Memories...

He's sad because Lisa said he was so ugly.

You may as well give up then

I went to the Wäscherei to catch up on some laundry. The place had self-serve facilities open until eleven, and full-serve open until eight. At halb neun (half past eight), while I was putting my stuff in, a man came running in. He asked me where the full-serve staff person was. My pants! She has my pants.

I told him she'd gone. This seemed to represent the end of the world as he knew it. I suggested he come back in the morning.

But I have no wife! Who will iron my pants?

Lost in the past

Took a detour along the way from Munich to Amsterdam. I'm in Lindau, where once upon a time I spent a summer.

It's pouring rain. Will leave soon to head back to Frankfurt, where I'll stay another night. I leave for Amsterdam in the morning.

Blah

In Munich now. Can't think of anything interesting to say. Train ride was uneventful. Hostel is okay. Has rained most of the time since I got here.

Europe is having a heat wave

If you know me, you know I love the heat. But the thing is, they're not prepared for it here. Nobody has air conditioning. Fine, I can deal with that. Nobody has fans. Um... Okay... That's not so good. The few places that have fans, they have them pointing in completely the wrong direction. Buildings were not designed to encourage airflow.

I'm at an internet cafe right now, and I'm reminded of Kolkata. Not because it's as hot as Kolkata here, but because it's so much hotter than the funny pink internet cafe we always went to on Sudder Street. They had fans in there and they knew how to use them. They have one fan here. It's sitting in the corner, pointing at no one.

I did some stuff today. It was all very interesting and nice; however, I'm too sweaty and gross to stay in here any longer.

Wiedersagen bitte

I wrote a post yesterday. I think it said 'I am at Stansted airport and I might be dead'; however, the lovelz computer in Stansted aiport ate it. All that survived was 'c'. Zep, 'c'. That was the entiretz of mz post.

Now I'm in Frankfurt.

German kezboards are strange. Thez don't use the letter Y verz much, so thez moved the kez. It's there; it's just not where I expect it to be. Also, somebodz please enlighten me: how does one make an @? Without resorting to copz/paste, I mean.

Not onlz are German kezboards strange, but this one has some charming uniquenes to it. The O kez works onlz some of the time. Other kezs don't work at all. Scrolling kezs, not tzping kezs. But still... Thez're there. Thez're labelled and everzthing, onlz nothing happens when I press them. Fun.

Anzhow... I'm off on a mission to get lost.

Stansted Airport

c

Scotland in pictures

Five'll get you started.

See... It doesn't always rain in Scotland

The Edinburgh castle
It costs £10 ($25!!!) to go inside, but it's free to look at from far away.

I can't remember what this was
But it's pretty, no?

The Scott Monument
That's Sir Walter Scott, not a Star Trek reference...

Canadian Hot Dog Bagel £1.99
Is that one menu item? Three? What would it be?

Vegemite tales

29 May 2005
Globetrotter Inn, Edinburgh

Can't sleep. Presumably this is because I've done almost nothing but sleep for the past 2 days.

So now I'm lying here awake, and I'm thinking about food. More specifically, I'm thinking about brown toast with butter and Vegemite.

Not that my stomach could hack it right now, even if it were on offer...

In the morning there will be toast, both white and brown. There will be butter. And, of course, the staff will all have their little jars of Vegemite. We guests, however, will get jam.

Life is so unfair sometimes.

Unmasked

I went to see my new doctor today. We sat down to go through all the medical history papers. She asked me questions about how I lost my voice and where I was when I got sick and where I'd been and what I'd been doing.

'I'm sorry. I don't want to alarm you, but I think I need to go put on a mask'.

She kept her mask on and continued asking questions. Then she disappeared for what seemed like quite a while. When she came back, she said it was probably nothing, but that I should go to the emergency room right away for all manner of tests and bloodwork and X-rays.

What was supposed to be a one-hour doctor visit somehow became a six-hour emergency room non-event. The last hour and a half of the evening was spent waiting for somebody to discuss my results with me so that I could go home. The results were in, the nurse told me; it was just a matter of waiting for a doctor to come and go over them with me. An hour and a half for a doctor to tell me that I had a run-of-the-mill flu and it was nothing to worry about.

Yes, thank you. I knew that. Ya big bunch of paranoid monkey-brains...