The perils of a Moroccon keyboard layout

Or not corrected: The perils of q ?oroccon keyboqrd lqyout;

I hqve encountered centrql europeqn keyboqrd lqyouts before; zhere the z qnd y keys qre trqnsposed fro, the trqditionql zestern lqyout; This hqs ,eqnt thqt qny e,qils; zhile grossly ,ispelt; qre still co,prehensible

Hozever the ,oroccon keyboqrd lqyout is co,pletely foreign: The keys qre set out qs follozsM; zhich renders typing just qbout inc,prehensibleM

azertyuiop; insteqd of qwertyuiop
qsdfghjklm; insteqd of asdfghjkl:
wxcvbn,; insteqd of zxcvbnm,.

Bqsicqlly; the lqyout is sufficiently different thqt I zould hqve to resort to one finger typing in order to co,unnicqte effectively:

So I guess I zill be spending the rest of ,y ti,e here sitting on the beqch; trying to qlleviqte ,y sickly zhite co,plexion: Qnd eqting tqgine for christ,qs dinner: Zoe is ,e:

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Back in the day I used to sing in Wellington Youth Choir and then NZ Secondary Students' Choir. Every so often when I was singing in these choirs, we would get a piece of music with the stamp 'National Youth Choir - authorised copy when in colour'. Sometimes the stamp was in colour, sometimes it wasn't. Every time I got one of these copies I would imagine that it had previously been handled by some singing deity, and I had to slavishly follow any written directions even if they were in another part.

Then I joined National Youth Choir, and discovered that the singing deities were in fact human. Very human.

I joined a choir in London a few months back, and one of the pieces we received for our upcoming Christmas concert is embossed with the stamp 'Harry Christopher - The Sixteen'.

Serious deja vu.

Frustration is:

Trying to follow US presidential results with an internet connection which suddenly develops an aversion to US based websites. Like the ones reporting US presidential results.

Luckily BBC has streaming coverage, so I don't have to wait for results more than my artificially shortened attention span can handle. However I do have to sit through the presenters trying to explain the US electoral college system to BBC viewers - bear in mind that I have yet to find a British person who understands MMP, so complex voting systems are not easily understood here.

The next question is whether TVNZ will be offering streaming of the NZ elections this weekend, I hope so. If not I may phone home. Frequently.

Homesickness at unexpected moments

I realised the other day that it has been over a year since I left NZ.

In that time I have had a few pangs of homesickness, but they have not come when I was expecting them. Which I guess is the point. When my cousin got married, it wasn’t not being at the wedding which triggered pangs of homesickness, it was hearing stories afterward about (mundane to non-family) shenanigans.

Shapeshifter played a concert a few months back. We got in just as they were starting up, and my first thought was “Yeah, this could be a pretty good concert. Lots of bright lights – check. Amped crowd – check. Thick NZ accents everywhere – check.” That turned out to be a slight understatement…

Their second song was New Day Come (audio above), and the moment it started all I could think of was my old walk to work, from Newtown all the way down Cuba St and then along the waterfront. On a crisp winter morning the sun would be nicely framed in the hills beyond the Hutt, rising on a slowly wakening city. Why did this song trigger such a strong reaction in me? I don’t know, but when the bass kicked in I was riding a wave of pure emotion – part musical ecstasy, part homesickness, a very potent mix.

It is not that I am having a crap time, far from it. Also, there are a number of travel and work opportunities possible in London which are simply not possible in NZ. But, and this is a 100% guaranteed but, I don't think I could live here permanently.
To put it another way: I am sure I will move back to Wellington in x years time. Currently x is undetermined.

U can't touch my low budget recording

Just because...

















My latest toy is a pair of headphones replacing my trusty old pair, which were slowly sinking into obsolescence. This has both good and bad consequences.

On the plus side, I can now hear minor details in recordings which have been engineered to include these, such as bluegrass or dense electronica.
On the minus side, I can now hear minor details in recordings which were were not engineered to include these. A prime example of this is MC Hammer. I had previously enjoyed U can't touch this in ignorance of the chorus vocals. I can't be entirely sure, but the backing vocals in the chorus cut off so sharply that it is either:
a) played on a synthesiser set to 'vocal'- I kid you not, or
b) the vocals have been artificially clipped in the post recording process, which would only be done if the singers couldn't come off in unison.
I am leaning toward explanation (a), which is seriously budget. The interesting (to me, anyway) thing is that Pray has much better production values, and that is off the same album.

Serves me right for listening to early 1990s cheese I guess.

Bilbao & San Sebastian

Guggenheim museum, Bilbao, side profile.










Marie and I took advantage of a recent bank holiday weekend to go to Spain. I really enjoyed the Tudor Consort trip to Tolosa a few years back, and wanted to show Marie this Basque area of Spain, so we went to Bilbao & San Sebastian with a mate Rachael.

I have decided that I am an essentially lazy planner, and am reluctant to do too much more forward planning than is necessary for a short holiday.
Flights - check.
Visas needed - not applicable.
Accommodation - check.
Flick through first few pages of guidebook to work out things which we absolutely have to do - check. The number one thing in all of Spain according to our guidebook was the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and number 22 was tapas in San Sebastian, so that was never going to be hard to cover.
Everything else - it will work out along the way.
This attitude is pretty much all you need for Spain. I was a little worried beforehand about the frequency of buses between Bilbao and San Sebastian, but they went on the hour even on Sundays so no need to worry there.





The Guggenheim in Bilbao was amazing, even before I went inside. My photos don't really do it justice, as the curves of the building are unlike anything I have seen before.
The contents were all modern art, with the permanent stuff being large scale installed pieces and the featured exhibition was on surrealism. It was nice, I liked it.

Apart from the Guggenheim, the other focus of our trip was the food. As you would expect, the tapas was great. The general idea of nightlife in Spain doesn't revolve around getting drunk (unlike NZ/UK), rather it is about socialising with friends/family, eating a little bit and as an afterthought having a few drinks.
On our first evening out I couldn't work out what was different about the vibe. I eventually realised that:
the groups of young men wandering around weren't as drunk as I was used to navigating, there was no hostility emanating from them, there were both elderly and infants out enjoying themselves in the crowd until quite late in the evening, and that guy crouched in the doorway over there? In London he would have been going for a pee, in Bilbao he was merely crouching over to hear his cellphone better.
A couple of things which slow down the speed of intoxication: you have something to eat with every drink, and the measures of wine are slightly smaller so you don't get drunk as fast.
Our first night in Bilbao we wandered around the old quarter eating tapas until we ended up in a seedy little dive chatting to some random guy who was propping up the bar. I didn't realise until I went to settle the tab that he had been surreptitiously paying for our drinks, it was one of those situations where instead of fully comprehending why you just pay the reduced bill, smile, and leave.

From Bilbao we went to the coast, to San Sebastian, which apparently has some of the best tapas in Spain. The pic below is at a dockside seafood restaurant, where we had a very tasty paella and some roast sardines. I never realised that sardines could taste better than they do from a tin, these ones were about four times the size and four times as tasty. Mmm seafood.






Lastly, I also found an advertisement for German beer which is a little more camp than I was expecting...

One Nation under CCTV

'One Nation Under CCTV', just off Oxford Street, picture lifted from Google Images. Note the camera on the right, and the barbed wire fence in the foreground. Quite impressive.













I came across the Banksy above when I out at lunch a couple of weeks back. Like any good bit of art, it made me think.
I am not this blog's expert on CCTV, given that Marie did a research project on it during her Honours year, so I can't expound on whether cctv is actually effective as a crime prevention or crime detection tool with anything to back my statements up. And if there is one thing you don't want to do, it is to contradict a crim geek in their area of expertise. What I can say is that Britain is the most heavily surveilled country in the world, and my personal experience is that there are cameras everywhere.

After admiring the Banksy for a while, I wondered exactly how many CCTV cameras capture my image; more specifically, how many cameras do I walk under on my daily walk to work.

The next morning I reached 17 cameras as a first count, which is quite high for an 18 minute walk. Nearly one a minute, that is pretty heavy surveillance I thought. But wait, it gets worse...

Once I began actively looking for them, I started to see cameras everywhere I looked. There are a couple of major reasons for this:
1) My walk to work is past Kings Cross, which as a major train station and past terrorism target is one of the most heavily surveilled public areas I have ever seen, and
2) I walk along the north eastern fringe of the London congestion zone, so there are cameras everywhere looking for congestion fee dodgers.
This meant that my number of cameras just kept going up, to the point where my initial tally of 17 appeared woefully inadequate. My revised tally is 48, comprising 27 in the first four minutes of my walk past kings cross) and the remainder down Euston.

That is one camera every 23 seconds. Unbelievable.

What happens to this camera footage? Does anyone look at it? Should I take more care in my appearance when I pop out for the paper in the morning?

Bordeaux

A couple of weekends ago Marie and I went to Bordeaux for three nights, and it was great. Richard and Rachel organised everything, which was very nice. All we had to do was turn up to the airport- I like this style of holiday a lot.
We stayed in the converted watermill above, which had a bunch of little crannies to curl up in when the open plan kitchen/dining floor was temporarily unappealing, and there were kayaks to paddle up the river. Not that I am a good paddler.





The main focus of our trip was wine, and this photo shows part of the regional wine tasting we had on one of our evenings. Hehe.
And after tasting a whole bunch of Bordeaux wines, it would be impolite not to ship at least a few back to the UK. Thus, after spending our last six months in NZ consuming the end of our wine cellar we now have a new wine cellar, even if it is still single digits for now.





On our first evening we went to a local restaurant to celebrate Richard's 30th. I quite like the idea of significant birthdays occuring in foreign countries, it makes the birthday dinner so much more exciting. The menu was entirely in French, and one of the starters was cote de something. This was initially translated as 'foot of animal', and I was hooked without any further information. It turned out to be from a pig, so a pig trotter. However it was not presented in its entirety, rather the meat was shaved off so no chewing of hooves. It was the best starter I have ever had.
This was followed by a entrecote steak, which is a cut of meat I haven't encountered before with a bordelaise sauce. Best steak I have ever eaten.
The one thing which 'let down' the meal as a whole was the dessert- a cheeseboard. Not that the cheese was bad, it was great. It just didn't reach the same heights as the first two courses.





I worked out where I left my car, and I even think I got a little bit of sun, which was quite foreign given that it snowed in London the previous weekend...

a tourist in windsor

Further to Simon's post below, my contribution is as follows...
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the location of Windsor in relation to London the number of low flying aircraft (on their way to Heathrow) as you are touring the grounds and seeing the ancient sites may come as a surprise.

Apparently one (allegedly) American tourist once voiced his surprise to a castle tour guide asking "why did they build the castle in the flight path of Heathrow?"

that is all

Paris- all about the food

Obligatory photo in front of famous landmark, in which subjects are actually partially obscuring said landmark.




















Marie took me to Paris a few weekends back. It was for my birthday, very nice.

Executive summary: I like Paris. A lot.

Our weekend got off to a slightly rushed start. However I am pleased to confirm that we can wake up 40 minutes before our Eurostar pulls out of St Pancras Station, and still make the train. And we hadn't packed, and were slightly hungover. Ahhhhh fun times. The Eurostar train was nice and shiny, and it went really fast. A couple of weeks beforehand I had been for a run north of our place under a shiny new rail bridge which was severely over engineered in comparison with the rickety bridges back home. And yes, the over engineered bridge was for the Eurostar trains so they can go 180 mph. Maybe not through inner London, but still impressive...

We went to Hidden Kitchen, and it was very good. Menu as follows:
Spicy carrot soup with sweet pea linguini
Fava beans with green goddess dressing and arzak egg- probably the highlight for me
Smoked trout with buttermilk greens and roasted beets
Sauteed mackerel with sunchoke puree, blood orange and green onion salad
Cleanser
Crispy carnitas with taco salad, shallot creme fraiche and caramelized onions
White salad with brioche croutons
Turkish coffee semi freddo with cinnamon doughnuts
Petits fours

After gorging ourselves there, we went on a bike ride the next day to even up our calorific footprint. Which I then abused with a quite nice dinner that evening, where Marie ordered a blue cheese salad so strong she had to swap for my foie gras.
The next morning I managed to get through an entire series of transactions at the patisserie without reverting to English. The fact that my french is pretty much limited to yes meant that I bought a lot of sweet treats. Dialogue as follows:

"Stream of uncomprehended french"
"Oui"
Mystery pastry item goes in bag
"Longer stream of uncomprehended french"
"Oui"
Mystery chocolate item goes in bag
Et cetera

I did have the best intentions to go to a bunch of museums, and see cultural things like Rodin's thinker. But Paris museums apparently all close on Mondays - my designated day of culture this trip- so I had to eat steak instead. Woe is me. And yes, this trip ended up being mostly about food.



I like this photo. That is all.

















And, I saw a fantastic mullet couple outside the Louvre and tried to go in for a mullet touch. It was not to be.

Windsor

Windsor Castle at dusk, sun setting over the barracks for the Queen's personal guard (all SAS, naturally).












One of the things I had forgotten before moving to the UK was the number of years history underlying the UK, compared to < 200 years of European settlement in New Zealand. We went up to Windsor to see Madden for the weekend, and of course there are numerous examples of things just casually lying around which are very very old. For example, in the middle of the chapel nave (chapel first built in 1392) there is a simple plaque to mark the point where Henry VIII (died 1547) and Charles I (beheaded 1649) are buried. This tomb is not in any demarcated area- you walk over it to enter the choir stalls. I wonder if that was deliberate....

One of the other pieces of history which impressed me was the Order of the Garter. This is limited to 24 members (Knights) at any given time, has been personally selected by the sovereign since the 14th century, and vacancies only arise when existing Knights die. So a fairly exclusive club. Sir Edmund Hillary was a member, only the second New Zealand member ever after Keith Holyoake.

More below:

Word on the street is that there is an upcoming memorial service to be held at Windsor later this year, at which point Sir Ed's garter flag will be presented to his family. Until that time, there is a wreath on his seat in the chapel (each Knight has a designated seat, I guess to avoid seating issues).


Aside from the chapel interior, the rest of Windsor is also impressive. We went for a wander along the Long Walk, and after walking for about 9 miles round trip Madden thought we covered around 10% of the Windsor Park. From the elevated section of the Park you get a great view of the castle and chapel, which also covers Heathrow, Wembley, Eton and Slough. Apparently on a clear day you can see the Gherkin in central London, but there was a fairly thick layer of smog when we were up there so no long distance views for us. At least that is the explanation I am running with for my photo quality...
One of the English things I am starting to enjoy is the predilection for large green areas open to the public. And yes, one of the reasons I am starting to enjoy going for a walk in a park is that there are very few green areas within walking distance of our house.

Scottish Signage