn’t really an issue: I sometimes play games in Pogo.com. There the Java wouldn’t work, but since you can just click Window in the toolbar, and ‘open this page with…IE, FF or whatever’, that wasn’t a real problem. I don’t even go there once a day and even if I was the advantages of this Safari clearly outweighs that little thing. There’s no going back now!

This blog has moved

It’s all the same…just a new address.

The Return of the Bandits

This morning we noticed we’d had visitors overnight…things were moved around out on the porch! When I looked closely I could see their paw prints so I knew that it was raccoons that had been there.

This is earlier than last year…it was the 19th of April 2007…I had the date stamp on the photo…and considering how much snow we have left, it’s strange.

As they’re up and awake of course they came back tonight. It’s always difficult to shoot photos through a window so only one came out with a visible raccoon. It’s good to see their friendly faces again but I wonder how they’ll manage in all this SNOW.

Mona’s Dare…. and sad news for QC — 2 blogs in 1

These two photos I took in July 2006 when Gerry and I took a rather touristy walk in Quebec City. Last night it looked like this:

THE CANADIAN PRESS/QUEBEC LE SOLEIL/ERICK LABBE

According to the news there are only ruins left…only a few structures standing in the rubble.
Noone was hurt, they don’t know how it started. It’s sad because these were old buildings –

the historic military armoury in Quebec City….123 years old.

Maybe they’ll try and rebuild them but still..it’s not the same.

Apart from these rather sad news I’m going to post a photo for Mona’s Dare at the same time — 2in1 so to speak…and avoiding being a «blog hog» (remember that word, Dixxe? LOL)

Each Friday my friend Mona posts a dare…to take a photo on a given ‘theme’…something in or around your home. This week’s theme was «SOMETHING BLUE». If you feel like taking part in this rather fun challenge, post about it in your blog and then go to this page and post your link: http://monaswe2007.multiply.com/journal/item/119/I_dare_you…

Judging from my designs here in Multiply one would think blue is my favorite color and that this would be an easy task. Turned out that wasn’t the case…we in fact don’t have too much blue here. Before Christmas, however, I totally fell in love with this set of dishes in Canadian Tire so I shot a photo of them!

The Box

Some people think outside the box….. while yet others think inside the box…

Happiness

Yesterday’s post about depression rendered a great deal of comments and many could evidently relate to that subject. Is it easier to relate to depression than happiness? I certainly hope not!

I don’t mean euphoria…like if you’d won a thousand bucks…I mean the very basic contentment when everything is in place — life isn’t all that dismal all the time, is it?! Most of the time it’s a delight to wake up each morning — to watch another sunrise (if you’re up that early).

Me?! I’m all about the little things in life…small pleasures that many of us take for granted. I’m fortunate enough to be living with the man I love…that is so obvious and I’ve written about that so many times.

I mean other things that we tend to forget…Whenever I want to I can jump into the car, drive down to the grocery store and buy whatever we need. I don’t have to accumulate each item as I walk around there — I don’t have to choose between buying a liter of milk or the newspaper.

Quite often I think of this when I go shopping and it fills me with a sense of deep gratitude and happiness. I’m not going to get too long winded about this but I just wanted to say that a hug, a kind word…an occasion to make somebody else happy…that just makes my day.

Just the fact that I was born in the time, age and country that I was…with all its conveniences like electricity and central heating…to make us feel warm and snug in front of our computers … that never fails to make me feel blessed!

Today I saw movement outside the window…a bird with a top-notch…it was a little too far away at first but I thought it was a blue jay. Stood up to get a better view and after a little while it came closer and turned out to be a cedar waxwing! A whole flock of them showed up here — they all lit in the same tree and a woodpecker was there too!

This only lasted for about ten minutes..I haven’t seen a waxwing since I left Sweden and Gerry said he hadn’t seen one either for at least thirty years! It was awesome!

Depression

Below is a copy of a blog I wrote about a year ago in the blog in Yahoo 360°. For one reason or another it came to mind yesterday and I went in there and found it (thanks to tagging). I remembered I got quite a few comments on this post then. Now when I went there to read I noticed several of them had removed their accounts…the comments were still present with a gray icon and the word [deleted]. The sad part is that I don’t remember who they were. They were all good and written with both insight and emotion.

I think I was reminded of this post because the light is slowly coming back and Spring is on its way. We still have great amounts of snow but the light is different and the melt has started. Personally I believe that after a long and dark Winter, this light affects me more than I’m sometimes aware of. Can’t say that I’m prone to depression…I know I’m not depressed now at least…I think it’s a pure chemical reaction to the light! Be it melatonin, serotonin or nor-adrenaline…maybe all the receptors are out of whack?! At least something happens…

Spring is a time of re-birth…renewal…at least in nature…and I guess I just don’t feel all that up to it. Everything gets so beautiful (even though it’s really going to take a while here) and sometimes you just want to crawl back underneath the covers. The windows need cleaning, the carpets need washing and most of the time I get overwhelmed and end up doing nothing.

I’m basically a happy and healthy person. Why shouldn’t I…?! I’ve got everything I could ever wish for and more. There is just this short period of time almost every year that I don’t feel all that chirpy. Maybe it’s just THAT! Normally I have a very positive oulook on most things in life so when I experience the slightest little bit of….what shall I call it…? Feeling gloomy? …it gets in such a contrast to the ordinary ME.

Honestly I don’t know why I’m writing all this because I certainly don’t use my blog as some kind of personal catharsis and I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I have everything to be grateful for and I really am so I hope you’re not getting me wrong here. Perhaps it just needed to be written…something that wanted to come out! I’ll fire up Photoshop and make myself an egg — then I feel good *LOL*.

A blog title like that would perhaps draw a few readers. Lots have been said and written about this serious condition. There are oodles of pharmaceutical products to treat it and them I know nothing about. One line from a T.V. commercial comes to mind … «Where does depression hurt?» and the answer to that is supposedly «everywhere». I don’t think depression is black or white …I think it’s gray. A heavy, gray blanket. When you just want to sleep but you can’t… When you see all the dust rolling around in your home but you just cannot bring yourself to pick up the vacuum and do something about it. You just sit there and look around at all the misery… That’s just my personal outlook on the subject and I think there might be many people out there suffering from clinical depression without really knowing about it! «What makes me write a blog like this?» you might ask yourself…it isn’t very like me, huh?! Well…first of all, last night I came across a blog — it wasn’t anyone in my friends list, it was outside — it was well written — such a clear and succinct description without adding any emotional stuff into it. …how it had started and how he slowly had come to the insight via a friend of his. All this made me think of what it’s like back home. There you very often …many times a day, hear people saying «Ohhh…I’m SOOO depressed». The word is so misused because what they’re really suffering from is most likely an adequate reaction to something that has happened to them. I mean, if someone close to you dies or if your spouse leaves you…you MOURN. That’s only natural and that doesn’t mean you’re depressed. In the long run you might turn out depressed but that is a whole different story. Secondly …a question that has been bugging me for some time now: What is the situation in countries where people really have to fight for survival in one way or another …where life is nothing but a constant quest for food for example?! Do they need shrinks? Are they depressed? Well… I sure don’t have any answers. I don’t have any answers at all but I do know that life isn’t always that rosy.