Friday, June 23, 2006

Alright ...

This is the last one...
the last scottish based blog entry, now would you believe it.
I spent the last days packing, cleaning, sending, buying stuff and furthermore sleeping under a mini duvet because the big one sleeps in its bag in Rachel's suitcase. My walls are bare, except for Kevin who I don't really know how to safaly get down and home again, the fridge is empty and so are my cupboards and shelves. Everything I possess is sitting in some bag or other and half of it is actually already on the way to Berlin.

Fra and I went to Craigmount yesterday to say goodbye and give the department a rather dodgy looking plant and a wee card that said "Thank you teachers (we added the "s") for making my schooldays so nice" or something like that.
The Lady dedicates her time pretty much to the one task of cleaning the flat, which is quite a challenge if you have lived with spanisch people for half a year, or so I'm told.

And with all this busyness, I hardly have time to realize that...and now bear with me...
I AM ACTUALLY LEAVING.

So last night at eleven, Lady Rach and I went up the Crags (Pav so "why", wir so "cause we can") to enjoy one last time the sparkling panorama of the City by night. We came down at about one in the morning and the sky was still evening blue, believe it or not. The wind was rustling in the grass and the stars were out and it was all very nice and serene.

So tonight I'm getting wasted!
I'm meeting Kenny Campbell in the Golf Tavern (hear, hear) at about four in the afternoon and later at eight, I'm meeting the Advanced Highers (!) in the Peartree and will be joined there later by the Lady, David Finlay, my favourite flat mate Princess Pav and Leighton, the Leightyboy, hoping to be able to get up at eight tomorrow morning to clean up the rest of the mess and carry my belongings to Waverly station to take one last train to Glatzgow Central to have one last cappucino and muffin with Fra and then say goodby to the boys in a three day hanging out celebration.
So just in case my brains are completely shrivelled by tomorrow night, hear this my last message from Caledonia:

SETZT KAFFE AUF, DIE MAMI KOMMT NACH HAUSE!!!

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

There's a new man in my life

Or at least, he hopes to become one in another 20 years' time.
The deliquent is five years old and the son of Raquel's aunt's neighbour's friend or something like that.
Now the lady in question, Rosmarie, is from Paraguay while her husband, Oliver, is from Aschaffenburg and as German as you can get, chequered shirts and all. A deadly mix! And as the kiddo is german-paraguayan, his mother insisted on a long name and his dad on a german one, as they used to live in Germany until three years ago. Anyways, the parents settled for the name "Karl-Christof", and you can literally hear the hyphen. The poor devil. And to make maters worse and in accordance to the custom in Paraguay, he is constantly adressed by his full name. Shidde, die arme Sau...so werden Psychopaten gemacht.
Carlito, as I, for sanity's sake, have come to call him, speaks spanish, german and english. In theory that is. Not to me, though. I have been looking after him for over a week now and he didn't say a single word to me. Also his only german reference is his dad so the kid grows up to speak some kind of westfraenkisch believing that this is how people speak. Also he hasn't quite gotten his head round the difference between "R" and "L". Au Backe.
My job is to pick him up from his nursery in the afternoon and take him to his home. That involves a walk to the busstop which would take any pedestrially challenged granny about five minutes. What can I tell you, it takes us 10.
Karl Christof never walks anything but leasurly and never in a straight line. He picks flowers along the way, walks through people's front gardens and marvels about the ugly guy's lawn mower. He especially likes to do so when it's windy and it rains and all I want to do is get in the bus and home so I can see the second half of the match. He so reminds me of my ex-boyfriend at times (and I can see my readers shudder at this) it scares me.
So we stroll along to the busstop while I carry his stuff and basically talk to myself, because the boy is not to be gotten a reaction of, no matter what I do.
UND DAS MIR!!!! Give me ten Kyle Finlaysons anytime! But this is doing my head in! I'm just glad the what with my genepool, this will not happen to me "in real life".

Friday, June 16, 2006

Hey Mr Taxman,

put a record on. I wanna dance with my money.
So oder so aehnlich schallt es in meinem Kopf heute. Die Inland Revenue sendet was die datende Welt als "mixed signals" kennt, das is das wenn wo man nich weiss was Sache is und alles im Kopf von den anderen leuten Kartoffelsalat is und ganz anders als man das eigentlich gerne ordentlich und gut haben moechte.
Hm. Hab ich das gedacht oder getippt?
Egal. Die Empfangsperson von dem Verein, mit dem ich heute sprach, hat kein kleines muffiges Empfangshaeuschen mit Glas davor sondern steht nur dumm in der Einganshalle rum, ein kleines Schild an die Putenbrust gepinnt, und das sagt "Dave".
OK, DAVE sagte mir also, dass ich keine Steuern zurueck bekomme, weil wieso auch und das gibt es nur, wenn Schotteland und Tschoermani ein besonderes Abkommen haetten, wovon ER, DAVE aber nicht wissen tute.
Ueberraschung, Dave! Es GIBT ein solches Abkommen. Ausserdem erzaehlte er noh irgendwas von P86S anstelle von P85 und vergass ausserdem, mich darauf hinzuweisen, dass ich mein P65 an den Sissikaunsl schicken muss. Alles in allem ergab das Gespraech folgende Folgerung bei der Lady und mir: wenn Dave irgendeine Ahnung von irgendwas haette, wuerde er nich dumm in der Einganshalle zu stehen haben, sondern waere ein ordentlicher Steuerrueckzahlungsformularexpertensachbearbeiter. Rischtisch? Rischtisch.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

IWF: Irrelevant Worldcup Facts


date: 10.06.2006
match: England vs Paraguay
player: Roque Santacruz
passes attempted: 9
passes screwed: 9
checks on hair: 14

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Endings

These last days, truth shows her ugly face in our everyday lives, constantly reminding us of the fact that everything associated with our year in Scotland is coming to an end.

The laptop left an empty spot on my desk and myself cut off from the world,
Sitske, Charline and Constanze left already,
The Lady's telephone, internet and Sky TV connection was cut; very appropriately, E4 showed the last ever episode of Friends on the day before that,
My ridacard expired and I'm not going to top it up, because what with the few days remaining that I am likely to take a bus, it's cheaper for me to pay as I go,
I can't get a library card, because I'm not staying long enough,
I'm using my last pay...

I even find myself musing about the last purchase of toilet paper before I leave; everything has this feeling of 'the last ever, definitely' about it and I HATE it.





But luckily, LUCKILY, we even abolished winter; people in shorts and sleeveless shirts are welcoming and celebrating

my last ever scottish change of weather...

Saturday, June 03, 2006

The countdown starts...

... one weak to go to the worldcup and here on the island tempers are boiling.

As for England, BBC keeps us updated on how England won the Worldcup in '66 and how the actual cup was stolen from a Museum in London during the competition and how the trophy was found by a dog named Spot or Sparkle or Pickles or something like that. On monday, we are impatiently awaiting the 18. TV programm about the whole affair, entitled "How England won the worldcup" (yeah, ok, lads), followed by a film called "Pickles, the dog what found the worldcup". Aaaaaargh. Oh, and also people are in a wave of reminiscence and joyful remebmering about how England beat the bloody Germans TWICE! Once in the worldcup (in '66, the year in which by the way they won it) and once 5:1 (in a friendly). The TV programs about THAT are entitled things like "In your face, Fritz" or "How we beat the Krauts". Oh, Jesus, that's like 40 years ago, dudes. It's nice to hold on to your memories, but THIS is actually so sad that it's funny...
The other thing that keeps BBC football people busy is the state of Wayne "Loony" Roony's foot. Let's face it, Sven, the boy is not gonna make it, hahaaa!
And by the way, the next item on the list of those things to be shot through the head: English football commentators! All they ever have to say is "That's Beckham" (which we can see, because it's actually written on the back of his jersey) or "Wayne Roony is going to have his foot x-rayed on monday" (which we know because the papers meticulously cover every single one of Roony's farts) and then instead of showing the team who is just singing their national anthem (in this case Hungary!!! I wanted to actually see them you ignorant, arrogant bastards!), they show the son of the guy who owned the dog what found the lost worldcup in '66. Aaahhhh, here we go again. FIRE AT WILL!!!

As for Scotland, now that's a different story.
Worldcup qualification didn't work out quite according to plan, which is a nice way of saying they blew it and consequently have to stay at home.
Now Jack McConnell, (I'm not sure whether that's his name, but it will do for the moment) a leading MSP (that's Member of the Scottish Parliament, honey), publicly announced that he wouldn't support England during the worldcup, because he would rather support the smaller teams like Trinidad and Tobago. Which for everyone with a little grey matter is fair enough and absolutely common sense but which caused a political outrage in which Gordon Brown, the little Nutte, had to sell himself big time and let everyone know the HE would support the team from south of the border because that's just good manners or whatever. He hopes to succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister, the little whore, so he kind of had to say that. How sad, du kleine Nutte.
The rest of the nation is divided into those who will support their neighbours and those who'd rather have a nice big bowl of shite for breakfast every day.
The latter group of people (I consider myself one of them, be it only for English football commentating) for several reasons have adopted the team of Trinidad and Tobago. First of all, many of their players are based in Scotland, secondly, if you wanna shout for Scotland, Jason Scotland of Trinidad and Tobago is as close as you will get to the real thing. The fact that T&T are in the same group as England and two thirds of the nation hope they will make English life as hard as possible has nothing to do with this adoption, of course.

Well, my half hour of free internet is running out and also I have to start to learn the names of T&T players.
May you have a merry worldcup, I'll catch up with you half way through it.
Till then, immer schoen real keepen...