21 Wednesday Mar 2007
Posted in media, miscellany, television
I love this programme.
And I’m also slightly in lust with Hugh Laurie – who’d have thunk that Bertie Wooster had such a gritty & sexy side to him? Add to that a great supporting cast, excellent snappy & intelligent dialogue and Bryan Singer as executive producer and you get totally compelling television … not something that happens very often.
~watercolour courtesy of lycanlauren at deviantART~
16 Friday Mar 2007
Posted in art, miscellany
What do you think?
It’s a detail of this photo I took in Barcelona at Casa Battló of a mosaic-tiled bench in the back patio. There are two of these benches there and they have glass ‘pools of water’ in front of them. Gorgeous.
Anyhow, I was getting a bit tired of seeing myself up there every day (though there is still a version of that pic on my ‘about azahar’ page) and so felt like a change. I love the colours and it’s got a very Spanish feel to it, but maybe it’s a bit boring?
11 Sunday Mar 2007
Posted in miscellany
When are you springing forward?
I was talking to a friend of mine in Toronto yesterday and she told me that the clocks were going ahead there this weekend – 3 weeks sooner than usual. Apparently because of some new law passed in the US?
Not sure when we change in Europe but I know the cats will love it – they’ll think they’re getting brekky an hour earlier.
04 Sunday Mar 2007
Posted in animals & pets, fun stuff, life stuff, miscellany, retail therapy
Worth about three thousand words … I honestly never thought they’d take to it,
but I couldn’t help myself as I’ve always collected fish-shaped things. 
27 Tuesday Feb 2007
Posted in miscellany, teaching
. . . why English is so hard to learn.
Can’t remember where or when I first came across this, but just found it again this afternoon in one of my files.
Let’s face it – English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France.
Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
Why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices?
Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, in which an alarm goes off by going on and trees are chopped down then chopped up into firewood.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn’t a race at all).
That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible
21 Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn… Continue reading
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