The lovely library
May 4th, 2010
Yesterday an e-mail from the physics library landed in my inbox. I thought I knew what it was about, so I didn’t read it and just put the book I had borrowed (Statistical Mechanics by Huang) in my backpack.
When I got to the library, I returned it to the lady working there. She scanned the barcode and proceeded to tell me with a bittersweet I’m-so-sorry-look on her face that I couldn’t borrow another book until a certain date because I hadn’t returned this one on time.
The e-mail I received wasn’t to remind me that the return date was approaching, as I had thought, but that in fact the book was overdue a week or so. I am positive that there was no reminder beforehand, so I’m not amused by the fact that now I’m being punished when they forgot to send me the reminder I had come to expect from how it worked in the past.
I can not resist saying that the fact that they punish people by not letting them borrow again for a certain time is everything but logical. If instead they demanded a modest fee like 1 EUR per day – as every other library I know does – that would motivate even people who don’t intend to borrow other books soon. Furthermore, with the collected fees they could simply buy more of the most requested books, which would help mitigate the problem instead of getting people upset.
But what should I expect from a library who sends the reminder e-mails out by hand? Maybe that explains the surprisingly large number of people who work there. The much larger central library at EPFL is run twice as well by half as many employees. Other Italians told me this was a disguised form of unemployment reduction by the state. I can’t evaluate the truth of that statement though.
Later, when I was looking for books on differential geometry, I found a copy of the exact book I returned hidden in a shelf where it definitely wasn’t supposed to be. The most probable explanation is that a student needed it in order to study for the upcoming exam and hid it in a place where only he would find it.
I found it. And since I’m not allowed to borrow it, it is now in another shelf… where only I will find it. Am I evil?
Leave a commentDer toskanische Dialekt (fortgesetzt)
May 2nd, 2010
Über die Besonderheiten des toskanischen Dialekts habe ich schon geschrieben. Die Erfahrungen, die ich seit dann gemacht habe, gebe ich hier zur allgemeinen Belehrung und/oder Belustigung wieder. Ich möchte aber gleich vorneweg differentialdiagnostisch festhalten, dass sich der toskanische Dialekt in der Aussprache noch stärker von den anderen Dialekten unterscheidet als in der Grammatik und deshalb zur zweifelsfreien Identifizierung oft Hörproben notwendig sind.
Beispiel 1: Kino
Wie schon erklärt wird ein Verb in der ersten Person plural häufig durch die impersonale Form ersetzt. So wird hier andiamo zu si va. Garbare ist typisch toskanisch und bedeutet nichts anderes als piacere. Avoglia heisst je nach Zusammenhang (ja) gerne oder sehr, zu viel. Eine nicht nur in der Toskana verbreitete Kuriosität ist die Verdoppelung eines Pronomens im Dativ. Aus a me oder mi wird a me mi. Monte heisst in diesem Zusammenhang so viel wie molto.
Senti, si va al cinema stasera? C’è il nuovo film di George Clooney se ti garba…
Avoglia! A me mi piace monte George Clooney.
Beispiel 2: Faccio und vado
(Io) faccio wird häufig zu fo, (io) vado wird zu vo. Wer ankündigt, dass er nicht alles essen wird, was auf seinem Teller ist, oder allgemein etwas nicht schafft, sagt
Non ce la fo!
Beispiel 3: Tu wird zu te, findet aber Anwendung in anderen Situationen
Tu wird in der Toskana konsequent durch te ersetzt, wie in ma te l’hai dato l’esame?. Dafür setzt man tu an Stellen ein, wo andere Italiener es schlicht weglassen würden, wie zum Beispiel:
Ma che tu fai? (Was machst du denn?)
Tu vedrai! (Wirst schon sehen!)
Beispiel 4: Aussprache
Ein famoser Satz, der verdeutlichen soll, wie ‘c’ als ‘h’ ausgesprochen wird, ist:
La hoha hola hon la hannuccia horta e holorata.
Beispiel 5: Etwas für die Ohren
Wer schon Italienisch versteht und wissen möchte, wie sich das Ganze anhört, kann sich jetzt ansehen, wie James Bond in toskanischem Dialekt mezza porzione di ribollita e acqua della cannella bestellt und seine Tanzpartnerin um 5000 Lire bittet:
Wer dann noch Lust auf mehr hat, kann den Wikipedia-Artikel über den dialetto toscano lesen.
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March 16th, 2010
We could have died in the fire that erupted last night in our building.
Do you know where the emergency exits in your building are? Can you handle a fire extinguisher?
My flatmate was awake at 3 a.m. when he noticed a particularly pungent stench. He checked all the rooms in our apartment only to realize that the stench was coming from the hallway. One of his first thoughts was that an apartment could have taken fire. While talking to the police on his mobile phone he went looking for the source. He went down eight flights of stairs checking every apartment door until he got to the entrance. The smoke made it hard to see and breathe.
We didn’t die and I’m still blogging. The boring truth is that my other flatmate and I slept like babies, while he saw that the fire was located at the main door and managed to put it out.
My flatmates had left while I was asleep this morning, so I was completely uninformed. About to go to university, I was amazed and slightly amused by the fact that I didn’t have to open the entrance door because there was none. A part of the carpet was charred and the surrounding ceiling had changed from white to blackish. I quickly took some pictures and asked the portiere about what happened. He told me that my flatmate had put out the fire. I continued my journey to the lecture that for some reason didn’t take place. When I got home my flatmate gave me his account of the night:
The police had arrived quite subito and the firefighters came running some 20 minutes after the alarm. When they saw that the fire had already been put out they turned around and left without even wanting to make a guess about how it could have initiated. Neither did the police, telling my flatmate that we would have to accuse someone if we wanted them to conduct an investigation. Then they left, too. Now the administration of the building will have the entrance cleaned up and the door and carpet replaced and nobody will know what set the door on fire. Except the guys who did it.
The entrance to the building
I have a friend who once filmed his neighbour’s house burning down. When the police asked him to testify a couple of days later he showed them his video, complete with some dramatic movie soundtrack, as he later recounted with a big grin on his face. I played around with some imaging software to make the photograph look more frightening, but I failed and so I’m showing the original.
I guess what could have been a pretty dramatic story in the end amounts to nothing much and therefore joins the many news articles with that same fate. Remember what Chesterton said: Journalism largely consists of saying ‘Lord Jones is Dead’ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
Just make sure you know where the emergency exits in your building are.
5 CommentsAuftragskiller inserieren nicht
February 9th, 2010
Die FAZ hat einen lesenswerten Artikel über Kommunikation unter Kriminellen.
Zitat:
Was also kann ein Verbrecher tun, um anderen Verbrechern glaubwürdig zu erscheinen? Er kann signalisieren, dass sein Vertrauensbruch ganz unwahrscheinlich ist. Aus südafrikanischen Gefängnissen ist die Praxis der Gesichtstätowierung bekannt: Verbrecher zeichnen sich selbst und zeigen anderen dadurch, dass sie auf die Welt des Verbrechens angewiesen sind, weil sie als Gezeichnete eine andere Karriere gar nicht machen können.
[...]
Ein genauso gutes Signal, meint Gambetta, ist Dummheit. Wer glaubhaft unfähig ist, andere als die verbrecherischen Tätigkeiten auszuüben, zeigt seine Verlässlichkeit. Gambetta ist auf diesen Gedanken beim Studium des italienischen Universitätssystems gekommen [...]
Es ist mir ein Rätsel, wie man beim Studium des italienischen Universitätssystems auf die Idee kommt, dass unter Gaunern Dummheit als Signal für Verlässlichkeit gesehen wird. Wie ist es demnach zu interpretieren, wenn sich ein italienischer Professor erkundigt, ob ich nicht Interesse an einem Doktorat in seinem Labor hätte?
Ich werde mir Mühe geben in Zukunft weniger verlässlich zu sein.
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