International Relations

If you're reading this you know me.

Well, when I say you know me, no-one who knows me in my offline life reads this (god forbid!) so I mean my online friends. Notice I don't call my offline friends my "real" friends as over the past year my online friends have become as real to me as my alarm going off at 530am for work when Im working the dreaded day shift.

Most of my friends are American, some Australian and the odd Canadian. Jenna's not that odd but you know what I mean....

I digress, a 12.5 hour shift and wine does that.

We all speak the same language - allegedly

Honestly you guys talk funny!! It's not me, I'm normal, I speak the Queen's language with a quirky Welsh twist (Wenglish), you lot speak a different language altogether. I have whole conversations with Helly or Brian that none of us understand and explanations fly back and forth as we try to clarify what the other meant.

The time thing amuses me no end, different times in the same country - too funny - or should I go American and say Go Figure..... - West Coast 8 hours behind, East Coast 5 hours behind, the middle I have no clue. Damn international date line....

I don't understand American Football, you call football soccer and Brian calls cricket demented baseball when cricket is clearly the saner game. I don't get Thanksgiving or the funny little holidays you get- Martin Luther King Day - who'd have thunk it???

I understand only about 80% of Brian's blog, about 50% of Dead Honkey (which is probably the same or more than anybody else) and a recent posting of Memoirs of a Gouda left me completely clueless.

You are used to my cwtches by now - Welsh for hug for the uninitiated and I want to send a big cwtch to the friends involved in the Travel Log adventure..

A member of grab staff asked if I could help out with her niece's school project. The class were compiling a kind of chain letter Travel Log. Deb sent it to me from Texas. I sent it onto Shaun in England who sent it to Helly in California. She's sending it to Jenna in Canada who is then going to send it to Scot in Michigan. If we had more time we'd get the Aussies involved but theres an October deadline. So in a month between us, we've covered 4 countries - pretty cool. Anything for the little ones eh? my postcard was the first and maybe only European one - we've earned this kid some serious brownie points in school.

But there is help at hand - for handy translations from UK English to US English try English to American.com. And yes, fanny and fag is there, I looked....

Unfortunately theres no help for deciphering blogs written by a tipsy, wine guzzling, Welsh chick who's been up far too long.......

Weekend Viewing

My initiation into sci-fi geekiness has arrived.....

Japanese English Lessons

Well I suppose any English is useful...

Incy Wincey

I just read a blog about spiders whilst watching a spider crawl across my wall. I'm not particularly scared of spiders although I don't really like them either, especially big ones. Bethan checks her room for spiders before she goes to bed as she thinks they will crawl down in the night and into her mouth. Because of this I've learnt the art of removing them without having the heeby-geebys.

What exactly are the point of Spiders? They eat flies I hear you say - And? Whats the point of flies?
This made me realise there are numerous animals in this world with no point in life but just being here. This is where some smart person recalls the food chain from school - so tell me oh smart one - which animals eat those bastard headlice then?

We eat animals obviously, or the products of, but it does make me wonder who decided what we'd eat and what we wouldn't. Why does everyone cringe at mentions of the consumption of horses or dogs in other countries but quite happily eat a cow or a cutesy little lamb? Why do the French eat snails but not slugs, when everyone knows slugs are just homeless snails who probably sell The Big Issue to the well off, with house snails at the corner of the garden.

But back to spiders, how do you get rid of them. Are you a messy splatter, a catch them in a tissue then squash them (like me) or do you humanely empty them out of the window/door?

Of course without spiders we wouldn't have Spiderman, or Toby Maguire...

So, I guess they do have their uses after all - and this blogs spellcheck wants Spiderman to be replaced with subterranean..

My Blog isn't my Blog....

....without gratuitous pics of my Ewan

Im Going to be Such a Smirt..

From April next year, the Welsh Assembly (Mickey Mouse Welsh government who can't cough without asking Whitehall) have decided in their wisdom to ban smoking in "enclosed spaces". So no smoking inside pubs, clubs, restaraunts, hospitals, etc.

Healthy I suppose but when you're having a drink, a ciggy goes with it - the drunker you get the more you smoke - or is that just me? I use it as a screen - if my mate goes off and Im stood on my own, I light up, gives me something to do and I feel less of a dork.

Dublin, Ireland did it last year and on the radio they interviewed an Irish journalist who said having to go outside for a smoke has brought along a new term...

SMIRTING

Picture the scene - you're in a pub, you want a ciggy so you go outside, without your drink of course cos drinking outsides been banned. You join the huddle of evil, nicotine-addicted pubgoers and convesation starts - and you flirt with the hot guy puffing next to you. Hence you are smoking and flirting - or smirting...

Its even in wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smirting

Now I was hoping to be completely smoke free by next April but I dunno - I want to be a smirt..