Archiv der Kategorie: almost a diary

almost a diary, photoblogging, traveling

King and Queen of… Sweden.

King and Queen of... Sweden.Finally a holiday experience that will impress my grandmother, who is, among many other things, fluent in all things concerning “European royalty.” Well, I suppose as fluent as reading women’s and celebrity magazines will get you in this respect.

So on my way back to Stockholm airport, I saw a tall guy with an earpiece standing in the middle of a road I had to cross. Then the royal carriage appeared and King and Queen of Sweden passed on their way to the annual opening of the Swedish Parliamentary session. Not sure, but it appears to be something like the “Queen’s Speech” in Britain.

Remembering what GWB’s visit to my home town had been like in February this year – remmeber, people who lived close to the place where he met with Chancellor Schroeder had to pass the entire day behind closed curtains not to risk being shot by US secret service snipers on the next building – I was mostly surprised about the relative lack of royal intrusion in people’s lives.

Where Bush had 3 motorways closed as well as airplanes diverted, King and Queen came, greeted and went to the Parliament with amazing royal understatement – despite the impressive amount of cavalry accompanying them.

Standard
almost a diary, photoblogging

Hej! from Stockholm.

Hej! from Stockholm.Despite my still serverely limited mobility I made it to Stockholm for the first bi-annual afoe stakeholder meeting.

Too bad that only a couple of fistfuls came to Sweden this weekend, but it’s great to finally meet some of the people I’ve blogged with for two years now.

Too bad as well that I won’t see as much of Stockholm as I would like because of overly frequent foot-caused coffee breaks.

Too bad, too, that almost all of those coffee breaks are taking place in self-service coffee shops. Waiting is a apparently an activity limited to rel restaurants in Sweden…

Standard
almost a diary, oddly enough

News from the School.

Still laughing my head off. Got this from the Guardian’s backbencher newsletter – they did not yet feature it in the alumni newsletter ;).

Congratulations to Monica Lewinsky, who will begin an MSc in social psychology at the LSE next month. Regrettably, the option on Gender and Psychology, which includes a unit on workplace relations, is not available in the next academic year. LSE suggests “Rethinking the [Word Omitted] Body: Theories, Cultures and Practices” as a suitable alternative.

Standard
almost a diary, self-referential

Summertime.

Just as Doug mentioned over on afoe, and as you might be experienceing yourselves, my gentle readers – it’s summertime. And summertime means that most Europeans enjoy the easy livin’, particularly during August, when entire countries seem to relocate to the sea.

Unfortunately, the Air France flight that crash landed in Toronto a couple of hours ago (apparently all passengers survived and only a few are injured) did not wait until la rentr�e to run over the end of the runway and break up. So while CNN had already found a camera crew in Toronto, and Wolf Blitzer had already talked to passengers and witnesses, the Air France website still reassuringly read –

Aucun événement à signaler sur l’ensemble du réseau Air France….

I guess that’s one way of dealing with such events…

Standard
almost a diary, oddly enough

Left behind what?

Spam is almost always annoying. Comment spam is the worst, because it requires additional attention, not rarely amounting to more time than it take to write a blog post. But there is also the rare instance where spam is fun or prompts reflection about its underlying social meaning, as in today’s case.

“Don’t get left behind” was the headline. “Add three inches today!” the goal – I’m assuming you’re familiar with the kind of addition offered -, and the way to do that was buying pills that my doc would most certainly frown upon, to say the least.

I know we guys tend to be competitive for the better or worse. It’s probably what evolution “had in mind” for a good number of reasons. I am also aware that the sexual evolution has brought about the general features of male primary sexual organ about whose size and functionality so many kind advertisers are so concerned about to offer help via email. But I wasn’t aware that technological advances had already turned a man’s endowment into a race to be fought individually let alone by taking pills.

So assume for the moment I decided to “add three inches” by taking the miracle pills. And then all other guys decided to do so, too. And if only size mattered… would I not be forced to eventually repeat the experiment? And wouldn’t all others? Would men eventually come to their minds and end a mostly certainly disfunctional sexual arms race? Or would we be more like the lemmings… (which I assume is what most girls believe ;))

I’m glad I won’t have to think about it anymore until I get the first spam about helping girls to cope with all those added inches… I’ll keep you posted.

Standard
almost a diary, oddly enough, self-referential

Saving Toby?

I’m at loss for words. Those of you, my gentle readers, who know me, will be able to certify that being in that state is a rather unnatural condition for me. However, I just found out about a website called savetoby.com. Being a Toby myself, I felt the need to inquire what was going on with my name buddy.

Toby, it turns out, is a rabbit, whose life has come under threat by two anonymous American students, who, according to savetoby.com and MSNBC.com, are planning to kill and eat Toby on June 30 unless they have raised at least USD 50,000 from donations and profits from selling savetoby.com merchandise on the web.
Weiterlesen →

Standard
almost a diary

Collateral Damage.

I’ve noticed that all those subscribing to the rss feed of almost a diary are probably unaware of the changes in the server configuration that took place over the last couple of weeks… well, at least my bloglines account told me that it’s still January in the old rss feed.

That’s because the old blog doesn’t exist anymore and all http queries are redirected to the new server. But redirecting doesn’t work well when looking for a specific file like index.rdf.

So I’ve now posted an rdf file with a last post in the old location, hoping it will help readers relying only on rss to find me again, but if you’re reading this, and you’re still interested in subscribing to my rss feed, please adjust your subscription manually to “http://www.tapsmusic.de/aad/index.rdf”.

Thanks!

Standard