Feuerzangenbowle

The name of this post is also the name of a drink I had last night, Feuerzangenbowle. It's very weird, and it's entertaining to watch when the sugar is burning (look at the link and you'll understand). It was essentially mulled wine, so it was awesome!!! Although I think it was a lot stronger than mulled wine, cos there was loads of rum in it. Aaanyway... I made some friends last night, woooop. However, I'm moving out tomorrow, so I probably won't seem them again.

So... I'm still reading that linguistics book. Apparently there's a really obscure literary structure in French: "aller + present participle". Still don't really know what it means... And I've also become interested in something called aspect. It's like the difference between "I do" and "I am doing". I find it interesting, although, as we've already discussed, I'm a nerd.

I've been watching a lot of That Mitchell and Webb Look and Peep Show (the former being my favourite) - I must really be in a David Mitchell mood at the moment.

I don't really have anything funny to say, except something that I found funny that I read in the paper. It's the funniest thing I can remember reading in the FT since Nicolas Sarkozy's words to Gordon Brown:

You know, Gordon, I should not like you. You are Scottish, we have nothing in common and you are an economist. But somehow, Gordon, I love you ... But not in a sexual way.

But yes, it's the fact that Dominique de Villepin (former French prime minister) has been cleared of involvement in a smear campaign against Sarkozy. Sarkozy was awarded money for damages. €1. Not really the funniest thing in the world, but it made me chuckle.

Nothing else to report really, except that it's snowing quite hard in Zurich... Wooo!!! There's been lots of snow here, as one might expect.

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

Well, hello there. Long time no see. I tend to neglect this a lot. I go through phases. But now, having read blogs by David Crystal, David Mitchell and Stephen Fry, I've been inspired to write more with witty and illuminating posts.

Just in case you were wondering (and if you don't already know then I'm very disappointed), the title of this post comes from Futurama. First thing that popped into my head. And I find it quite amusing.

So... what's happened since I last blogged? Let me write a list (as I did last time, I think):

1. I got a girlfriend (that's over now, so this blog actually missed out on a whole relationship... Alas.);
2. I left school;
3. I got my A Level results (which I was pleased with);
4. I started a job in Zurich (I've decided not to use the umlaut when I'm writing in English, otherwise I'd have to write 'Cymru', 'Praha', 'Roma', and I'd be fairly screwed when I wanted to write place names in Chinese). It's for SIX Group, which controls the Swiss financial infrastructure. I mainly translate German documents into English for my non-German-speaking American bosses. Living alone's pretty boring though. I really hated it before Christmas but now I'm back and have loads of books and DVDs so it's not so bad;
5. I got rejected from Cambridge. Again.

And there we have it. Well, we did Anything Goes, too, which was AWESOME! But that's kinda old news now, I'm afraid.

So at the moment I'm back in Zurich, watching lots of Scrubs, Spooks, Glee, etc. and reading. I finished The QI Book of the Dead a few days ago, which was really interesting and I'd really recommend it. At the moment I'm on Problems and Perspectives: Studies in the Modern French Language, which is less mainstream. I'm a language nerd - what can I say? Interesting stuff, though. Apparently, 20% of French vocabulary changes every 10-15 years. I find it hard to see how this is measured (dictionaries, or actual speech and writing?) and I'm sure that the number of words which 'die out' in French is very small indeed (and would be near impossible to measure, anyway). But still, the concept is interesting.

I'm going to Asia (India, Nepal and Thailand) with Josh Trott next month for four months. That'll be scary, but hopefully fun! I've sent off for my Indian visa, but most other stuff is sorted out already.

I will hopefully be going to the University of Durham next year, to study French, German and Italian. I don't have an offer yet, though, so we'll see. I'm slightly disappointed as there's not much linguistics at Durham (although there is some). Hopefully I'll keep up the interested and maybe do a Master's. I don't know. I do like linguistics, though, and I love the thought of being really good at it. Like writing a thesis and coming up with a whole new theory. Incidentally, I would also recommend Don't Sleep, There are Snakes to everyone - especially those interested in linguistics or anthropology.

Various other interests going on in my life - I want to be a doctor (Scrubs), I want to be a theoretical physicist (my entire life, but recently A Brief History of Time), I want to be a comedian (mainly David Mitchell)... All in all, I want to be a polymath, but that's getting increasingly harder to do (and hasn't really been done in centuries) because of the rate at which knowledge is progressing. To be a scientist now you have to know more than scientists did in the 16th century, because there's more to know. Still, I'll try. I want to be a wise old man.

As I said, this blog is meant to turn into an interesting yet humorous log of my thoughts. It's just gonna turn into, "I'm a sterotypical teenager whose life sucks," and "I fancy Girl X," soon enough. You know, teenage angst sort of stuff. I try to deny that I'm a teenage stereotype, but I am. Maybe I just try to hide it well.

And now I want to leave you with a list of people who I admire, or who I like, but get irritated by:

1. Benjamin Franklin - a genius (and polymath) who always looked on the bright side of things;
2. Nikola Tesla - a (male) Serbian engineer who was a genius, worked incredibly hard, invented AC power and the radio (apologies to both Marconi and Chelmsford - your fame is undeserved);
3. Jeremy Bentham - first proper 'liberal' and general nice guy;
4. Buckminster Fuller - genius and architect, whose death was very interesting;
5. Martin Luther King - civil rights activist but apparently a womaniser;
6. Sir Isaac Newton - all round genius but apparently a knob in person;
7. Carl Gustav Jung - legend of a psychoanalyst (like Freud but better), but regularly had affairs (that his wife knew about).

...and there are probably others. Enjoy. I also respect Stephen Fry more now cos I found out that he's quit smoking (no, I don't like it. I know it's judgemental, but get over it).