(no subject)

[baratron]

I am using a public terminal in the Brussels Natural Science Museum. The keyboard is the most perverse thing I´ve ever seen. It´s not just an AZERTY keyboard - no, I could probably adjust to that quite easily (after typing my first billion qs). Nope - it has the M and ? keys swapped round, the punctuation all in the wrong place, the numbers and punctuation the wrong way round (so you have to press shift for numbers?!), and weirdest of all, . and ; the wrong way round - so you have to press shift to _get a full stop_. What this says about the relative abundance of full stops to semi-colons in French, I dread to think.

Suffice to say, this is going to be a very short entry - having to correct just about every word is driving me nuts. Let´s just give you a roll-call of the past 24 hours:

Disturbing things seen:
* savoury waffles - ok, the cheese and ham ones weren´t very disturbing, but the curry ones, made of normal waffle batter flavoured with curry powder? ewww
* a gay bar called l´Homo Erectus
* a giant inflatable Hello Kitty _Mermaid_ (only 18 euros (yes, this bizarre keyboard has a $ and a £ but no euro symbol)

Cool things seen:
* can´t tell you, as they are mostly presents for people
* Quick (the hamburger chain) now does 3 vegetarian things and a vegan thing!!!

We are staying in the sleaziest hotel ever!

Have acquired Alpro Soya products and some dairy-free chocolate from just a normal small supermarket (like local equivalent of Tesco Express) - am v. impressed.

Bloke next to me is playing a game with very loud annoying music, so i think that´s my cue to go look at rocks...

UPDATE: the rocks are organised according to the elements in them and there is a BORON cabinet!!

Comments

[inkyann.livejournal.com]

Slightly boggled... why not staying with Henrietta for free?! Bring me back a small packet of Croky Paprika crisps please!

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Because we think it's rude to use someone as a hotel?

Anyway, staying with people apart from close friends is fairly fraught at the best of times. Generally speaking if you stay with someone they try to feed you, and interrogating people about the content of food becomes pretty exhausting after the first meal - I expect doubly so if you're trying to do it in another language, and in a country where even vegetarianism is seen as weird, let alone veganism. (Am vegan for health reasons, as milk & dairy products & egg all do terrible things to my intestines, and it seems much easier not to eat them). As well as food I am allergic to such a weird and wonderful selection of household chemicals (some of the allergies bad enough to put me in hospital) that it's almost impossible to give someone a list. I have a half-written livejournal entry where I tried to type out a complete list for the benefit of others, and it took me about 3 hours to write half of it.

This is, btw, one of the things that keeps us from visiting family members (that and not having a car and some people living a long way from public transport). Your dad in particular can't get the hang of the fact I am violently allergic to plug-in air fresheners, even though he once had to drive me to hospital on Christmas Day when I had the worst asthma attack ever. Between that and the smoking and the nth degree about what I do and don't eat (even though I've offered to bring all my own food and/or take over the cooking for meals) it's just easier to do occasional day trips, grit my teeth and eat whatever, and then be up the entire night wheezing and on my own toilet at home.

Sorry if this sounds really really abrupt - it's TOO EARLY in the morning and I have got up for a student who has so far failed to show, so I am in a bad mood from that and it might have carried over into this comment :/

Did you btw see this (http://www.livejournal.com/users/baratron/262919.html) about The Birthday Present Of The wuzzie? let me know if it interests you...