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Thursday, 3rd July 2008
Pizza success
There's a nice little pizza place less than two minutes walk from my apartment block. I was introduced to it by the folks I'm renting the place from, and during Euro 2008 often went there to grab a takeout pizza to watch with the match. A tasty way to enjoy football - though the hot dogs with fried onions and totally loaded with mustard that I cooked up for the final were rather nice too! Since Euro 2008 finished, I've continued going about once a week, but this time I order the pizza and a beer and sit outside, enjoying watching the people go with with the Madry Kostol (Blue Church) in the background.
When I first went, I'd generally order in English, with just "please" and "thank you" in Slovak. However, with time I've improved. The time before last, I managed most of the ordering in Slovak, and could tell them, as they watched curiously while I looked at the Slovak menu and wandered if I understood a word, that I was studying the Slovak language - in Slovak. This week I went and did the whole ordering and so forth without a word of English. OK, it wasn't perfect Slovak, but I was understood, and since they know I'm working on the language now, they helpfully stick to Slovak rather than dropping into English, since that's more helpful for me. Which is nice. :-) Anyway, it's nice to feel like I'm getting somewhere with it all. There's a long, long way to go yet, though!
Monday, 30th June 2008
Back on the road: Romania and Russia
I abandoned my plans to travel to the Middle East in the spring, because it was going to put something of a strain on me both in terms of time (I was planning a move of country around the same time) and finances. That would have meant that organizing it would have stressed me out, and I'd have had to be watching what I was spending constantly rather than my usual strategy of spending reasonably liberally (though sensibly) to pack in loads of great things. So, it was shelved for the time being. This last month and in the coming month and a half, I need to focus heavily on my work. However, in August I will be taking a week's break, and I'm taking a big trip in September!
The week in late August will be mostly spent in Romania. It's with a friend from the UK who is very much into the Dracula stories, so we will visit a couple of places significant to those during the trip. I'm not so into Dracula, but the places themselves and Romania generally are of interest to me - I love to see different countries and cultures. So, that will be nice. We'll also hit on Budapest for a little time, and top it off with a weekend's hiking in Slovakia's High Tatra mountains.
The September trip is my next big solo trip. After the gentle introduction to backpacking that was my three weeks in Scandinavia, and then the crazy month of fun in China, this time I'm heading to Russia. I'm going to be doing the Trans-Siberian railway. Yes, the real one, from Vladivostok to Moscow, separated by thousands upon thousands of kilometers and spanning eight different time zones. If you did it in one go, it'd be six and a half days of train travel - but then you'd miss out on all the places, the people and the culture inbetween! So, I'll be taking just over three weeks over it, and taking in eleven places, bridging them with ten individual train journeys. Current plans see me getting some time in Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Blagoveshchensk, Chita, Ulan Ude, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk, Yekaterinburg, Kazan and Moscow. I completed the draft schedule with all the flights and train times on it today, though I need to go through and review it very carefully (the timezone stuff gets properly confusing, and in true Russian style I planned parts of it while drinking vodka!) Anyway, that's what's coming up. Exciting, huh?
Sunday, 29th June 2008
FAIL!
Oh yes. This may just be the next "icanhazcheeseburger?" It's Fail Blog! Some are ironic, some are cute and others are just plain wrong (I warned you!)
Saturday, 28th June 2008
A little walk by the Danube
I spent part of last weekend and the last week feeling quite ill, but still managed to work a lot anyway. All of the hours of work I've been doing of late has been getting my RSI to levels where it's starting to annoy me a bit again, so I decided to try and get out a bit over the weekend. Today (Saturday - it'll be Sunday by the time I post this), I went for about two and a half hours walking by the Danube river. There's some photos if you want to follow along. I started from my apartment and walked down to the Danube (which is just over five minutes away) via the Blue Church, which is a church close to my apartment; I often hear it ringing from my apartment.
I live near to Stary Most, which is Slovak for "Old Bridge". I reached the river by this bridge and started walking west, in the direction of Austria. The center of the city lies between the old and new bridges, so I walked this distance first. Around Novy Most (the new bridge) there are views of the castle and cathedral. The promenade by the river, which starts in the center, extends quite a long way - in fact, all the way to another bridge some way out of the city to the Lafranconi bridge (it seems Lafranconi is just the same of an area of Bratislava - there is a tram stop with the same name nearby). If I had gone over that bridge and followed the main road, I would have come to the Austrian border (though I'm not sure it's possible to follow that road on foot). As it was, I could just see into Austria after I had just gone under the bridge. In fact, from a point just after this bridge, the Danube river becomes the dividing line between Austria and Slovakia for a little while (up to Devin, and then the March river, heading north-ish and flowing into the Danube, becomes the border).
I continued for some way beyond this. The Danube has an area with a few small "islands" in it here. I'd hoped you could walk on the river shore all the way along, and for quite a way there is a path very close to the river. However, further on it joined a road, and the area between the road and the river was fenced off. I got to a bridge that went over to the "island", but couldn't actually cross onto it - the other end of the bridge was guarded (by men and dogs); I'm not sure why. A little way after that, the footpath ended, and I realized it was getting hot, I didn't have anything to drink with me, and so I should probably head back towards the city. I followed pretty much the same route on the way back; it got pretty hot at one point, when the sun fully came out from behind the clouds, which had been keeping it just nice t-shirt walking weather, and heated things up very quickly. Thankfully it was on my back, and my hair protects my neck, so I didn't get any sunburn from it! I'd actually seen the grey clouds in the sky before I left, ignored the forecast that it was going to be dry and taken a waterproof that I ended up carrying all of the way; everyone else was just happily t-shirting it without worrying! Well, I know for next time...and will probably get heavily rained upon. :-) Anyway, it was a nice little walk, some good exercise and it's nice to know that it's easy to get to some nice scenery on foot, which makes you forget you live in the middle of a capital city! I like Bratislava. :-)
Friday, 27th June 2008
"Offensive" Number Plates
Today I noticed a link to a bunch of letters from people to Wisconsin's Department of Transportation complaining about other people's car registration plates. Seems some people are quite easily offended - in one case, even if they have to read the plate backwards to be able to find something offensive about it! Only in America. Well, probably the UK too... :-)
Saturday, 21st June 2008
A month in Slovakia
It's actually been over a month since I arrived here in Slovakia to live, but once you take out the time I was away in Sweden and France for conferences shortly after my arrival, it's been about a month now. It was in some senses a fairly daunting move, given I'd spent not much over a day in Bratislava and only several days in Slovakia in my life, and arrived speaking barely a word of the language. However, thanks to the nice family who own the apartment I'm renting, who have given me a wonderful welcome and helped me with so much, along with various folks I've met from the Perl community here, it's been relatively easy to settle in and it's starting to feel like home now. I also have found a church that I feel I will settle into and, with time, make some good friends. I did meet someone I got along with really well last time, but sadly it was their last weekend in Bratislava before moving to Bulgaria. Hopefully I will stay in contact with them by email - I gave them my address and they said they'd write to me. And hopefully I meet other people I get on just as well with.
I'm fairly happy with my progress in learning the Slovak language so far. Since I arrived, I've built a vocabulary of around 200 words, mostly nouns. It's not much, but if I can keep up this pace then before the end of the year I should at least have the vocabulary under my belt to be at the level that I got to with Spanish. I can say a few things about myself, such as "My name is Jonathan", "I'm from England" and "I'm a programmer" like stuff that - and I can ask other people questions that seek these kinds of responses. I can handle asking where stuff is and understanding basic responses, like "take the second street on the left" and so forth.
Importantly, I'm also starting to get some of the cases and their uses into my head, as well as how to inflect nouns to be in those cases. This is something you need to do in all but the most trivial sentences. Or, put another way, you ain't getting far in Slovak without learning this. To give an example, to say "I would like a ticket to Poprad", you have to put "ticket" into the accusative because it's the object of the sentence (though that doesn't actually do anything for masculine nouns like ticket...as long as they are inanimate masculine...that's almost a forth gender), and put "Poprad" into the genitive (because the preposition "do", the word for "to", says you have to), which makes it "Poprada". You'll note I'm doing this with Poprad, a place name. This also happens with street names and people's names, so glancing over the inflections table I could be referred to in a sentence as Jonathan, Jonathana, Jonathanovi and Jonathanom. I mentioned this to someone recently, and they asked something like, "Wouldn't Jonathana make you female?" Well, probably, in Spanish. But in Slovak it just makes me accusative, or genitive. :-) Anyway, I'm barely scratching the surface of what there is to know. It's fun, if challenging, to learn, though.
Anyway, here's to the next month, in which I hope I will learn lots more Slovak, see some new places, and make some more friends.
Sunday, 15th June 2008
My new church in Bratislava
After two Sundays abroad and one where I was too exhausted to get up, I finally made it along to church here in Bratislava. I went to the Bratislava International Church, where they hold a service in English. At 9:30am. So, lie-ins are a Saturday-only thing for me now! (It's probably worth noting that most Slovakians would find my statement a tad surprising, since office hours here start at 8am-8:30am, and by 10am it seems it's too late for the greeting "dobre rano" (good morning)).
After going to a more charismatic, free church in Spain, this one is much more high-churchy. In a way, I guess they're on quite different sides of the spectrum, and it for people only used to one it would be an enormous jump. However, it's no further in the high church direction from what I was used to in the UK than the church in Spain was in the other direction. So while I'd probably struggle with "excessively high" church, I found this quite comfortable. It's essentially Lutheran, but as they say on their website: "Our membership comes not only from many different countries, but is also made up of persons from almost every conceivable Christian denomination and confession. Worship is designed, therefore, to reflect not only the congregation’s Lutheran origins, but also its international and multi-denominational membership." Which goes quite well with my denominational pragmatism. :-)
Importantly, the people there seemed very friendly and welcoming. I met various members of the church in the post-service coffee fellowship, which lasted as long as the service itself (something I certainly approve of). Already I feel like I'm going to fit in there and make some good friends, from all over the world. This morning I talked with people from the UK, the US and Holland, but there were people from other places there too that I didn't get to talking to, and some Slovaks come and join the service too (I read that on the website and overheard during coffee what I'm sure was Slovak being spoken.) So, it looks like I've found my new Christian family here in Slovakia. :-)
Monday, 9th June 2008
Barbecue and football
On Saturday I joined some Slovak friends I already knew, and along with some others I hadn't yet met we went for a barbecue in the maly kaparty (some hills on the edge of Bratislava). It was actually the Bratislava Perl group barbecue, but many people also brought their wives and children along with them too, so it felt like one big family outing. :-) There I was taught the Slovak way to cook sausages, along with various new Slovak words (including snail, and my first Slovak swear...which I now must be careful not to say in my Slovak lesson). It was nice to get out into the hills, and it was in an area where a couple of other groups had come to do the same as us. Good food, good beer and good company. I could get used to this. :-) I wish I could speak with people in Slovak, but that will take much studying. It was nice after only three weeks here to have the opportunity to spend time with locals, though. And I'm really grateful that they took the time to speak with me in English.
On the evening after the day's barbecuing, the first matches of Euro 2008 were played. I'd been considering watching one of them anyway once I got back to my apartment, but then Emmanuel invited me to come to his place and watch them with him there. I ended up staying for both games, and was served some very tasty goulash and chili soup that his wife had cooked. Mn'am!
So my impression in the first few weeks is that Slovak people are very kind and welcoming, and that (along with the fact that now I can walk down the street and recognize a few of the words I'm seeing) is making it start to feel like home. :-) I have also looked up the details of an English-speaking church here. I had planned to attend on Sunday morning, but when I got back after the barbecue and the football I felt completely exhausted. It just hit me like a wave as soon as I sat down on the sofa to take my shoes off, so I was very shortly afterwards in bed, having failed to set an alarm. I woke up, after what I guess was much needed sleep (probably due to working way too many hours on Friday), about quarter of an hour after the service would have started, so I had to give it a miss. :-( I just went back to sleep, to try and get caught up proper before another week's worth of work begins. So I'll go to that next week, and see how it is.
Thursday, 5th June 2008
My Language Study Plan
Since I always have a lot going on, it made sense to try and organize and schedule my language learning a bit more. Thus I now have a bit of paper with each day of the week for the next two months on, with a tick box next to each day. The easiest box to tick will be the one "Day Off", where I don't do any language study at all. The other six days, I will do something.
One of the days, I have my Slovak lesson with my teacher. The day off follows this, and then the next day, two days later and two days after that (bringing me through a full week) I will spend an hour each day privately studying Slovak. That will be a mixture of vocabulary and grammar rules, and is when I will do my homework as set by my teacher. This leaves two spare days. I have allocated just 30 minutes to each of those, so they are lighter days. I will give one of them to Spanish, so I am regularly flexing it and keeping it in working order, and continuing to build it up some. The other day will be spent resuming my learning of Russian, and I will usually listen to a Pimsleur audio lesson, but may sometimes instead use it to practice reading the Russian alphabet.
So, the printed sheet is going up on the wall in a prominent position, so if I'm being a rubbish student everyone can see it. And hopefully having this structure and timetable will lead to me actually allocating the time each day to this. I like the plan, because it has a focus on the Slovak that I need now, while also keeping my Spanish alive and giving me chance to learn some more of another interesting language. The plan is for the next two months, then I'll make another one based upon how I did with this one.
Joined the Rakudo Consulting Group
I have joined as a consultant at the Rakudo Consulting Group. Rakudo is the name of the Perl 6 compiler running on and targeting Parrot. The idea of this business, founded by Jerry Gay (a fellow Parrot and Rakudo hacker), is to provide access to a number of the top Parrot and Rakudo folks for development tasks related to these technologies. I'm delighted to have been invited to join the team, and look forward to working with any of its future clients.