I gave two sets of foreigners directions yesterday. What the heck are tourists doing in St Leonards anyway^[1]? They both wanted to know where the train station was, which worked out, because for once I actually was able to give directions! Usually people are asking me where so-and-so street is, and I have a terrible memory for street names. Anyway, I was on the Pacific Highway and it was pretty easy to point “that-a-way” but I had trouble communicating “on the other side of the street.” I kept worrying from their looks of incomprehension that they might have thought I was saying turn left. One set was Japanese (guessing based on the script used on their Sydney tourist guide book) and the other was a French couple (guessing based on accent), yet both had trouble with “on the other side of the street” and since I was the one constant in both conversations I take it for me not being clear enough. If either set had been Russian I could have said “на лева”; I actually remember that. Human languages are so hard.

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1. I mean that in a why would they want to be there kind of way, not a they don’t belong there kind of way

Today I did the rest of the living room. I love my red plates and monet-esq placemats.

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I also unpacked a whole bunch of stuff which was still in boxes when I moved in last... well we will just forget when exactly it was that I moved in :) The table covering on my coffee table (seen yesterday without anything on it) is from Mexico.

Here I started filling up my bookshelves. On the top shelf here you can see my language books, German (Deutsch), Chinese (中文) and ... uh... er... Klingon (tlhIngan Hol).

I also found this while I was unpacking. It is one of my oldest material possessions. It has a little gear under its head so the trunk moves up and down as you scoot it accross the floor.

• Someone asked why Таня pronounced something in a certain way today and she said “I don’t pronounce it that way; it just sounds like I do.” (Russians often spell things one way, but then pronounce them another, to the bemusement of Australians who pronounce them the way they are spelled regardless of what language they came from: witness news anchors saying “junta”).
• The young bloke in the front row with a Guns and Roses T-Shirt didn’t know who Юрий Гагарин was.
• I was watching the Colbert Report today and I got the munchies for Doritos. I know I am a couple of weeks late.
• There was an article in the Sydney mX today about Stephen Colbert’s (Стефан Колбер) run for the White House. mX is brought to you by the same corporate overlords that bring you Faux News. It did mention it was a joke, but it didn’t mention that he was only running in South Carolina.
• I wonder if Sydneysiders even know where South Carolina is. Then again, I know Americans have no idea where New South Wales is.
• My Internet is for shit tonight speed wise :(

Today I wrote actual (perl) code as apposed to writing (in English) about existing buggy code or how one might fix said buggy code to make it work.

It was nice.

Prickly subject, I know.

I had it easy when I moved to the states in that I already knew English. Someone was, in fact, rather surprised that I had learned English so quickly after having arrived in the states. In the early 1980s most Americans hadn't heard of Australia, much less what was spoken there.

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Starting tomorrow, GST (Graham Standard Time) will be observing the following new rules.

1. There will be no Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday
2. All days will be referred to as "Gorfday" (or "Gorgstag" Auf Deutsch)
3. As there are no longer any "days of the week" there will be no "week" either
4. As a downside, the concept of a weekend is now meaningless, this is conpensated for by the fact that weekdays are also now meaningless.

Thank you. That is all.