The meat was a success. I am still not quite sure what it was and I overcooked it but it was very nice. The cats were not quite as pleased as we were but managed to force some down. It was much cheaper than the lamb I bought yesterday. There will a reason why lamb is so expensive and it won’t make any sense to me. I come from a country which is swarming with sheep and I have yet to see one in Austria – there are certainly none in Stadtpark.
Come to think of it – I haven’t see a cow either – or any of the other strange animals from which the weird looking meat comes. We saw nothing on the drive to Bratislava or to the Abbey – where are these critters?
Herr Birdstirrer visited me again today and showed me how to get free to air TV in some other parts of the apartment. We have everything attached to the giant screen in the lounge room but sometimes like to watch something just before we go to sleep. Cate also likes to have a TV on in her study while she works at night as its distracts her from the grim reality of life as a Mitarbeiter.
Cate is getting depressed because she is woken each morning by people talking German (Well – it is Austria) but singing in English. Just as in Australia - there are radio stations here that are in a time warp and play almost nothing from this century.
The radio in the car has an LCD screen that tells us the name of the singer and of the song. We though that Autom. Klim was a very popular singer until we worked out what it was. I do like Rosenstolz which seems to be the only German band that my current station plays. I haven’t had time to experiment with the radio as I am usually too busy avoiding collisions but will do this when I can. There may be some local readers who can tell me where to find other music stations.
Weirdly – the people on the radio station conduct interviews with singers and others in English. I guess most listeners to this particular station will have learned English at school so have no problems with it.
My extensive experience has been that there is very little point asking singers about anything in particular because they are usually only occasionally good at one thing – singing – and have very little to add to the overall sum of human knowledge. But then I am a curmudgeon and – like Oscar Wilde – believe that youth is wasted on the young.
As soon as I can work out how to do it I will sign up for the local iTunes so that I can start browsing German music. I will need to cull from my iPod as I currently have 15,000 songs on there and it is getting a bit crowded. We do have a bigger iPod that will take 60,000 songs but Cate uses this when she travels and doesn’t like it being cluttered up with my music.
I forgot to mention that the pickup of rental desks and delivery of new desks went according to plan. The pickup took place as planned at 0800. The delivery from Interio was due between 1000 and 1200 – and took place at 1200. The desks were assembled expeditiously by two fine gentlemen from Slovakia who had clearly done this many times before. They did in two hours what would have taken me days.
Cate has discovered that with glass desks you can see the cords of the computers, printers, scanners and other office equipment. She would like me to think of a way to hide all these cords and is not interested in my initial suggestion of painting the desks black.
I did see fleetingly on TV recently the ‘Junior Carp Fishing Championship’ where one of the contestants was asked how he was going to develop his career. I would have thought that the answer would be ‘catch more carp’ but he twittered on about working to develop his profile. Is there really a career in carp fishing? I will need to investigate this further. Does Sarah Palin know about this?
Perhaps she could develop the ‘Junior Polar Bear Hunting With Rocket Propelled Grenades Championship’.
Tell Anna that when Jeff found out that Reg was a goner he tried to top himself - but has recovered fully.
Come to think of it – I haven’t see a cow either – or any of the other strange animals from which the weird looking meat comes. We saw nothing on the drive to Bratislava or to the Abbey – where are these critters?
Herr Birdstirrer visited me again today and showed me how to get free to air TV in some other parts of the apartment. We have everything attached to the giant screen in the lounge room but sometimes like to watch something just before we go to sleep. Cate also likes to have a TV on in her study while she works at night as its distracts her from the grim reality of life as a Mitarbeiter.
Cate is getting depressed because she is woken each morning by people talking German (Well – it is Austria) but singing in English. Just as in Australia - there are radio stations here that are in a time warp and play almost nothing from this century.
The radio in the car has an LCD screen that tells us the name of the singer and of the song. We though that Autom. Klim was a very popular singer until we worked out what it was. I do like Rosenstolz which seems to be the only German band that my current station plays. I haven’t had time to experiment with the radio as I am usually too busy avoiding collisions but will do this when I can. There may be some local readers who can tell me where to find other music stations.
Weirdly – the people on the radio station conduct interviews with singers and others in English. I guess most listeners to this particular station will have learned English at school so have no problems with it.
My extensive experience has been that there is very little point asking singers about anything in particular because they are usually only occasionally good at one thing – singing – and have very little to add to the overall sum of human knowledge. But then I am a curmudgeon and – like Oscar Wilde – believe that youth is wasted on the young.
As soon as I can work out how to do it I will sign up for the local iTunes so that I can start browsing German music. I will need to cull from my iPod as I currently have 15,000 songs on there and it is getting a bit crowded. We do have a bigger iPod that will take 60,000 songs but Cate uses this when she travels and doesn’t like it being cluttered up with my music.
I forgot to mention that the pickup of rental desks and delivery of new desks went according to plan. The pickup took place as planned at 0800. The delivery from Interio was due between 1000 and 1200 – and took place at 1200. The desks were assembled expeditiously by two fine gentlemen from Slovakia who had clearly done this many times before. They did in two hours what would have taken me days.
Cate has discovered that with glass desks you can see the cords of the computers, printers, scanners and other office equipment. She would like me to think of a way to hide all these cords and is not interested in my initial suggestion of painting the desks black.
I did see fleetingly on TV recently the ‘Junior Carp Fishing Championship’ where one of the contestants was asked how he was going to develop his career. I would have thought that the answer would be ‘catch more carp’ but he twittered on about working to develop his profile. Is there really a career in carp fishing? I will need to investigate this further. Does Sarah Palin know about this?
Perhaps she could develop the ‘Junior Polar Bear Hunting With Rocket Propelled Grenades Championship’.
Tell Anna that when Jeff found out that Reg was a goner he tried to top himself - but has recovered fully.
Do you think the price of lamb may have something to do with the time of year? i.e. it's not Spring in Austria. Just a thought from a sheep farmer in Australia where it is Spring!
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