(no subject)

[pphaneuf]

Thanks for everyone who came to my birthday party, last Friday! Yeah, I know, taking my sweet time, but better late than never... I got some gifts, but even though I'm grateful for those, I was very touched by how some people really worked hard to make it, in spite of distances, insane schedules and massive crowds, and that, wow, I'm quite flattered. Even some people that I don't see quite often and that I've often neglected in my being somewhat of an hermit did came. Thanks!

I'm now in Mountain View, about to head out for a day at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, where I'm told the water might actually a bit too cold for going in, but that I'm sure I'll manage to have a good time. Again, the sheer insanity of actually being paid for this is mind-boggling. On the other hand, I am in Mountain View now. But not to worry, tonight I'll be paying San Francisco a visit, going to a show tonight (I've never heard of them! woohoo!) and to the Tour de Fat.

In other bits of random knowledge, did you know that Norwegian actually has two written forms? Argh.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

yes I knew that Norwegian had two forms. We had "issues" with the AbiWord translation in Norwegian. :-)

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the two different ways of writing numbers in Arabic (they also use European numbers in Maghreb, for good fun), the various groups of people that get offended when you get things that you couldn't possibly figure out wrong, and you've got a lot of fun in the making. ;-)

[taxlady.livejournal.com]

Of course I know about the two forms of Norwegian. "Ny Norsk" means "New Norwegian". It was invented. Some scholars decided what Norwegian would be now, if Norway hadn't been part of Denmark.

Icelandic, as it exists today, is another case of the scholars deciding what the the language would have been without the Danish influence.

The water probably is too cold for a Californian to go swimming. They seem to forget that you are from the Great White North.

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, was invented sometimes in the 19th century. It makes language codes rather complicated!

I actually went in the water and dabbled around for a few minutes. It was kind of cold, but not horribly so. I do a terrible Canadian, being easily cold, but since everything is relative... My Cypriot teammate went in for a swim, although not much longer than I did! It was very warm and sunny otherwise, so it was nice to cool off. :-)

What I did a find pretty hilarious display of Californians not being able to stand the cold was in San Francisco, where I was in t-shirt all along (I did bring long sleeve shirts on my trip, but forgot them in Mountain View!), and I saw people people with scarves, tuques, and coats with fur on it. It was rather chilly on the evenings, but scarf and tuque cold? No way!

[taxlady.livejournal.com]

Scarves & tuques?! What a bunch of sissies.

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, totally!