By the rivers of Babylon ...

As I have mentioned previously, I love working in Geneva, not only because of the stunning scenery but also because it is a multicultural city, with all the added benefits that that brings.  A real Babylon.

Picture Cornelis Anthonisz

Switzerland has four official languages (bet ya didn't know that).  It is principally Swiss-German speaking (around 70% I think, maybe a little more), followed by French and then Italian.  The fourth language is a language called Romantsch, which is spoken in a very small part of the Grisons area of Switzerland.  In fact, here in Geneva, signs are pretty much written in either three or four languages (German, French and Italian, and very often English is also added).  Signs like "do not use the lift in the event of an emergency", for example, would most likely be written out in those four languages. Thankfully (for me), Geneva is French-speaking, as my German is "iffy" to say the least. But, with Swiss-German being so prominent, there are a lot of Germanic names, with lots of "zeit", "stein", "hoch", etc. in them.

Recently my company held a large meeting with different "interests" being represented from all over the world.  One particular European company had recently changed its representative, and we were trying to find the name of the new person representing them so that the Chairman could have the name available, if necessary.  I started looking through lists and had to stifle the giggles. There was one person whose Germanic-sounding name - had I had to read it out loud - I would have pronounced as "horse-shite".  My colleague took one look at the name and immediately came up with "oh shite"! I don't know what we would have done if this had turned out to be the new rep - luckily for us, it wasn't him.  Phew.

In a similar vein, many years ago I was on a training course in Geneva when I got talking to a woman who worked as an interpreter.  She told me that during meetings dealing with the Palestinian situation, the Palestinian peoples were referred to as the Palestinian population of the West Bank - forgive me if I got that wrong but it was quite some time ago.  Anyway, she explained that during simultaneous interpretation you simply don't have the time to refer to the "Palestinian population of the West Bank", so the interpreters had to shorten it to "West Bankers".  She was in the interpreters' both one day when one of her colleagues came out with the supreme Malapropism of "Best Wankers" - she said they didn't know where to put themselves but had to forge on and hope no-one noticed!

And finally, as my mom is Welsh I spent most of my summers up in Betws-y-Coed with family, and it was fascinating (to me at least) to see things such as signs written out bilingually in English and Welsh.  Of course not everyone speaks Welsh so when information was available in English and they needed an official translation into Welsh the text would have to be sent off to the translation department.  The sign below made the news some years ago and certainly gave me a chuckle.

The English text is self-evident.  The Welsh, however, apparently reads "I am not in the office at the moment ....".  Ha - lovely.  So it's not just me then!

A different post from the one I had planned!

Well as of a couple of hours ago Geneva is on high security alert with police actively looking for several young men who may (or may not) be deemed to have terrorist intentions.  It has something to do with a car with Belgian plates coming through the border Tuesday night (I think) and being seen leaving again 24 hours later.  The UN and other organizations under intense security, police outside the Russian and French missions, in particular.  The US mission is pretty well protected anyway.  Not a nice feeling at all, particularly when you think tens of thousands of people cross the Franco/Swiss borders here every day - me included.  Let's hope .....

Why you should always wear your Sunday best!

As I mentioned in a previous post, from a fairly young age my dad suffered from heart problems, having several heart attacks, numerous scares and two by-pass surgeries.  Indeed, as a young girl I remember lying in bed at night listening for the creak of the floorboards and just praying it wasn't mom running downstairs to call the ambulance again.  A horrible time for all of us of course but, in retrospect, it was funny on occasion too.

 

Now while I know I probably shouldn't be talking about my dad's underwear here it is central to the story.  Dad - and most men of his generation I guess - wore boxer shorts, for comfort and probably because there wasn't much by way of choice anyway.  One particular day when he was at work, the elastic around the waistband of his boxers and the actual material separated company but the elastic didn't actually break.  So dad, not really knowing what else to do, just pulled the elastic up and put it over his head in order to keep his "drawers" from falling down.

 

Well as (bad) luck would have it, that day he was taken ill at work.  They called the ambulance to take him to hospital and called my mom at her place of work to meet the ambulance at the hospital. Several hours later it was determined to be a false alarm and that dad had not suffered another heart attack.  That of course was when mom spotted his boxers in the little cupboard next to his bed.  Well she went somewhat "ballistic" - "oh for God's sake, of all the decent pairs of underpants you have in the drawer you had to wear those!  I swear you do this just to embarrass me sometimes!"  You get the gist of it. To be honest, I suspect it was mostly relief that he was all right and she was just letting off nervous energy, but poor old dad got it in the neck that day I can tell you.

Of course, he made matters worse when he was explaining to her that after they admitted him and the young nurse was trying to undress him as he was lying on the bed, every time she tried to pull his underpants off he sat up!  We all cracked up laughing, but I'm pretty sure he had to dodge a few expletives from mom all the same.  Ahhh tales from another era I think.
 

Picture by Dreamstime

Organ donation

I just recently discovered that in Wales, as from today, people who die will be deemed to have consented to becoming organ donors, unless they have opted out of the scheme. I'm not quite sure of all the modalities of it but (as I understand it), anyone over the age of 18 and who has lived in Wales for at least 12 months will be deemed to have given their prior consent to organ donation unless they have specifically opted out.  From what I understand, in the event of someone's death, if there is no "opt out" or if no close relative can be found to "opt out" on the deceased person's behalf, then organs can be taken and used for transplant purposes.  While the scheme  currently only applies in Wales, any organs harvested can be made available to suitable recipients anywhere in the UK.

And you know what, I think this is a wonderful initiative.  Of course people have every right to opt out for religious or whatever other reasons they may have, and I respect that, but for me personally making the assumption that organs can be taken in the absence of information to the contrary is a wonderful step forward to saving lives.  I know if my sons or someone else I loved were in danger of dying for lack of a donor kidney I would be so grateful to any grieving family who took the courageous and selfless decision to donate their loved one's organs, particularly at such a difficult time.

Many years ago I signed an organ donor's card and carried it in my purse.  That must have been over 30 years ago I guess so I am pretty sure that card is now shredded beyond repair somewhere. Which makes me think I must get hold of another one and do the necessary, or at the very least make my wishes known to my family.  Nobody likes thinking of this stuff of course and I'm sure many of us think that as soon as we "sign up", we will then be killed and used as a donor.  Just like making a will - "well if I make a will I'm sure I'm going to snuff it the week after".  But I for one want to be cremated when I die and want my ashes scattered in the mountains, as I don't want a place where my family need to go to feel sad.  For me the dearly departed are all around us so I don't need to be buried anywhere in order for my family to show respect.

Sadly in the last few days rugby great Jonah Lomu died suddenly of complications linked to kidney disease. He was only 40 and left behind two very young sons who now have to grow up without their dad.  Jonah did, I believe, get a kidney transplant but it failed and he died as a result of his illness.  I don't know if another transplant would have been possible for him or even if it would have done any good, but I personally believe that that option should be out there.  To be burying viable organs when our loved ones are dying for want of a transplant is somehow just wrong to me.  Of course I totally respect people's wishes not to be involved with organ donation, but in cases where people don't really have strong views one way or another, I for one praise the Welsh initiative and hope it will prove such a success that it can be rolled out UK-wide, thereby saving lives that otherwise would be lost.

RIP Jonah Lomu!

Say cheese!

My dad suffered from heart disease from a pretty young age.  I'm not exactly sure but I think he had his first heart attack around the age of 48, when I was in my early teens.  It was a very traumatic time for all concerned of course, all the more so since he then went on to have a triple by-pass in 1974, at a time when that operation was a really major intervention.  Horrible, horrible time, but thanks to the skill of the surgeon and the hospital staff he survived and even though he subsequently had more heart attacks and another by-pass he lived to the ripe old age of 85.

Now all that is just the background to today's post really.  Around the time that he first got sick, it was decided that he should have all his teeth out since bacteria entering the body through the gums can infect the heart and do serious damage.  (To any medical personnel out there, please excuse the ah-hem paraphrasing here, but that is how I understood it).  So dad had to have all his teeth out and in those days false teeth was the only option, there either wasn't the possibility of implants or they were just way beyond his budget.  But dad hated those false teeth and to be honest, they spent more time wrapped in a hanky than in his mouth - and boy did the lack of teeth make him look old when he took them out.

Anyway, one day he had been sitting on the sofa when his hanky/teeth fell out of his pocket and ended up down the back of the sofa.  Now we had an adorable mutt - border collie mixed with goodness knows what else - and said dog proceeded to jump up on the sofa and go "fishing" down the back of it - only to emerge from its inner depths with the most perfect set of knashers - courtesy of the NHS!  Not the same dog but he ended up something like this:

Picture by Melissa Hardy

Now that really was hilarious!  Another time, dad got up to get ready to go to work and rather than put his teeth in he just grabbed them from the glass on the bathroom window sill where they were twinkling away adding to the posh feel of the bathroom and again put the teeth/hanky into his pocket and set off for work.  The only trouble was, by that time mom had also lost her teeth and had a complete set of matching false teeth twinkling away in the bathroom window.  And - you've guessed it - dad picked up the wrong teeth! Mom was furious as she had to go to work and of course as soon as she tried to put her teeth in they wouldn't fit - because they weren't hers obviously!  So she had to catch the bus into town (about a 30 minute ride) to get to my dad's place of work so they could exchange teeth.

Image by Photobucket

I think dad was in the dog house for quite a while after that.  But at least we got a good giggle out of it!  And to be honest, I'm glad we now have the option (albeit a very expensive one) of having implants should we ever lose our teeth.  Running to the loo in the middle of the night to find someone's teeth staring at you in the darkness can do serious damage to an impressionable young mind I can tell you!

Round Robin letters

With Christmas nearly upon us I suppose it will soon be open season for the Round Robin letter-writers, in fact I have already received my first!  I used to get quite a few (I suppose being an expat your friends tend to be more widely dispersed) and while I don't get as many as I used to I still hate the bloody things.  I don't know why really, but I sense it is because I just got so sick of all the perfect friends, with the perfect spouses and the perfect kids who excel at everything.  You know the kind "oh Hyacinth and Hortense are just coming along screamingly with their viola lessons, and Cuthbert's percussion teacher says he is a natural".  Now don't get me wrong, I understand that if you want to send out a lot of letters to friends and family (particularly at Christmas), in this day and age it is probably a lot easier to write a basic text about what you and your family have been up to, but for goodness sake at least make some attempt to personalize it a bit.  One bland, bog-standard Round Robin letter about the perfect achievements of the perfect family just about does my head in.  I mean, am I the only one who doesn't have perfect kids who excel at everything they do?  I sincerely hope not. I love em to bits anyway but they are normal not over-achieving spawn!  In fact, I'm sure most of the kids mentioned in these letters are also happily far from perfect, it's just that the letter-writer feels somehow obliged to blow all their achievements up beyond recognition.

And as for the perfect spouse with the perfect job - well I guess I should just roll over and concede defeat on that one right away.  Anyone who has read any of my previous posts knows where I stand on the "perfect spouse" bit - yeah, you got me - he was about as much use as a chocolate teapot but far less interesting.

Maybe these letters don't bother other people, or maybe you don't all have perfect (long-distance) acquaintances like I do (you know, the ones you rarely see so you have no way of telling if Hyacinth really knows her viola from a hole in the ground), but just a little cri du coeur - for goodness sake personalize it so that the recipient at least knows you have given them some thought.

And on that note, Mrs. Bah-Humbug here will get off her high horse and get back to contemplating Christmas with her less-than-perfect kids!

Fake Britain

Has anyone been watching the documentary series Fake Britain?  Along with other programmes like Hugh's War on Waste and Watchdog, I really enjoy this kind of programme.  Love Matt Allwright too, and his war on rogue traders.  I think he seems to have the perfect personality for this kind of programme and (in my opinion anyway) he is very watchable!

Anyway, I watched Fake Britain this week and what an eye opener it was, not so much for what they were exposing as fake but the prices some people were (seemingly) willing to pay for the real McCoy. I mean, Customs had seized counterfeit cosmetics with a street value of around £12 million I believe. Some of the items seized were supposedly brand name cosmetics bags - you know Coco Channel, Yves St. Laurent stuff - small make-up pouches containing, say, a mascara, lipstick, some eye shadow, maybe some blusher - and the prices on these pouches, marked as though they were legit, were from £450 to £600!!!!  I mean, even if they were real who on earth pays out that kind of money for a couple of items of make-up?  I just could not get my head around the fact that if these goods hadn't been intercepted some fool might have been tempted to buy them at, say, a knock-off price of around £250 - for a couple of items of cosmetics.  I mean, what's wrong with Boots or Rimmel?  And even if they were legit, would they have been any better than the stuff from Boots, etc. to reflect their retail price?  I don't think so.  It was just amazing.

When I was thinking about it, I thought maybe someone might not see anything wrong with paying a few pound for one these "knock-off" items - I mean, we all like a bargain right.  But one of the officers explained just why these goods are so dangerous.  The lipstick, for instance, contained paint stripper to make it run smoother!!! And the mascara contained some form of acid-like chemical to stop it from clogging! Can you imagine putting that near your eyes!

They then went on to showcase knock-off batteries/chargers, for laptops, for instance. Now I'm not quite sure of all the "technical" terms but they said that while all batteries are capable of catching fire, the knock-off versions are so much more likely to catch fire and then proceeded to put several of them "under stress" to show the effect.  The last battery they did this to had flames leaping about 3 feet into the air.  The officer then went on to say that this exact scenario had happened a couple of years ago on a flight from Hong Kong to London (just after the flight had landed), and invited viewers to imagine what might have been the outcome if this had happened mid-flight. It really made me think I can tell you.

I also got to see Matt in action last night on Watchdog where one of the scams they showed was a call centre purporting to help people find work, when in reality the aim of these scammers was to keep their poor victim on the line for a minimum of 14 minutes in order to rack up phone bills of almost £30 per time.  Just last week I got a message on my answering machine regarding a "delivery they had pending for me".  I actually did call the number back and it was some scheme where they wanted to send me a case for my mobile phone.  In fact the call automatically cost €3 to start with plus however long they could keep me on the phone I guess.  Luckily I hung up immediately and don't think I will be returning any calls again, but then it can sometimes be difficult if you are expecting some kind of delivery anyway.

And you know, you and I may think we are smart enough not to be taken in by scams - and I'm sure we are for the most part - but very often these people are very practised in what they do and we will probably all fall for it sometimes, however street-smart we may think we are.  Hell, I was robbed by a gypsy in Barcelona right under my nose .... but then they don't come much more "practised" than them do they!