Length isn't everything....

 ...as the actress said to the bishop*.

Over the Easter weekend, I went out with my walking group on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday.

The walk on Easter Sunday was 20 km long but flat - in the countryside near the Dutch border. Lakes, fields, a heath and forest. Easy peasy.

The walk on Easter Monday was supposed to be 12 km but hilly. I was more tired after the first 10 minutes (with 124 steps to get out of the valley and on the hillside) than I had been at the end of the previous day's walk. Phew. 

We had some newcomers to the group who thought that 12 km was going to be easier than 20 km, but as I soon told them, you can't go by length. The main criterion as to how knackering a walk is going to be is how hilly the countryside is. 

*In the UK, you can make a double entendre simply by adding the words "as the actress said to the bishop" at the end of any sentence that can be read with a salacious [wollüstig] meaning.

Quo vadis, ChatGPT et al.?

I can understand inventing machines to take the heavy loads off human beings so that they don't get worn out by a lifetime of heavy toil, but what is going to happen when people no longer need to think because those jobs are being done by machines?

I translate for a living and this year, all the translators I speak to (German to English, English to German) have said that work seems to have fallen off a cliff. I've gone from a position of being able to buy what I want (I have modest wants) to not even covering costs.

All the translators I have spoken to say that they believe that clients are using things like DeepL to translate documents. However, they are also waiting for the penny to drop when they realise that those programs are incapable of actually thinking things through.

I tried DeepL out on a price list. The word 'Preise' was above a table of costs. The euro symbol was repeated throughout the table. How did DeepL translate that single word? As 'prizes'. Yes, the German word covers both meanings: prizes and prices.

That's why my colleagues are certain that when the clients get bitten in the arse because they've relied on such a faulty computer-generated translation, they'll be back.

I bloody well hope so.

I just don't understand people - part 2

A couple of Saturdays ago, I walked over to the English library.

Most of the way is along a broad road, which has two lanes in each direction and a tramline in each direction in the middle of the road. The pavements on either side are correspondingly broad, too.

The pavement is broad enough for four people to walk side by side. The bicycle path is almost as broad.

Imagine my surprise when I see a man and his son, possibly around the age of 8 or 9, cycling towards me - on the part for pedestrians. I say to him, "Da ist der Fahrradweg." (The cycle path is over there.)

His reaction? "Aber ich bin mit meinem Sohn unterwegs." (But I'm with my son.) Said in a completely scandalised tone of voice. 

I replied in German, "Then you should be showing your son how to use a bicycle path." He was already past me then, but he stopped and turned back to shout at me, but as I told him, "You don't think I'm going to listen to a man who doesn't know how to use a bicycle path." And, frankly, I really couldn't understand a word. My ears just close up completely when morons like that try to justify their stupidity. I mean.. they were pedalling fast right towards me. 

Now, if the cycle path was right next to a traffic-filled road full of fumes and with vehicles just zipping by, I might have had some understanding of the father's fears. However, between the bicycle lane and the fairly empty road was a broad strip of grass and trees (as broad as the bicycle path). And for part of the way, there are even small metal railings to prevent cars from parking on the grass. But no...the father had to show the son how to cycle towards pedestrians and how to ignore the lovely broad bicycle path reserved just for cyclists. I just don't understand people.

I just don't understand people

During the height of the pandemic, I went on a walk around the park, the park being three times fuller than usual with joggers panting their aerosols in all directions and cyclists whizzing past me at close quarters.

At the furthest end, however, one simply has to walk through the park on quite a broad path. I always walk on the edge of the path, allowing plenty of space for other people to pass by. That day, I saw five people in their thirties walking towards me. All in a row. 

As the men and women approached me, I thought that they must surely see me (especially since all my coats are bright red) and that one of them would walk behind the others to give me space. After all, they seemed educated enough to manage that.

But, no. They continued to walk straight ahead and the man at the end closest to me actually banged into my shoulder as they walked past. Not a word of apology.

Of course, I turned round and asked if it was impossible for him to walk behind someone else because otherwise he would feel like a loser. I genuinely believe that many Germans cannot psychologically tuck themselves in behind someone else because they would otherwise feel "second best" and thus "a loser".

These people couldn't understand the fuss and one man said, "Why are you so het up? It's Sunday." As though that excused bad manners.

Move forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I was walking in the nearby countryside. I'm on a rough road that leads to some isolated houses. Wide enough for cars. Ahead of me, I see an older couple walking together. But get this...the woman is in front and the man is directly behind her. All that space by her side and he is walking behind her. 

I don't get it. When there is plenty of space to for people walking in opposite directions to pass by each other, the husband walks behind the wife. When there is no space left for a single person to pass by a group of people, that group of five people simply have to walk side by side and even bump into the single person that they've been able to see coming for at least 100 metres.

I don't get it.

January - probably the strangest month of the year

For me at least, January seems to be a very strange month. It goes by so quickly on the one hand, while, on the other, it simply drags on and on and on. January seems to have more weeks in it than the usual four and a bit. It's nearly the end of January and yet so much seems to have happened since the start of the year. I keep asking where the time went, but there are still six more days to go.

A very strange month. Maybe it exemplifies Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. As the quote attributed him goes...

                     “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. 

                       Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”.

And that is January for you...one moment it's rushing past you, and the next moment, it's positively dragging its feet.

Here's a picture of Janus, after whom the month was named. He was, to quote Wikipedia, "the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames and endings."

And this is supposed to be an improvement? Part 2

I bought some fish yesterday. It's actually bits of fish pressed together and then cut into 100 g blocks. What I do is defrost one of the four blocks in the pack, then pull the bits apart, dunk them in a beaten egg and dip them into fine polenta (gluten-free) and then fry them. Serve with vegetables.

I reckon I've been buying them for at least a decade and in all that time, they've come in a simple cardboard box. This week, I bought two packs (because they were on special offer) and was disgusted to find, when I opened the box, that they were now packed in plastic. And not just one plastic bag. No, they were put into two plastic bags containing two blocks of frozen fish. Why??? In an age when people are trying to cut down on the use of plastic, this company has suddenly had the stupid idea of putting their product into plastic. 

Given the state of the sea, into which a dumper truck of plastic is thrown every minute of the day and night (according to one book on economics I am reading), the last thing we need in this world is more plastic. Madness.

Not the brand I buy, but the same product.

"Call me Eeyore!"

Some of you may recognise that as a misquotation of the opening words of Moby Dick by Herman Melville, which starts with the words, "Call me Ishmael." (Ishmael is the narrator of the book.)

And if you are a fan of Winnie the Pooh, you will remember that Eeyore is the gloomy and pessimistic donkey in the stories. 

Well, gloomy and pessimistic sums up how I have increasingly felt over this last year, which is why I've not posted anything here in two months. 

Never, at the start of a new year, have I felt so pessimistic and gloomy as I do this year: the mad man in Russia, rising prices for gas, electricity and food, recession staring most countries in the face, companies closing down as they can't afford the fuel and power prices any more...what is there to feel good about?

Speaking with many older people of my acquaintance - they seem to feel even more desperate than I am. Let's hope we are all wrong and that you can soon stop calling me Eeyore.