More loving ...

I've just received the following message entitled "More loving" as an email from a friend. Whilst I don't believe that forwarding it to my friends will improve my life in any esoteric sense (and I certainly don't believe in unpleasant surprises if I don't), I do believe that discussion of its content, in order to deepen my own understanding, might do so. So I invite you to comment on any/all of the 'wise words' below - are they good advice?

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ONE. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

TWO. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.

THREE. Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.

FOUR. When you say, "I love you," mean it.

FIVE. When you say, "I'm sorry," look the person in the eye.

SIX. Be engaged at least six months before you get married.

SEVEN. Believe in love at first sight.

EIGHT. Never laugh at anyone's dream. People who don't have dreams don't have much.

NINE. Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.

TEN. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.

ELEVEN. Don't judge people by their relatives.

TWELVE. Talk slowly but think quickly.

THIRTEEN. When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, "Why do you want to know?"

FOURTEEN. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk

FIFTEEN. Say "bless you" when you hear someone sneeze.

SIXTEEN. When you lose, don't lose the lesson

SEVENTEEN. Remember the three R's: Respect for self; Respect for others; and responsibility for all your actions.

EIGHTEEN. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

NINETEEN. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

TWENTY. Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice.

TWENTY-ONE. Spend some time alone.

Mind reading machines

So, no thinking, huh? No lip-puckering either?

Still, I have to admit that a mind-reading (expression-reading) machine - even if it did keep 'losing' me - is pretty smart!

Neverending story ...

So, in the last few months, I've started reading somewhere in the region of 50 articles, books, etc. that I've not finished and don't even have much of an inclination to finish, beyond a meaningless sense of duty to the work itself. Alison has just suggested to me that this is perhaps normal for me, and that I shouldn't cut myself up about it, that perhaps I'm just highly selective, or that I stop when I am no longer learning anything new ... hmm ...

'You' and 'us'

Probably for the first time since I've been in Scotland (now nearly 4 years), I got 'you and us'-ed on Sunday evening. 'You', the English; 'us', the Scots. And, as usual, I got upset. But why?

Why am I not proud of being English, I was asked. On reflection, I think I am. But I am only proud of those aspects of English culture that I have decided to integrate as part of my own identity. For me, pride has only ever made sense when it refers to something in which I might have played a decisive part, and never (or rarely) simply by association. So nationalism, where my part is just too small to be of any importance, or feeling a sense of pride when my local team - or even my swimming club - won a competition, always puzzled me. And pride in the history of this country was always complete nonsense: I wasn't even born!

Of course, if I were to take the 'personal implication' to its extremes, then I would have to claim that I could be proud of my children, but not of my parents (unless their actions were due to me in some way). But if I can be ashamed of my parents, then I can be proud of them too, and I have been.

Nonetheless, I never felt any sense of 'belonging' to England. And yet I am proud of my Englishness. I'm proud of being English when I recognise the potential of young people, and don't require them to produce bits of paper or years of experience to prove their worth; I'm proud of being English when I consider men and women as absolute equals; I'm proud of being English when I believe in myself, and in others, and in their ability to achieve what they set out to do, however ambitious.

But I'm also proud of feeling French when I pick mushrooms, or in my attitude to food or alcohol; I'm proud of feeling French when I ski; I'm proud of feeling French when I say hello to the shopkeeper or checkout assistant and 'have a good day' to people I don't know on the telephone; I'm proud of feeling French simply because I speak their language.

I'm proud of feeling Swiss in my attitudes to recycling, the environment and religion; I feel proud to know how to make fondue.

I'm proud of feeling Glaswegian when I can take my friends out for dinner and leave them feeling surprised and happy; I feel a sense of pride - and of belonging - to this city when I can show visitors around and take them to the places I love.

I'm proud of feeling Scottish when I travel in this amazing country; I'm proud of Scotland when I go to the Edinburgh Festival; and I'm ashamed not to feel Scottish when I'm too 'busy' to give my time away freely to others.

And I'm proud to know I'm British when I say thank you to the bus driver as I disembark.

Yes, I'm proud of being English. But my cultural heritage is much wider than that. When people talk about 'us' and 'you', whatever part of my cultural heritage the 'us' refers to, they deny me some part of my identity. And that hurts. Yes, I'm proud to be English, but I also want to be allowed to be proud to feel French, Swiss, Glaswegian and Scottish. And, of course, British. I'm proud to have those multiple influences and perspectives. And, by God, I think I'm right to be proud of that!

Me in my new office!

I finally moved in yesterday afternoon and thought I should record the event: here's a picture of me in my new office, taken with the webcam on my computer ... demonstrating how it feels to have my own office :-D

Photo for my profile!

This will be the first photo that I've published on my blog, so let's hope it all goes smoothly! Of course, I can do it the hard way, with the html and stuff ...

Standing still or moving backwards?

Today was supposed to be the day - in a D-day kind a way - that I would move into my new office. Only it wasn't.

Following a short trip to the oasis of quality products that is inStore, where I picked up a very fluffy microfleece throw (good for hiding standard, regulation issue university chairs), I finally made it into work and to my new office. Grimy, really grimy. The layer of black dust turned to inky smudginess as I dampened it with kitchen roll but half an hour later all the horizontal surfaces, and a number of the vertical ones, were looking much whiter. So I thought I'd move in.

What I'd forgotten to take into account was that my computer is locked to my desk by something that Robin calls a Kensington Laptop Padlock but that looks like a bicycle chain. Of course, when I finally decided to follow Gregor's advice a couple of weeks ago and sort the keys on my keyring into those that I need and those that I don't, the key for the Kensington lock found itself in the latter category. So it's at home, in the little drawer by the sink in the kitchen.

Why does my own stupidity strike me as so amusing? Last night, Robin called me from Edinburgh to tell me which train he was taking, and then again about 45 minutes later. But not from Glasgow. "Hi, I'm in Stirling", he told me, laughing. I think he'll be more careful about which half of the train he climbs into next time!

Robin's sense of humour

I got home to find Robin on the phone to some guy who wanted him to change electricity companies. After about 45 minutes, it was the other guy who hung up on him!

Clueless about haiku

Apparently, that's what the Japanese symbols were that Mac's phone sent me the other day. It hadn't occurred to me that copy-paste of the Japanese to Google translation might actually work - after all, I still have problems with accents appearing as whole different letters when I write French - so I was surprised when Huda suggested I should try. Here is the result:

指定された送信先はエラーのためお届けできませんでした。
became
Ahead transmitting which is appointed for making error we could not deliver.

Google admits that it's still a beta.

So, since Mac pointed out that he would "expect someone of your intellectual capacity to think in haiku and to welcome the chance to share them with the world!", I figured I ought to try.

In a couple of minutes of syllable manipulation and finger counting, I came up with the following (please feel free to cringe):

Oh, to have that gift
to spend all my life thinking
and sharing haiku

In a strange twist of irony, Google translation disappointed by failing to translate the word 'haiku', but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku obliged by producing the correct characters:

ああ、そのギフトを持つため 俳句 を考え、共有するすべての私の生命を過ごすため

A retranslation back again (for a cuteness reality check) successfully rendered 'haiku', and less successfully rendered the rest of the sentence:

'Well, because it has that gift, in order to pass all my lives which think of haiku, share'