My travel blogs

The new index page.

Little old lady

Today I thought about the moniker little old lady, the fabled driver of immaculate used cars and her other roles. What about the other 7 combinations?

big-old-lady            Matron
little-young-lady       Cute kid
big-young-lady          I'm not touching this
little-old-gent         Yoda?
big-old-gent            Ex-wrestler?
little-young-gent       Scion
big-young-gent          Fitness enthusiast

So it seems that big is somewhat pejorative, and gents are less talked about.

Perhaps we could also try the other combinations of hot little hands.

Mergellina

Last Sunday's pizza from Via Napoli was one of their new offerings, Mergellina, containing, quoting from their menu, Yellow Heirloom Tomatoes (Vesuvio), Fior Di Latte, Octopus, Mussels & Neapolitan Tarallo.

But this put me in mind of the original Mergellina, from 38 years ago, on my first trip to Europe. An Israeli backpacker whom I had met in Corfu, and I had stayed at the youth hostel there. We had a great day trip to Capri and night in town. The hostel was perfectly adequate for poor backpackers, but the one thing that has stuck in my mind was that some families who had been displaced by the 1980 Irpinia Earthquake occupied some floors there. As far as I can tell the hostel is still there after all these years, still with good views of the harbour, being on a hill, but has mixed reviews.

As I commented in the original post on Naples, I must go back some day.

Pessimal

After signing a petition opposing Cormann's candidacy for OECD SG, I realised that pessimal, the antonym to optimal, should be used more.

Actually I first encountered it in the Spanish form in 1997, when some Chilean girls talked about their coche (car) pessimo. I understood immediately from the context. That was also my introduction to pisco sour. Fun times.

20%LOAF

I came across a piece of advice in a Mark Rice-Oxley’s The Upside newsletter: Try to give 20% less of a fuck about everything. In these times where we are inundated by information, are we wasting time on issues that we have no power over, when we could be making a real difference and be more happy working on issues that we can influence? Often these issues are closer to home and closer to our self.

20%LOAF means that out of every 5 issues confronting us, we discard one as not worthy of our energy. This is a more realistic course of action than DGAF immediately. Now assume that we make a yearly resolution to give 20%LOAF, then our attachment will then diminish according to this series: 0.8, 0.64, 0.512, … By the 5th year we would only waste a third of our time, and by the 10th year only a tenth. Wouldn’t that be worth aiming for?

How should we determine if the issue is worth GAF? Here’s a flowchart that might help:

 

Generic language joke

A [NationalityB] walked into a shopping centre and saw an attractive shop. He walked inside and said in a thick [NationalityB] accent: Can you gimme a half kilo of cheese please?

Everyone began to laugh loudly. As the [NationalityB] walked away deeply offended, he thought to himself: If I learn to speak good [LanguageA], then they will not know I am [NationalityB].

He took course after course until he spoke flawless [LanguageA].

He went back to [NationA] and went into a shop. There he said in his best [LanguageA]: May I have half a loaf of sliced brown bread, four biscuits and a white milk loaf?

The shopkeeper began to laugh uproariously and said: You're [NationalityB], right?

The poor [NationalityB] was completely embarrassed and said: But I spoke perfect [LanguageA]. I don't have the slightest [NationalityB] accent.

The shopkeeper replied: You asked for bread. This is a butcher shop.

Hypobole

Today I wondered if the antonym of hyperbole might be hypobole. Like the Apollo 13 report "Ok, Houston, we've had a problem here". Or my Peruvian friend's account of a Shining Path massacre of an entire village: "Naturally the villagers were not too happy after that". My friend was a master of that verbal art.

It turns out that hypobole is a real word, but means something different, to anticipate objections for the purpose of refuting them later. Understatement is probably the closest to what I wanted, with a couple of related terms like litotes and melosis.