Keys Corner » Language / Culture

Message Etiquette

John — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:16:21 +0000

I am obviously getting disconnected from what are considered to be the correct social norms. I realised that when I read this article on LifeHacker about when it is acceptable to call someone and leave a voicemail message instead of texting them.

The truth is, no matter what kind of message you leave, some people will just never listen to their voicemails, period. Even if you call them five times and leave three voicemails, they’re just not going to do it, and they’re not going to change for you. The expectation is that if it’s important, you’ll either text, so they’ll read it when they get back to their phone, or call again and catch them when they’re available…

…But if you can, stick to texts. It saves time for both parties and does the job adequately well for a good chunk of the time.

Hmm – I’m clearly out of sync with current etiquette. I send about 1 text message a month. At the most. But I will often leave a voicemail message if I call you and you’re not around. I also expect that the message will be listened to.

Brain-damaged bureaucracy

John — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:57:22 +0000

I mentioned the Israeli approach to airport security a few posts ago – they aim to have you out of the carpark and into the departure area in a maximum of 25 minutes by applying intelligent security checks.

Contrast this with Europe:

Check in 15 days in advance with Ryanair - and confirm no-one has interfered with your luggage

With Ryanair, and most other airlines you can use the internet to check in. It speeds up the check-in process when you get to the airport. In Ryanair’s case, you can do this 15 days in advance. But only if you confirm that no-one has interfered with your baggage or any item that you are carrying or checking in, and that you are not carrying anything for someone else. Otherwise you can’t check in on-line.

Right – don’t leave your coat in the cloakroom in a restaurant for the next 15 days; don’t let your colleagues or kids touch that laptop you are going to be taking.

How mindlessly stupid can bureaucracy get? Accepting a statement like this 15 days in advance is brain-damaged. And expecting anyone with a brain to take this form seriously, when it asks for this confirmation given 15 days in advance, is too.

Kill the form – lets see a minimum of intelligence being applied by our well-paid bureaucrats, and streamline the check-in process without such idiocy. (Yes – I have been flying more often recently )

I say Gugelhupf, you say Kougelhopf

John — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:41:19 +0000

Kougelhopf

We were in the Alsace (or should that be Elsass?) this week to visit the 16ème Carrefour Européen du Patchwork (the 16th European Patchwork Meeting) in Ste Marie-aux-Mines. I was quite taken to see that in the Alsace region of France, the cake which I have always thought was called Gugelhupf is called Kougelhopf by the locals. You often hear languages evolve and change with time and place; here is an unusual but tasty example!

There were quite a mix of nationalities taking part – Brits, Americans, Germans, Dutch and of course French, to name a few of the commonly heard voices. But it was also interesting to notice that the shuttle bus drivers announced the bus stops in French and German, but not in English! Not surprising given that the Alsace changed hands between the French and the Germans 4 times in a space of 75 years.

26 Years ago today

John — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:52:40 +0000

My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.

Ronald Regan’s infamous sound check, which resulted in part of the Soviet army being put on alert for 30 minutes after word of the statement reached the Soviet Union.

“Efficient” British banking services

John — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:25:07 +0000

Whenever I have the misfortune to deal with British banks I am inevitably impressed by their lack of speed when dealing with customer requests. The latest example: we decided to close our joint UK bank account, since we don’t actually need it, and it just tied up money keeping the account in credit. (I won’t name the bank to protect the guilty). I wrote to them on 30th June requesting them to close the account and transfer the balance to our German bank using SWIFT.

On 23rd July (over three weeks later and after three phone calls to the branch asking why nothing was happening) they wrote back to tell me that to close the account and transfer funds abroad I would need to provide a certified copy of both Ruth’s and my passports with a specific text that the official doing the certification had to include on the copy.

We sent the copies back the day the letter arrived, on 26th July, and last Friday (30th July) I noticed that the online internet access to the account had been deactivated (a good sign). Today (2nd August) at 8:30 this morning, the passport copies arrived back in the post. The balance arrived on our German account this evening.

Total time to process: 33 days.

I don’t think, by the way, think that this is atypical. We have had several similar experiences with another of the British “Big Four” banks when we were administering my mother’s affairs in the last four or five years before she passed away.

Careful what you tweet…

John — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:32:08 +0000

I can’t see the point in some of the more modern internet trends – I tried FaceBook and gave up after a couple of weeks, and have never felt the slightest urge to share my life using Twitter. However I know quite a few people who do use Twitter. They may want to consider that their tweets are being recorded for posterity.

The US Library of Congress has just announced that they are going to archive every public tweet ever made since Twitter started it’s service in 2006.

Appropriately, the news was announced by the Library of Congress on Twitter:

Economic logic

John — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:40:23 +0000

What makes supermarket employees work harder? Why do rats drink more tonic water, when it becomes more expensive? (Rats hate tonic water, they don’t like the taste of the quinine in it), and why is your boss overpaid?

It’s all down to the logic of economics, according to Tim Harford, or as he calls it The Logic of Life. I discovered Tim Harford when I picked up his first book (The Undercover Economist), in Spain a couple of years ago – it looked interesting, and I started reading it in Spanish, but I got frustrated at the number of words I had to look up, and bought it again and finished it in English.

He is an economist who believes much seemingly irrational behaviour is actually completely logical if you think about it. Which is what both his books illustrate.

He’s got a knack if explaining complex ideas with clear, simple examples, and both books are great fun to read and pick up an understanding of how economic pressures affect everyday life. Both books are a good read, the first one explains the basics of economic theory; the second one looks at why seemingly irrational behaviour is to be expected, and explains some common phenomena in terms of economic logic. You don’t need to read them in the order he wrote them, and you don’t need any maths either.

Trompes l’oeil by John Pugh

John — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:46:04 +0000

The Daily Mail had several pictures of recent work by John Pugh today – they really are worth taking a look at. No pictures here, as I no longer publish pictures unless I’m absolutely sure that I’m not potentially infringing copyright.

Follow this link to the Daily Mail, and if it gives you a taste for more, you can visit John’s web site (and click on the thumbnails to see the pictures in all their glory).

The versatile Piet Hein

John — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:34:01 +0000

When I was a student, many years ago, I discovered Piet Hein and his fascinating gruk (grook) poetry, which was originally written as a call to resistance during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. I loved not only the poetry, but also the whimsical illustrations of circular-headed little people which accompanied nearly every grook. I still have a couple of books of his grooks. If you take a fancy to them, they are still in print, obtainable from Borgens Forlag in Valby, Denmark or via Amazon.

What I didn’t know, until I stumbled across the fact this evening, is that Piet Hein also invented the Soma cube. You probably have seen one, even if the name isn’t familiar – it is the wooden puzzle cube (above), which is so easy to take apart, but fiendishly difficult to put back together again. Here it is in disassembled state:

Junco-operative

John — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:13:31 +0000

Sometimes I ask myself what the developers of the Apple Mac spelling checker are smoking…

Fortunately, most people don’t accept that particular suggestion – not everyone was paying attention however…

Useless technology

John — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:40:54 +0000

We were in Spain the last two weeks, and while we were there, we bought the Franklin TES-120 translator for spanish / english pictured above. It cost 39 Euro, and claims to translate 800 000 words (the screenshot shows part of its “boot” sequence, which repeats this claim every time you switch it on).

This is the first time I have been so disappointed after buying something, that I have written about it on my blog. For considerably less than 39 Euro you can buy a decent pocket dictionary, or a good spanish / english dictionary for your PDA. You can even buy the latest Encyclopedia Britannica DVD for only a few Euro more. Both the paper dictionary and the PDA software claim to contain less than 800 000 words, but if you actually look up a word, your chance of finding it is better than with the electronic translator. For example, these words are not in the electronic translator but are in both its competitors:

sepia (squid)
parabrisas (windscreen/windshield)
chorizo (sausage)
churro (fritter)
acepci�n (meaning, sense)
tirita (sticking plaster)

None of these are particularly unusual words, and they are words which you might need to know if you are a tourist.

We found about 20% of the words we wanted to look up weren’t in its dictionary, which makes it quite useless. (Recommendations for an alternative electronic translator which has a useful vocabulary and doesn’t cost the earth will be gratefully received!)

How many chose German university courses in the UK in 2008?

John — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:12:38 +0000

The answer is far too few.

For a population of 60 million, it’s sad to see that only 602 people chose to study German at university in 2008 – down from 2288 ten years ago.

It’s not only at the higher levels that an interest in foreign languages has declined in the UK – the number taking French at GCSE has halved in the last 8 years.