Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[Iversen]

The end is nigh - at least of this year, and Christmas is now less than a week away. Or seen from a commercial viewpoint: we have had Christmas for a couple of months now, but now it will soon be over - but not without the annual crash course in christmas hearts folding.

The best paper for the purpose is thin glazed paper with bright colours ("glanspapir" in Danish), but if you can't get it then you can use other types of thin, coloured paper. Even here in Denmark - the center for home production of christmas hearts - it is becoming harder to get the right kind of paper because people are getting lazy. But it is worth the effort. Besides you need a pair of scissors and two drops of glue per heart.

For one heart you need two strips of paper in different colours plus one for the handle). A good medium size would be around 6 x 18 cm for each strip (and 1 x 18 cm for the handle). As you can see on the illustration below there is a halfcircular area at each end of each strip, and then there are squares of 4x4 cm - and they must be square so you should draw lines on the backside of at least one of the strips with a pencil. You fold the strips at the middle line as shown while cutting (with the lines visible on the outside - but remember to turn the paper before doing the actual folding operation!). Since the two strips for most patterns are identical you can put one inside the other before cutting along the lines, but take care that they don't slip while you cut. The lines along which you cut differ from pattern to pattern, and in some cases they have to be extremely precise, but the one shown below is the simple one with straight lines, which result in a simple chequered pattern. It takes a bit of geometrical savvy to make for instance those with triangles or circular squares.

Crash-course-in-christmas-hearts-folding.jpg

And now we are ready for the folding. As you can see each strip now presents a double layer of paper and it is closed at the end with the cuts, open at the one with the halfcircles. You take one flap from a strip (the red one on the illustration) and insert it into one of the outermost flaps on the other strip. When it is through the flap you put the second flap from the other strip inside the flap you are working with from the first flap - and then you continue like that: through flap, around flap, through flap, around flap etc. until the end of the flaps on the second strip.

Next flap: this one has to be done in the inverse order - that is, if you started out putting through the flap from strip 2 before, then you now have to get that flap around the one are working with. After that you alternate as usual. And of course you push the rows (or whatever they are) upwards to get more space as you need it. And yes, there should be space enough because you drew squares before, but to make sure that you don't end up with a squeeze it is a good idea to make each cut a few millimeters longer than it should be according to the rules of geometry.

And when you have used all flaps on the strips you add the handle, using the two drops of glue.

Below you see a few types of hearts, including some of the more complicated ones:

Xmas-hearts-F2250a05.jpg

Xmas-hearts-with-dinosaurs.jpg

[Iversen]

GER: Gerade jetzt sehe ich deutsches Fernsehen - etwas über Kreuzfahrtschiffe im Warnemünde Hafen. Ich mag die Kreuzfahrtschiffe nicht - sie sind zwar groß, aber scheinen mir trotzdem wie große Gefängnisse mit zuviel schlechte Musik. Es wird über Sußwaren gesprochen - die Passagiere kaufen anscheinend Schokolade und Marzipan uzw.wie verrückt hier vor Weihnachten. Es gibt aber auch eine reguläre Fährverbindung nach Gedser in Dänemark, obwohl die Trafik hier hetzutage sehr beschränkt geworden ist - einmal pro Tag max. Während der DDR-Zeit war dies indessen die Hauptroute nach DDR und auch nach Berlin (West und Ost). Ich erinnere mich noch wie die Zugwagen auf einem Gelände stundenlang hingestellt wurden, während die Behörde alles durchgewühlt und alle Papiere kontrolliert haben - und man konnte auch die Polizeihunde außen hören, so es war keine gemütliche Ankomst dort. Wollte mann von Kopenhagen nach Hamburg, hat man stattdessen 'Vogelfluchtlinie' über Fehmarn benutzt, und diese Route ist heutzutage die absolut meist benutzte - mit eine Fähre in jeder Richtung jede Stunde oder so. Letztes Mal wo ich über Warnemünde gekommen bin, war ich mit meiner Mutter und meiner Schwester zusammen. Meine Mutter und ich haben Rostock planmässigt besucht, während meine Schwester mit derselbe Fähre zuruckgesegelt ist - sie möchte nur die Fährfahrt erleben. Für mich war die Fährfahrt nur ein Mittel um nach Deutschland zu kommen - mit Strich under '-land'.

EN: Apart from that we have been making preparations for Christmas - like buying gifts. And here we depend on extremely specific lists, but it has become really hard to get ideas to add to those lists. If I need something I would normally just buy it (like a new alarm clock instead of the one that tumbled to the floor and went broke in November), but when Christmas is looming in the horizon I have to do without such items so that my family can give me them on December 24 (as is wont here in Denmark - the 25. is just a day where you eat too much and relax). This year my sister helped my mother find and buy and transport her own gifts (i.e. those from my mother), and those she will get from me she bought herself - I just have to pay the bill. Which just goes to show the idiocy in giving gifts amoung grown-ups.

Kunst170.JPG

PS: the text on the painting is written by myself as a gloomy travesty on one of most popular Danish Christmas charols ('Dejlig er den himmel blå')

DK: Hæslig er den himmel grå
Føj for den at se derpå
Folk de farer rundt som gale
Ungerne på slæb som hale
Gid det hele var forbi
Gid det hele var forbi

Hæslig er den himmel grå
Fy for den at se derpå
Folk foroven, folk forneden
Alle juler, bruger kugler
Gid det hele var forbi
Gid det hele var forbi

Hæslig er den himmel sort
Ta' og bomb det hele bort
Koldt derude, jul herinde
Værre nu end nogensinde
Gid det hele var forbi
Gid det hele var forbi

[Iversen]

Just a short notice to announce that I have reached the end of the "40 Leçons pour découvrir le grec ancien", and it was actually quite interesting. I still wouldn't use a book like this to learn a new language, but to its credit I would say that the morphological tables grow more comprehensive later in the book, and the cultural information remains entertaining all the way through. There are some quirks - like for instance that the "alpha iotique" (ᾳ - notice the comma below it) is introduced with the dative, but without any indication of how to pronounce it - except an example, where the pronunciation is written as "/as". That would be surprising enough to warrant a bit more explanation. Apart from that the examples don't contain the bewildering multitude of diacritical signs of koiné (which the book obviously doesn't purport to teach), so how this one slipped through I don't know.

[Jar-Ptitsa]

I remember those Christmas hearts. you explained the method some years ago and I made some. they are nice, but I love the decorations anyway, especially the pretty lights.

I hope that Christmas was ok for you. I don't want to receive presents at Christmas, except if it's something I need and this year it seems that everyone gives everyone ferrero rocher or panettone anyway. I truly hate ferrero rocher because wafers taste disgusting, and hazelnuts as well and that is what is in those things. Panettone can be ok, but I prefer cakes with sour lemon or with chocolate. In my family we had a list and exchanged the things on it, which is good, so no ferrero rocher or panettone, thank goodness.

[Iversen]

This year Christmas became a slightly different affair. I got a message that my mother had been hospitalized on December 20 so the 21 I left home and went to her place. She returned home after a three night stay and is now recovering. However we dropped the usual Christmas tree and other periphernalia, and at the suggestion of my sister we exchanged our presents December 23 ("Lillejuleaften" in Danish = 'small Christmas eve'). Actually we know all the presents beforehand because of our lists - and in some cases the recipient has bought them herself, and I just have to pay the bill.

As Vogeltje I find the gift giving circus fairly idiotic, but at least we know that chocolate isn't welcome as gifts. Btw. my sister and I have so different tastes in chocolate and basically everything else that we each have our own stockpiles. I prefer milk chocolate with nuts or soft fillings, whereas she only eats 70% dark chocolate without additions - mostly from Aldi (and the only thing she buys there). And when I made milk pudding with almond splits (which is very different from the thing called 'pudding' in the UK) my mother mixed it with cherry sauce, my sister just had the pudding, whereas I eat the two things one after the other - using the sauce as a cherry soup. This is quite normal in our family.

Languagewise I did manage to watch some TV programmes in other languages than Danish or English, including a number of nature, zoo and historical programs in German (more often than not on Phoenix), a bit of Dutch on BVN and an excellent program in Spanish on Cubavision about a national park un Cuba. Now I have returned to my own humble abode, where I have access to all my dictionaries, grammars and the internet.

LA: Activitas studienda mea inter dies nativitatis Christi MMXVI praecipue linguae latinae proderat. Tabulas verborum feci et partem libri grammaticae Hyllested et Oestergaardi in lecto legi ante nocte obdormiscere. Nonnulli rerum forsitan iamdudum sciebam at postea oblitus sum. Exampli gratia numeralia distributiva: "quinae litterae" = quinque epistola, sed "quinque litterae" = V signa ex alphabetae. Non iam omnia legebam, et idcirco pars syntacticae libri mihi inter dies ventures delectarit.

Kunst178.JPG

[Iversen]

Here after Christmas things have returned to the normal - with me sitting either in my armchair studying or at my Pc or walking around in town to get a bit of fresh air (irony intended). Most of the TV programmes I watch are in English, both because they dominate and because those that treat my favorite topics are in English. Right now I'm watching a progam about the 'first' emperor Shi Huang Di's tomb, with lots of new information that gives me a new perspective on things. Like for instance a cranium with a typically Westernese nosebone coupled with some Oriental features. And at the same time the first truly realistic lifesize statues, best known from the thousands of clay soldiers in the pits surrounding the imperial tomb. So now all the hellenophiles are happy to see one more culture being influenced by the Greeks. And now they reiterate an information I already knew, namely that the emperor wanted to become immortal and his doctors convinced him that mercury would be the right remedy to achieve this. The word for a malady caused by doctors is "iatrogenous" - and of course this is a word of Greek origin.

RU: Я изучаю в данный момент текст с веб-сайта, в котором французский гипер-полиглот Югь Бодрияр объясняет, как и почему он учил каждый из его 24 языка (предполагается нескольких дополнительных языков в настоящее время). Осуществление является частью исследования во время копирования, частично ретрансляция, как описано ранее.

GR: Επιπλέον έκανα γλωσσάρια στα ρωσικά, ινδονησιακά, ελληνικά και σερβικά.

And since Christmas is over now, let's store this year's Father Christmas in the same cappucine-style crypt as his predecessors and get on with our ordinary boring lives:

Kunst092.JPG

[tarvos]

Huangdi （皇帝） is actually the Chinese word for emperor. So Shi Huangdi actually just means "Emperor Shi". The thousands of clay soldiers that you are referring to are the Terracotta warriors found near the city of Xi'an, right? I visited them last year, and it was quite impressive. I recall you mentioning somewhere you visited mainland China at some point, but I don't remember when or where exactly - or maybe I'm just mistaken - but did you have the chance to see the warriors up close, too? 始皇帝 is actually just "First Emperor", and in this case he would be 秦始皇 （first emperor of the Qin dynasty). There is some dispute, I see, on Wikipedia as to what his actual name was.

[Iversen]

Well, I have visited the tomb area (the actual tomb has not been excavated yet) including a hangar full of the famous terracotta statues, but it happened in 1994, and the archeologists have apparently found a lot of things since then. It costs a fortune to buy a permission to photograph the original statues (and there are draconical penalties for photographing them without the relevant kind of permission, but you can photograph those in and outside the souvenir shops for free). Once in a while a selection of them is shown outside China. We actually had one such travelling squad passing through my own town a couple of years ago, and that's where I photographed the guys below.

Btw. I was aware that "shi" means 'emperor', but I had forgotten that the rest means 'the first' (PS: I have now been reminded that it actually is "Huang di" that means 'emperor' and "shi" that means 'first'). And of course Shi Huang Di wasn't the first emperor in that part of the world - although he did unify seven warring countries into one and founded a shortlived dynasty (his youngest son grabbed the power after the iatrogenely induced death of his insane father, killed all others in the family and then duly lost his own life in the ensuing civil war). Actually the whole thing started out with five legendary emperors, followed by the Xia dynasty which still didn't have a writing system, but may possibly be identified with the Erlitou culture. So the socalled first emperor was definitely not the first emperor, and even though he did try to obliterate all traces of previous history in the area he didn't succeed in making the world forget that there were dynasties before his own.

Terracotta-figures.jpg

[Jar-Ptitsa]

This year Christmas became a slightly different affair. I got a message that my mother had been hospitalized on December 20 so the 21 I left home and went to her place. She returned home after a three night stay and is now recovering. However we dropped the usual Christmas tree and other periphernalia, and at the suggestion of my sister we exchanged our presents December 23 ("Lillejuleaften" in Danish = 'small Christmas eve'). Actually we know all the presents beforehand because of our lists - and in some cases the recipient has bought them herself, and I just have to pay the bill.

As Vogeltje I find the gift giving circus fairly idiotic, but at least we know that chocolate isn't welcome as gifts. Btw. my sister and I have so different tastes in chocolate and basically everything else that we each have our own stockpiles. I prefer milk chocolate with nuts or soft fillings, whereas she only eats 70% dark chocolate without additions - mostly from Aldi (and the only thing she buys there). And when I made milk pudding with almond splits (which is very different from the thing called 'pudding' in the UK) my mother mixed it with cherry sauce, my sister just had the pudding, whereas I eat the two things one after the other - using the sauce as a cherry soup. This is quite normal in our family.

I hope that your mother is recovering well. Thank goodness she was at home on 23 december and not in the hospital at Christmas, although it can be ok as well.

Chocolate can be nice gifts, but like you said, the people have different tastes. I agree with you that milk chocolate is more tasty than the dark chocolate but I agree with your sister that it's better without additions. I don't know the chocolate from Aldi we go to Waitrose, but maybe I will go to Aldi and buy it. Yes, in England 'pudding' is dessert, and 'custard' is English sauce / pudding / vla. In England and Belgium custard aka pudding aka English suace is yellow, but in Holland it's yellow or brown or gold or pink because they sell chocolate, caramel and strawberry as well. I really like custard but not with almond or cherry sauce. anyway, the problem with ferrero rocher is that they are wafers and with hazelnuts, which is a disgusting combination, or even separately yuck as well. I've changed my mind about panettone: I like this now, when you grill it and put butter on then it's very good.

A nice place for delicious desserts in England is The Ivy restaurant. I had a chocolate dessert which looked like a Christmas decoration (bauble) or a bomb, but hte waitress puts sauce on it then it melts. Other desserts are like this there as well, I mean the waitress or waiter does things at the table like put some fire in a little frying pan or presents the dessert but adds something after which is fun and makes the dessert interesting etc. I would love to eat those desserts every day, but then I'd become fatter and I am too fat already in my opinion haha.

[Iversen]

EN: Happy new year to ye all. I have not celebrated the occasion with a culinary feast or binge drinking, but did take a bus downtown to watch the fireworks in the streets around our local cathedral at midnight. My cable TV provider celebrated new year by going dark around 16:30 - first the programmes in English, then those in Danish so I knew it probably was a Yousee error, not a hardware breakdown on my side of the wall. I have a package that can be watched both directly on my TV and through a box and some 36 or so additional programs which only can be seen through a box, but both categories were hit including those that can be watched directly so it couldn't be my chipcard in the box that had given up living. Luckily I have had access to the internet all through the process so I haven't died of boredom, but when I checked the situation on my location according to the company I was told that everything was OK. Ha ha. At least the signal is back this morning, but in the meantime I have had the opportunity to check one of those pages that rate services and companies - and my my, people weren't happy about missing the Queen's new years speech. Which with all due respect to our reigning monarch I wouldn't have watched even if I had had the possibility.

DA: Som man kunne vente, sad jeg ved min computer det meste af aftenen, men inden da havde jeg blandt andet brugt lidt tid på at læse medlemsbladet fra min rejseklub, som hedder "De Berejstes Klub". Og temaet denne gang var ekspeditioner og eventyr.

EO: Same kiel ekzistas multaj malsamaj specoj de homoj interesitaj en lingvoj, ekzistas multaj opinioj sur kiel estus la ideala vojaĝo. Mi certe ne estas en la aventuristo fako, kiu havis la vorton en tiu ekzemplo de la revuo. Mi ŝatas improvizi survoje, sed nur se mi scias ke estos plano B, C kaj D en ajna situacio. Sed aventuristoj lasas sen fore sen scii se ili ĉiuj venos hejmen vivaj (aŭ alivorte, se ilia plano A funkcias). La revuo rakontas ke unu membro de la klubo ĵus vizitis la lastan membroŝtaton de la UN-o (Libion!), kaj alia membro movas al la sama celo - sed sen uzi aviadilojn survoje aŭ viziti la hejmon. Kaj ĉi tiu afero devos kompreneble preni plurajn jarojn - ĉu ci ekzistas entute mara transporto ekzemple al insuloŝtatoj kiel Palaŭo au Naŭro en la Pacifiko Oceano?. Tielajn longajn kaj malkomfortajn vojaĝojn mi simple ne faras. Unu membrino partoprenis en aŭtovetkuro kie oni devis kuri el Anglio al la Himalajo en kaduka aŭto je minimuma buĝeto - dum levanta monon por bonfarado. Bele kaj sendube admirinde, sed mi definitive ne faros tielan veturadon.

Aliflanke mi certas esti la sola membro kiu vizitis pli ol kvincent bestoĝardenojn kaj akvariojn, kaj mi probable ankaŭ estas la sola membro kiu sisteme partoprenas en lingvaj konferencoj. .. kiu ironie signifas ke mi elspezas malpli tempon sur ekzotaj destinoj ol mi faris antaŭ la revivigitado de mia lingvo-intereso en 2006.

EN: By the way, I just noticed that this thread now has reached 500 'replies'.

Kunst188.JPG