The Book of Sifty

Bricklane and Improvment Goal #2 6:16AM

Last night was quite a good laugh in the end. After a slight navigational blunder on my part, I finally met Jono in Soho at about 7pm. He had some shirts and ties my mother had sent to his address from NZ. On my way there the guys from the current flat rang to say they were heading out to this girls farewell, and would I like to come. As is usual with most farewells I go to I've never met the person whos leaving, which is always odd at their farewell.

So after leaving jono to eat his dinner, it was on the tube across town to meet up with everybody else at a pub just outside Liverpool street station. After a few beers there, at about 10pm, it was off to Bricklane for dinner at an Indian restaurant. Now I may have mentioned Bricklane before since I've been there a few times to go to various music events and bars. Well the place is choka block with Indian and Pakistani restaurants. Since there's so many they have a bit of competition trying to get you inside. This usually involves one member of staff standing outside trying to accost you as you walk by, with the best deal or free extras. Well we had a group of 21 people so there were some pretty good offers. The winning one was a free Naan bread each and, since they were a BYO, a 15% discount at the off license just over the road. Couldn't argue with that.

Needless to say that despite most of the crowd being mates of Marcus and Poh, who are from near Perth in Australia, they were all from New Zealand, and about three quarters were from Wellington

""why bother everybody speaks English anyway"" 6:46AM

So now seems as good a time as any to discuss the next goal in my list. (Although nobody ever reads this page.. and nobody really seems to be hanging on the edge of his or her seats to hear it). But what the hell, writing about it is going to get me motivated and sort out my reasons for doing it. So:

Sifty Self Improvement - Goal 2: Learn a foreign language

This was mostly inspired by my two trips into Europe so far, and the foreigners I met in Scotland. Also my future travel plans would be greatly assisted by some local lingo. Travelling in Denmark I found that most people spoke either exceptionally good English or none at all. In fact in Scotland I met several Europeans, all of whom had very good English, and usually spoke several other languages. There was one girl I met who spoke four, and English, and all fluently. She seemed to be able to find a common language with everybody except the odd Spanish person. When I mentioned that I was keen to learn a language she goes 'why bother everybody speaks English anyway'. Well true, in northern Europe, but I feel like a schmuck travelling anywhere else without at least a little local language. So although I've done some German at school, and meeting blonde Swiss girls is all good ;) most european languages are off the list, since mostly people speak English (this is probably a gross generalisation but what the hey..)

So I've narrowed down the languages to a short list of two: French and Spanish.

French because when I was in the French speaking corner of Switzerland most of the locals didn't speak very good English, if any at all. I imagine France itself is the same. They also seem to resent people who don't make an effort to speak a little French, which I can respect since I'm annoyed a little by people who have no English at all and I can see that it works both ways. (Not to mention that fact that there is no love lost between the French and the British - in fact several people told me once they work out you're from NZ they're a lot friendlier, and start talking about rugby!(Oh great)). At one point in a Swiss shop my friend and I were sorting out rental snowboards for the day. Eric speaks French pretty well, and the rental guy didn't seem to understand English at all. But when I make a joke, in English, to Eric this guy laughs, so apparently he did, but didn't want to speak it?.

Until world war two (may have been WW1?) French was the international language of diplomacy. All foreign envoys used it as a common communication method (which from a programming perspective I quite like! Since it's the same concept as a COM interface, that two seperate systems written in differrent languages agree on something common to exchange information in). But after the war the English language took over. A lot of French colonies still speak French in far flung parts of the world. Also French is apparently the language of love, and I always need that!

Spanish has made it too my list since its spoken in several places I really want to go, and is understood in a lot more. I don't know much about it, or the places its spoken, and that seems like as good a reason as any.

Anyway this whole language thing is going to be good challenge for me. Since I have a tenuous grip on the English language as it is, another one will be pretty hard work! Anyway this takes a back seat for a bit while I sort out getting to the States for this skiing lark. Then depending on which is easier to find lesson in its one or other.

No such thing as free computer 6:56AM

Tommorrow will probably be my last day here. So if you're feeling lucky I might get in a writeup of the wicked route I've been taking to get every day for the last three weeks.