Wednesday, April 27th, 2005, 8:32 p.m.
I would just like to point out that my flatmate, who is currently listening to punk rock while he sweeps his very college-dorm-room-like room, is a physics professor. Yes, that's right - that book he was reading before? ("Properties of Liquid and Crystalline Materials") That wasn't for fun, as I'm sure you believed. Neither was it for a class that he's taking. It's for a class he's TEACHING. This would be a good place to share that I find it fascinating how many 20-somethings I have met here in Europe who are getting a doctorate. Turns out a lot of young people do their PhD because it only takes like 3 years here. There is no way my flatmate is over 32 and he is definitely a physics PROFESSOR. OK, is it just me or is that wow?
Also - two things I always thought were Italian turn out not to be. One is garlic bread. Did you know they don't actually eat it? That not one of the three Italians I cooked for had even heard of it when I served it? Also, biscotti, as I learned yesterday, just means "cookies" in Italian. Valentina was baking these teeny little cookie things that were CLEARLY not biscotti, and we got into a mini yes-they-are-no-they're-not disagreement before I realized I was arguing with an ITALIAN about what BISCOTTI were. Ok. So we showed her a picture online, and it turns out she'd never even SEEN what we in America think are "Italian" cookies. Crazy.
Language spot:
"Auricular" in Spanish means phone - the actual phone handset thing. Do we have a word for that? We just call it "the phone," right? It seems like we should have a word but we don't.
From "Blunders":
Passengers in the baggage claims area at JFK in NYC were understandably put off when a large suitcase partially split open and a human arm flopped out. The arm belonged to Audley Gibson, 21, of Kingston, Jamaica, who had hit on the novel notion that he could save considerably on airfare by climbing into his brother-in-law's expansive suitcase. Unfortunately he had failed to take into consideration the fact that airline baggage holds are unpressurized.
In 1968 Robert Rush, an American army seargent, was woken at 6am by his wife, who screamed once and then died. At the inquest it was revealed that 5 years ealier the woman's sister had expired in a similar manner. She had climbed out of a local swimming pool with a look of terror on her face, screamed once, and died. Autopsies on both failed to explain their deaths.
