jonny goes to england

This ATM looked broken up. I found it last night, had a look inside and didn’t find or see anything interesting. I didn’t wanna inspect it for too long in front of the security camera so I left. Disappointing.

I was much more pleased when I found these three things in a bar. These camels, or whatever they are, are used to stir a drink. I remember that we had exactly the same things at home maybe 15 years ago .. haven’t come across them until yesterday! I remember too that I liked to break off their tiny legs such that they couldn’t stand anymore. Didn’t do that yesterday though.

I just got the following news via The Register:

Suicide squirrel knocks out Swiss TV

TV and radio were knocked out for a couple of hours in Switzerland on Sunday – after a squirrel got itself electrocuted. The trams stopped running too for a short time in Zurich, the venue for the squirrel-short circuit action

In the same article they refer to a Baz (from Basel!) article showing the “suicide squirrel” (Eichhoernchen). By the way, the german article doesn’t mention it really was suicide .. so that’s attributed to the UK boulevard press. The Register article concludes with a funny question

“So how many squirrels does it need to take out Switzerland?”

Today is bank holiday .. which means everybody has a day off from work except us! That said, I’m still at home, eating breakfast and writing a blog entry so it’s also bank holiday for me.

Slowly this is turning into a picture blog.. but why not. Here are three more randoms.

These are, I think, so called Weng Weng sweets and a present from my Chinese coworker. The guy with the stick-out ears is a popular brand in China.. the Weng Weng’s didn’t even taste bad!

*update*: I was informed that it’s not Weng Weng .. it’s Wang Wang!

That’s a peek into the QM gym which should have been finished 1 year ago! After the 1 year extension they have now roughly one month left to finish off the work. They started assembling the machines which is a good sign. The bad news of the gym is that there’s a female-only section! Don’t ask me.

Last but not least, something disgusting. It’s a shot of my 5-a-day fresh fruit drink at bricklane market. I think it was the kiwi-melon-apple-orange-juice mix explaining the toxic colour.. It left a nice tingling sensation on my lips due to my kiwi allergy.

Two more artefacts from Jersey.

First a sign which only allows Czechs (?!) to park there. It reads “Parking for Czechs only”:

Another one is this “Danger” sign without any other additional hints of what danger you should be warned of:

Back from Jersey since Sunday night. We had an enjoyable trip. Jersey is really small. Also, it’s so close to France that the airplane started its descent over France just to land on time on Jersey.

Anyway .. we’ve been to the beach on one of its coasts. Jersey has many huge sand beaches with only few people on. Here’s one of them:

Beside being on the beach we had a nice BBQ, went to the Zoo and made a short walk along one of the coasts. One word on the Zoo. Apparently the Jersey Zoo, or how it’s called Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, is known for its gorilla family. Long long time ago, a kid fell into the gorilla area and instead of being mauled by the apes it was carefully protected by Jambo — a gorrilla born in Zoo Basel in 1961! — until some guards rescued the child. Swiss gorilla for the win.

We also visited (from the outside, more or less by accident) the infamous children’s home which was in the news recently for killing and abusing children!

Some more pictures on my flickr page.

Hello! I’m still in Jersey .. this is a timed post to keep you entertained I thought I’m going to post a really touristy-picture. It’s piccadilly circus with its light board thing. I think they recently installed even more of these gigantic displays.

Crisp rainbow arching over Roman Road

Seen on a BT box. “9.11 is a setup”

Ever since I arrived here I noticed something funny. The way people pronounce “London”. It’s certainly not how we german-speakers say London with two strongly pronounced O’s. Now, after careful considerations and listening to many hours of BBC I found a trick how german natives can pronounce it the right way. Here’s the trick:

Think of a guy from a rural Zuerich area who’s trying to say the following in proper German with his strong Swiss accent: “Sie koennen hier aber leider noed landen“. Now the italics landen is exactly how to pronounce London correctly.

Well done!