Sunday 1 December 2013

Future of the UK and Scotland

Yesterday around 200 people got together in the Old College to talk about the white paper made by the government of Scotland. It's already impressive that this amount of people would choose to spend most of its St. Andrew's day talking about politics. But even more impressive was how well the debate went and how obviously interested people are in reflecting on the issue before making a final decision in 10 months time.
I know that's how Democracy should be like. Unfortunately, it's so rare that it really is like that. So often people don't care about getting to know more about the consequences of their vote. That, of course, when they do decide to vote... So this event was refreshing and gave me confidence on Scotland's future: in or out of the UK.
In the morning we had five academics' thoughts on five different questions. Would Scotland be wealthier? A fairer more equal country? Safe in the world? Greener? And what kind of Democracy would it have? In the afternoon we had five other academics who, assuming a yes vote in the referendum, reflected on dividing assets and debts, EU membership, role in the international community, currency union and constitution.
Both panels were followed by debates with people with different opinions and from distinct professional and political background. In the morning there was also a period of audience discussion. Unfortunately, the gadgets they provided for the audience to vote were not working very well but the discussion was still very lively. Another unfortunate fact was that there was a fire alarm in the afternoon that made us all freeze outside for one hour and loose the time for audience discussion. These two technical malfunctions still could not cast a shadow over how great the exchange of ideas was.
Congratulations to the organization and to all the participants! (uops, this last one also includes me...)

Friday 22 November 2013

Things that only a Brit would say... II

You meet someone in the street, exchange a few words until time comes for farewell and your British interlocutor tells you: "catch you later!" 
Catch me! Will you be chasing me? To do what once you caught me? Is that a threat?
In fact this only means "see you later!" So why don't they say "see you later"? Britishnesses...

Thursday 21 November 2013

Things that only a Brit would say... I

In reply to your question: "how are you?" you get a "not too bad!"
Not to bad!!! The first time I heard this my immediate reply was one of commiseration: "why? what happened? is there anything I can do to help?"
In fact "not too bad" in this country means "good". Go figure... 

Friday 15 November 2013

Prestige... Do you still remember?

Can you still remember the accident of prestige? Well, it was 11 years ago and it was one of the worst petrol spills in Europe ever. After all this time the criminal court in La Coruna (Galicia), finally came to a decision. Everyone involved was innocent of any crimes.
What do we learn with this? That to not comply with safety navigation norms in order to save some money is ok. That to severely harm the environment is not that serious. That to prevent entire communities of fishermen from working for months in a region that greatly depends on fishing is just bad luck. 
Well, the environment is not that important, right? If we completely destroy this earth we can always move to Mars... What? Mars does not have enough O2? Well, our planet will also soon not have much, so what's the difference?

Wednesday 30 October 2013

Living room window

Saving the best for last... The best view, of course!
The living room window has a superb view over Arthur's Seat. For those who never visited Edinburgh (shame on you), Arthur's Seat is a pick in Holyrood Park. From it, the visitor can have a superb view over the city. In this photo, Arthur's Seat is the one on the right.
This window gets a lot of sun in the morning. When there is sun, of course. Which clearly was not the case when I took this photo... It also leads to the street, overlooking one of the main streets of Edinburgh: Clerk Street (locals read Clark).
Even though this is the window with the best view, I don't have a funny story to tell, like the bedroom window's nor did I ever took long to contemplate the people outside, like I did with the kitchen window. Maybe people who say that beauty isn't all that important are right. Or maybe not...

How many days?

In the post office, after posting a registered letter to Singapore the lad behind the counter tells me:
- Forty five days to arrive.
I, obviously surprised, answered with shock in my voice:
- Forty five days to arrive!!!
The lad replies:
- Forty five days to arrive.
No wanting to believe this outrageous number, I reply:
- One month and half for a letter to arrive in a city that has daily flights from London! In that case I don't want to send it from here! Give me back the letter!
Given that tomorrow I'm flying home, I intended to send the letter from there. I'm sure our postal service would be more efficient than 45 days with the royal mail. The lad decided to speak really slowly:
- T h e - l e t t e r - w i l l - t a k e - f o u r - t o - f i v e - d a y s - t o - a r r i v e.
- Ahhhh! - I replied with relief - Why didn't you say: "the letter will take between four and five days to arrive" in the first place then? Are you afraid of using extra words? It wouldn't stress your vocal cords too much, you know?
Mental note: I won't use that post again!

Saturday 19 October 2013

Polish adventures

Next to my house I have a wee Polish food shop. Sometimes I go there to buy bread and I end up being adventurous and buying something else. Why adventurous? Because everything is written in Polish and I can only vaguely imagine what I'm buying.
Today I decided to buy something that looked like a pate. At least it was certainly something to put in the bread because there was a picture of the thing spread over a loaf of bread. The thing was called Smalec z ogorkiem malosolnym. This sounded like an innocent enough name, right? Well, not really... The thing is almost pure lard! That exotic people from across the iron wall spreads lard in the bread!
Now, I can't exactly say that I loved it at first bite. However, I'm not the sort of person who throws away food which means that by the end of the jar, I will probably be a fan of spreading lard in bread. And I will have gained a few extra kilos as well...
Joys of being adventurous!

Friday 18 October 2013

The bedroom window

I know that yesterday I wrote that the kitchen window was a bit plain and without much of a view. Still, compared to the one in my bedroom, that view is amazing. This is due to the simple fact that my bedroom has no view. I mean, if there's a window, there's a view, but the only thing I see is the next building on the other side of a narrow alley. 
Now this seems boring, right? And for more than one month from the time I moved into this new house, I thought that was the most boring window in the world. But this changed on a night a couple of weeks ago... Now it's the time for those of you who think that only perverts peep at their neighbours to stop reading this post so you don't think of me as a pervert.
So, this was the night from Saturday to Sunday. I woke up a bit after 4 am in need of a visit to the loo. When I went back to bed, I could hear house music from the street. Now, there is no bar or club near my house, so I thought it strange and went to the window to check what it was. As soon as I opened the window, I realized where the music was coming from: the neighbour from across the alley. 
The neighbour was a 20-30 years old guy wearing nothing but black boxer briefs and dancing in his room. Dancing a sort of strip-tease dancer or something. Politically correctness would advise me to call it exotic dance but I didn't find it exotic, just absolutely hilarious! So I, who wanted to go back to sleep, laughed so much that lost all the sleep I had and spent the rest of the night watching episodes of "how I met your mother". 
Well, to be fair to my neighbour, I laughed because I thought it completely crazy for a guy to be dancing alone in his room at 4 am on a Saturday night (they invented disco-clubs for that). But when I was laughing, I realized that there was a girl with him in the room and I stopped laughing... Somehow this seemed less funny and more of a national geographic sort of thing: "the male human dances to show his physical prowess and attract the female." This means that my neighbour is not completely crazy. He just deserves to be part of some human life documentary by Sir David Attenborough.
Well, one good thing came out of the rest of the night watching "how I met your mother". I stopped thinking that my bedroom window was the most boring window on the face of the earth. But now I will certainly never open it again when I hear music in the middle of the night. After all, a PhD student needs more to sleep than to watch American TV shows. 

Thursday 17 October 2013

The Kitchen window

So, the first window in this series of post on the windows of my house is the kitchen window.
The kitchen window does not have an amazing view: it faces a plain, normal street like so many streets in the centre of Edinburgh. However it's the window through which I look the most. The reason for this is simple: when I eat alone, it's this window I'm facing. When I'm somewhere else, I'm usually doing something that prevents me from staring outside the window. So, that's it: this is the window I 'use' the most.
From using this window so much, I realized something. During my breakfast time, 95% of the people passing in that street take the same direction. That is the direction of many buildings of the university, so you can see all the students going to class or the Uni staff going to work. Of all these people walking in the same direction, some 95% of those walk at the same pace. A fast pace, much faster than the normal pace in Southern Europe. I guess that people in this country don't face that concern we face down South of not wanting to arrive somewhere all sweaty... And walking quickly makes them warmer.
Now: imagine a reasonable crowd of people walking in the same direction at the same pace. From the distance, as I am, one kind of gets the feeling that they're a human mass. They're not a student of business who dreams of being a Steve Jobs, a professor of philosophy thinking of some metaphysical problem, a shopkeeper who feels more like flying to some paradise beach in the Caribbean than to face the customers one more day... They're just a faceless, indistinct mass of people with no feelings or dreams just walking in the same direction.
After I got used to see these people as a mass, the other day I decided, between mouthfuls of cornflakes and toasts with cheese to imagine what these people might be thinking, feeling or dreaming. From one moment to the other 'my crowd' became so much more interesting and diverse! I even began to like the kitchen window much more than I do!

Tuesday 15 October 2013

My windows - the begining

I decided to start writing about my windows. No, this is not a philosophical expression of some sort to refer to the windows of my soul or something like that. I would love to be more of a poet that I am, but, unfortunately I don't have much of a poet soul.
When I mean windows I literally mean windows. Today I realized that I love windows. I like to stare outside a window and see people passing by. I like to see the people and imagine something about them. Try to understand by their mere passing what they are thinking
I know, this sounds kind of creepy. But, hey, am I a Mediterranean or not? (yes, I am) And could you imagine wandering around any country in the Mediterranean and not see people sitting at the window staring outside? Staring at you... I am not going to they to explain why they (us) do it. You (British? Chinese? Northern European?) may just consider us nosy... So, this nosy person will start to describe some of the windows of his life. Staring from tomorrow because today I already procrastinated too much. I need to leave some procrastination for tomorrow.

Thursday 22 August 2013

Feta with the Queen

Those who know the fringe of Edinburgh well, also know that it's difficult to find good free shows. Sometimes they're terrible (I already had to leave one after 15 minutes), sometimes they're ok but when you find a good one you have to share it. I went to a very funny one, Feta with the Queen, reason why I'm sharing it here.
Katerina, the comedienne, is from Greece but has been living in the UK for a long time. The entire gig is about the stereotypes of British and Greeks. However, in this last point, I have to stress that the stereotypes of the Greeks can be easily applicable to most Mediterranean peoples: the equally bankrupted Italians, Spanish and Portuguese; the Bulgarians, Romanians and the Balkan Slavs enjoying their first steps in the EU (welcome to the club); Turks, Egyptians, Maghrebians... If someone comes from around the Mediterranean, it is very possible that they will feel that Katerina is talking about their own people.
Watching this gig made me think about other characteristics of the Mediterraneans. We build strong relations with our families, friends and neighbors but very week ties with the rest of the society. The state, that abstract entity that connects us all, belongs to all and, consequently, belongs to no one. And if something belongs to no one, as our Roman ancestors taught us: quod nullius est, id ratione naturali occupanti conceditur. Which means, things that belong to no one, belong to those who find them. 
This leads to avoid paying taxes, celebrating contracts that are disadvantageous to the state and advantageous to our family or friends, using public money for private reasons... All that is not as strongly condemned as it is, for example, cheating your family and friends or, God forbid, not call your parents with regularity. People may turn a blind eye to hiring a unqualified relative to a public position (actually, they'll even expect it) but they won't forgive easily if you don't spend the most relevant holidays at home (Christmas or Eid Al-Fitr, depending if you're in the North or in the South of the Mediterranean).
I imagine that for British (and Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians, etc.), the Mare Nostrum may seem a bit like the geographic basis for a big Cosa Nostra. But do indulge with us, please! Indulge with our strange relation with the state as we indulge with your strange relation with alcohol.

Saturday 10 August 2013

The challenge

So this is the famous Ben Lomond. Doesn't look so high in the photo but I can tell you is no piece of cake to climb it all!

Views from Ben Lomond




Loch Lomond

Unfortunately my camera is really kaput... The rice trick didn't work!
Still, I got the photos from my trip to Loch and Ben Lomond.

 The mist over the lake..
View over Loch Lomond from Ben Lomond.

Sunday 4 August 2013

Swimming British Lakes

In the last few weeks I decided to swim in some British lakes. Well, it wasn't really a premeditated decision but I ended up doing so.
During a very good and special week, I was down in England in the Lake District. The Lake District corresponds very much to what we, foreigners, imagine the English countryside to be like. Lots of lawns, green hills, cows everywhere, friendly people... And a nice strong rain every now and then. There I swam in the largest natural lake in England, the Lake Windermere. The weather was great and really inviting us in, as can be seen in the picture of me facing the dangerous swans.
Not so inviting was the weather today in Loch Lomond, described by wikipedia as "the largest inland stretch of water in Great Britain by surface area" (whatever that means). I camped in a camping site by the lake and it was a truly amazing place! With one minor problem: no showers. Actually, for any average Mediterranean person, this is not a minor problem, it's a major one as we are generally restless until we take our daily shower. As such, despite the not very inviting weather, after breakfast I went to swim in the lake. Not more than one minute, just enough time to feel like there had been water in me that day. The problem was that in the afternoon, while canoeing with friends, our canoe capsized and there I was back in the lake, this time for more than one minute... 
Don't worry, dear reader (the one that comes here once a month), my health will not deteriorate to the point of stop writing here. Major problem for this blog was that my wee camera was in my pocket. I still didn't turn it on as I'm waiting for it to be completely dry (five days in rice). It would be a shame if I had no way to photograph my British adventures for the blog. Let's hope the rice trick works! If it does, I'll have amazing photos of my climb to Ben Lomond to show here.

Thursday 1 August 2013

Loch Ness

Beautiful one day trip the most famous of Scottish lakes. And no, I didn't spot Nessie.




Monday 8 July 2013

Thursday 20 June 2013

Life outside facebook

One week without facebook! Yes, it was precisely one week ago that I decided to check if there was still life outside facebook. I was surprised to realize that there is. Well, clearly there are advantages and disadvantages to it. 
The major disadvantage is that all the events are now organized using facebook. Now I understand the complaints of my facebookless friends who kept complaining they weren't told about events. It's just so easy to create an event, disseminate it around your friends and forget about those rare, exotic, loony people who are not on the most popular social network in the world. People like me, now!
The major advantage is to gain time to procrastinate in some other way. I wonder if that is an advantage... I closed my account considering that I was stealing too much time from work but until now I don't think there was a surplus of work. There is merely a more diverse procrastinating time.
Hummm... Given the lack of clear advantages and the existence of clear disadvantages, maybe it should be time to go back in. But I keep thinking that I'm probably still in that phase that quitting smokers experience after one week of stop smoking. They still don't feel better but feel in a terrible mood... So I'll need to give at least two months to life outside facebook to really experience how it's like.

Thursday 13 June 2013

Stone's, inches...

Every now and then, the locals like to say things like 'I'm x inches tall', or 'I've put on x stones and need a diet', etc.. Now, it's obvious by my looks and accents that I'm not a local. They actually know that I'm not a local! They actually know that no non-local ever understands what they're blabering about inches and stones. And they know that all of the non-locals do not plan to learn about inches and stones. Still, they say it!
I started to consider this inch and stone thing like a bit of a good colonizer - bad colonized relationship. Locals (aka British, aka the good colonizers) are convinced of the superiority of their measure systems. Therefore, they nicely want to teach them to those natives of lands with inferior measure systems. Now these natives (us, the foreigners) are stubborn and refuse to learn! (the bad colonized part) The reasons for this stubbornness are that 1) it's impossible to understand such strange systems; 2) we consider it an eccentricity of the locals (aka good colonizers); 3) we consider that accepting such systems is beyond our inferior capacities as natives from the metric-system lands.
As such, we just adopt the innocent style of the colonized by nodding to what the colonizers are saying with a meek smile. After that, we try to calculate how many cms the locals measures or just assume that those stones the local put on is a few kgs more than desirable. That makes the locals rejoice thinking 'here's a once uncivilized human being who has risen to our inch-stone statute... oh, the British civilizing the world'! And we, the supposedly now civilized creatures, are thinking: 'these British are so funny and eccentric! I'll have to tell my friends back home about them!' Oh harmony in the colonized-colonizer relation!

Sunday 9 June 2013

Wee Kilts

Today the children were having their first communion in my Parish church. Until here, nothing out of normal of what you can find in Catholic churches around the world. The cool thing was that all the boys were wearing little kilts! Not the boring grey shorts or trousers everyone wears all around the world...
And that's Scotland!

Thursday 30 May 2013

Twilight

With a title like this, someone might expect me to write about a bad quality teenage saga. But no. I want to write about those two hours or so, from around 10pm to around midnight in which there is still some light here in Edinburgh. Basically, Edinburgh is so far North that in Summer days become really long. Even at that time of night in which it was suppose to be pitch black, we can still see shades of blue in the sky. It's very beautiful!




Sunday 12 May 2013

Blind checks

A couple of months ago, after passing in the X-ray in Edinburgh airport, I was asked to show my ID in a random check. 
I thought that was strange. I have to admit that my idea was "why on earth would they ask me, a white, light-haired, blue-eyed guy wearing a suit and with no criminal record?" I know this thought sounds quite racist. It sounds like I consider to be above suspicion... How politically incorrect can it be? 
As such, while showing my ID, I decided to ask the officer the reason for that random check. The answer came while he was trying to choose which of my names to put on his records: "it's just a routine check!
Now, this wasn't a satisfying answer for me. I would guess that in a routine check they should be asking the ID to those individuals with a more suspicious look. Risking continuing to be politically incorrect, I have to admit that my thought was that a light-haired, blue-eyed guy in a suit and tie and Oxford shoes  was not the first guy one would usually consider suspicious. So the next question was: "routine checks are good and necessary, but why me?!" This was said in a tone that also expressed a little bit of a "look at me! do I look like trouble?"
The officer had to control the smirk on his face while answering my politically incorrect question. He said something like "the choice was perfectly random, anyone could be chosen", etc.. Even though he said this in a matter-of-fact tone, he kind of stressed the "anyone" part.
I remembered this today while reading a letter of a guy from Muslim background to the Minister for Justice in Sweden. He was complaining how he always felt surveillance to tight whenever he went into a shop. Or how police always looks at him more suspiciously than they do at "traditional Swedes" (read the light-haired, blue-eyed ones). And even how once he was taken to a police car for no reason and kept waiting for 20 minutes before being dismissed without an apology.
Next time I'm asked for my ID, I promise not to complain. I promise not to ask "why me?" I promise I will be happy that I may even consider such control to be strange.

Sunday 5 May 2013

Holidays


Coming to Scotland was a bit of a cultural shock! Not because of the weather, one only needs to wear more clothes. Also not the food: dumplings and noodles might be awesome, but haggis is no second to them (I do miss a good weekend yam cha, though).
What is really shocking here is the lack of public holidays!
Before I moved to the UK I was living in what is perhaps the most “holidayed” territory in the world, Macau. I guess the reason for this is that Macau was for 450 years ruled by two of the peoples who enjoy having public holidays the most: the Portuguese and the Chinese.
So, basically, nowadays there are many kinds of holidays in that small territory. There are Chinese political holidays, like the day of the establishment of the PRC but also religious holidays that were abolished in China with the Socialism, such as the birthday of Buddha. There are Chinese traditional holidays such as the day to sweep the graves, the moon cake festival or Chinese New Year. There are also the Catholic holidays, inherited from the Portuguese, such as Christmas, Easter, Our Lady of Conception or the day of the faithful departed (which is actually not a public holiday in Portugal because the day before is, the all saints day).
With all these holidays and with low cost flights to so many places in Asia departing from Macau, one of the main hobbies in the city is to plan trips. To me, this trip planning was already natural: browsing the calendar for the next holiday, check how many days off I needed to take to “bridge” it to the closest weekend, check promotions of low cost companies, look for friends who hadn't gone to that destination (an increasingly challenging task, as everyone was doing the same) and finally, book the trip and buy the fake lonely planet guide across the border, in Zhuhai, world’s capital of fake stuff.
The United Kingdom could not be more different! In this country most holidays are just in the calendar, they aren't for real. In the 1st of May, for example, no one would notice there was a holiday going on. In St. Andrew’s day, the Patron Saint of Scotland, everyone was working. A lot of other holidays appear in my calendar but they’re just another day with no difference whatsoever to working days…
Well, this is actually good, because now my financial situation would not allow me to travel as much as in Macau and I would feel miserable if everyone but me was doing it!

Thursday 25 April 2013

Saudade

I come from a country with a beautiful word: saudade...
Saudade is a longing for what we lost or what we know will never come but also the joy for what we have and a hope for what will come.
Saudade is also a sadness for being apart from "our loved ones" and at the same time the happiness of having such " loved ones."
At last, saudade has a lot to do with your motherland because it is the sadness of having left it (my country is a country of sailors) together with the joy of knowing we have it with us in our hearts.
So saudade is in itself a mix of contradictions. And being such a strong feeling that my country-fellows and I share proves how contradictory and complicated we are.
But I know we are not the only ones. We exported this feeling to the ends of the earth. In South America and Africa, in Asia and Oceania there are people who know this word and share this feeling... Or this mix of feelings. And we're all happy and sad that we can feel saudade.

Monday 8 April 2013

Public money


In 1983 Margaret Thatcher made what is still nowadays one of my favorite political speeches of all times. One that, unfortunately, was never sufficiently advertised in my own country, Portugal. This is notorious nowadays. However Portugal may be used as an example of a situation that is seen in many other countries, such as France, Italy, Greece, Belgium...
Thatcher reminded the British that the money spent by the state is, in fact, tax payers' money and that the more the state collects, the less the economy has. Even if some of it eventually is invested in the economy... And this happens for two reasons. The main one is that between the moment in which the tax payer gives up his money in favor of the state and the moment the state invests in the economy a lot is lost in red tape, civil service, etc.. The second one is that generally private stakeholders are better at making money grow than the state.
In the day of Lady Thatcher's death, I would like to take a look at the Portuguese situation in light of this idea.
The Portuguese state got into too much debt over too long. To run a huge deficit in the end of every yearly budget became the never disrespected rule instead of the exception. And this was the will of the tax payers / voters: if any politician had had the courage to say that they would slash on public expenditure, that was a politician doomed to failure.
After the 2011 international rescue it seems that few people in Portugal learned the lesson. The government in power since the rescue has failed to really cut expenditure. It is true that some expenditure has been curbed, but that's far from enough. It has, instead, increased taxes in a way that is killing any chances the economy might have to grow again. And if the economy goes down, so does the tax revenue...
The opposition suggests economic stimulus to the economy. However, it fails to explain which money would it use. Again, the taxpayers' money? 
Lady Thatcher's ideas and political example are extremely valuable. In this sad day of her death, let us not forget them. RIP

Thursday 4 April 2013

Climate refugee

There is one thing that I never shared in this blog: I'm almost a climate refugee. 
I was living in Macau for five years and those were five long and painful years due to the inhuman and degrading treatment I received down there. During an average of 8 out of 12 months of the year I would start sweating as soon as I ventured three steps outside home. It had become perfectly normal to see me walking around with my shirt dripping and my hair glued to my face. Face which, by the way, was always as shiny as a turkey in Christmas! If this isn't inhuman and degrading treatment, I don't know what is... For me and for all those who had to bear this sight!
The government of Macau clearly failed to fulfill its positive obligation to build a gigantic greenhouse over the city with super-power ACs working day and night. Only this could provide the city with the necessary protection to human rights of its inhabitants and visitors.
Now, today my climatic traumas were revived. I left home wearing a sleeveless jacket at 7.30 am and still I arrived in the gym sweating almost as much as I used to in Macau. Is this possible in a civilized country under the rule of law?! Is UK not supposed to be the cradle of modern democracy? To whom can I appeal of this approaching inferno? Holyrood? Westminster? Buckingham? Strasbourg?
Who can bring me back the snow?

Wednesday 3 April 2013

The new British Class System

If there's something Brits love even more than tea with milk and sugar (which is still something I couldn't get used to, for me tea should be drank pure) it's a good, well stratified class system. Historically that has to do with the Normand invasion and having the upper class speak French and the lower Saxon. Until this day they still don't speak the same language... 
But now BBC decided to innovate and create a new class system because they considered the old one to be outdated. I think I will understand BBC when I'm able to enjoy tea with milk and sugar...
Now, BBC does not want Brits to feel lost and not know where they belong. As such they provide an online test so that Brits are aware of their place in society. They brilliantly named it the class calculator.
Now, this calculator was extremely useful to me. I didn't know my place in the British society. This might be due to the fact that I'm not British... But now, after a short test with only half a dozen questions I know what I am in this beautiful kingdom:
Emergent service workers - a new, young, urban group which is relatively poor but has high social and cultural capital
I can't say that I was thrilled at being described as an "emergent" and "relatively poor" (though this last one is true) but I can't hide the fact that I quite enjoy that I have a "high social and cultural capital".

Monday 25 February 2013

Transgenic Scotts

I have already once expressed here my impression on the strange relationship Scotts have with cold. Since then I just came to accept that Scotts are transgenic people: they don't feel cold in the same way that we, traditionally organic people do. You see them jogging in the snow, go out at night in a t-shirt and even leave home to go shopping in their flip-flops. All these are things that I have grown used to see in my every day life. Even though I still stare a wee bit, I have grown used to it.
One thing, however, that I haven't grown used to is the cold at home. I would guess, before I moved to Edinburgh, that all the houses in locations this far North would have well insulated double-glazed windows. Well, maybe they do in Norway but certainly not here!
Well today I was in conference on Environment and there was a representative there of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. We had discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the many forms of energy so I posed the obvious question: why isn't proper insulation compulsory. Now, the SEPA guy gave a vague answer on conciliation of interests but a lawyer there present gave what top me was a very different answer. He said that he would like his grandchildren to see the Georgian windows, how the sun shines through them and how their ancestors built them! I guess he wasn't very concerned with waking up feeling that his ears might fall with the cold or that his nose had gone numb...
There you have the proof that they are transgenic: they want their grandchildren to see how their Georgian ancestors had the windows. I, on the other hand, would prefer my grandchildren not to have pneumonia...

Saturday 16 February 2013

Scottization...

Every day, since September, when I arrive to School in the morning, the janitor of the building nicely saluted me with what I always thought was a "morning, Bob"! Now, this made me feel very uncomfortable because I'm not Bob. My simple conclusion was that either the man was mad or we was mistaking me by someone else.
Because for 5 months the man kept calling me Bob, I had already asked to a number of Scottish friends what he might mean by that but no one could provide me with a satisfactory answer.
The answer finally came last week not from a Scott but from an Italian. He wasn't calling me Bob, he was calling me the Scottish version of pal, which is something like pol. But to me it really sounded like Bob, right?
That changed my relationship with the nice man! Now not only I answer with a good morning, as I already did, but I also comment on the weather... My fear is that if it took me five months to understand pal, how long will it take me to understand all the other words I still don't understand?

Saturday 19 January 2013

Amazing Edinburgh 2


After going to bed with snow outside, I woke up to see this amazing view from my window...
Edinburgh is amazing!

Amazing Edinburgh!

Imagine you had never lived in a place where it snowed...

Imagine that you had never seen the mere action of snow falling and actually accumulating on the ground...
Stop imagining! That was me until today!
Now Imagine that a person like me starts seeing snow falling outside heavily while on a (very interesting by the way) conference on legal theory. I just couldn't take my eyes out off the window, no matter how interesting the conference was...
Now I left the conference and saw the court yard of Old College covered in snow. All but the lawn, for some reason...
Then I head of to a whisky tasting enjoying each moment of walking in the snow. During the whisky tasting, once again I was gazing at the window and once back outside marveled at how everything was covered in snow. And decided to throw some snow bowls at friends who were perfectly accustomed to snow because they hadn't spend their entire lives between a Mediterranean and a Sub-tropical weather.
After another pub, I head off home in my faithful bicycle. I got used to ride in the snow immediately by the way.
On my way home, at almost 2am, I saw this guy juggling with fire in the middle of the snow in the Meadows. I stopped to see for five minutes and then continued slowly, riding my bicycle, on my way home.
What a beatiful evening!


Wednesday 16 January 2013

Amazon V Blackwell's

Now I decided to have German lessons, so I had to buy my German course book (Berliner Platz Neu). 
I decided to check the price in Amazon as I always do. However, I also decided to go to Blackwell's. Just to be on the safe side...
I realized that in Blackwell's it was £10.00 cheaper than in Amazon! I then decided to also buy a German-English-German dictionary and both things together were still cheaper... 
What's wrong with Amazon?!

Tuesday 1 January 2013

Happy New Year!

It's been quite a while since I last wrote here. I must apologize to my occasional readers for this absence... In fact, this blog is about Scotland and I've been back home for a while, so nothing much to say about Scotland when I'm not there.
Since I last wrote, a new year arrived: I wish you all, in Scotland or elsewhere, a happy new year of 2013!