A day to mark with a white stone.
Not only lunch with Caroline, but also finding (at last) the correct lead for my in-car navigator.
I should have learned my lesson when I bought an Apple computer about the dangers of choosing something which was not the ordinary and popular choice. Tom-Tom is the obvious choice for in-car navigator, but no, I was sweet talked by a convincing salesman in Halfords into getting a Garmin machine which was "so much better value than the equivalent Tom-Tom." The lessons of buying an early Mac computer were lost!
Not only lunch with Caroline, but also finding (at last) the correct lead for my in-car navigator.
I should have learned my lesson when I bought an Apple computer about the dangers of choosing something which was not the ordinary and popular choice. Tom-Tom is the obvious choice for in-car navigator, but no, I was sweet talked by a convincing salesman in Halfords into getting a Garmin machine which was "so much better value than the equivalent Tom-Tom." The lessons of buying an early Mac computer were lost!
I bought the Apple Mac computer when everyone else was buying machines that ran Windows.
I have to admit that the Mac was much better than the other machines. The operating system was more like Windows XP is now: an intuitive operating system which did (generally) what you thought it ought to do in the way that you thought it might do. As opposed, of course, to the DOS system where to get anything done you virtually had to sacrifice a chicken before the bloody screen grudgingly indicated that you were part of the way towards your objective.
The trouble was, of course, that everything was geared towards a DOS system and Apple Macs were very much in the minority. The school operated with DOS; magazines gave away software in DOS; everyone you knew offered programs in DOS. Even when programs were sold as compatible with Apple machines, they never quite worked in the same way as they did with DOS computers. I should have gone with the majority. Although as Ibsen wrote (via one of his characters) “The majority is always wrong.” Whatever than means.
Eventually, after a few court cases Windows had a system which was suspiciously similar to that of the Mac and all was well with the world. Then the ipod came along and Mac was the way of the world.
And at least I have an ipod (or three) and I find that walking into the electrical department of any reasonably sized supermarket and there are rows of inexplicable accessories for my mp3 player. I am now one of the majority. So I must be wrong!
All of preceding peregrinations were occasioned by Caroline’s observation that it was a relief to share a meal with someone with the same range of reference.
Living in a foreign country, especially one which is as near to us as Spain, one is struck by how much is the same yet subtly different.
Even with my limited Spanish I can tell when simple questions on quiz shows have answers that I wouldn’t have known even if I had been speaking fluent Spanish. I lack the basic knowledge of the faces of famous people; I’m not able to hum along with the theme tunes of childhood television children’s television series; basic facts of Spanish history, on a par with 1066 and 1215 and 1666, are unknown to me; basic understanding of Spanish geography are searching specialised knowledge for me – and so on.
In one way it is good to have a whole culture waiting to be discovered, but so much which is naturally acquired in a life time is only going to be imparted to me by accident.
Which is as good a way of expectation as any I suppose?
The trouble was, of course, that everything was geared towards a DOS system and Apple Macs were very much in the minority. The school operated with DOS; magazines gave away software in DOS; everyone you knew offered programs in DOS. Even when programs were sold as compatible with Apple machines, they never quite worked in the same way as they did with DOS computers. I should have gone with the majority. Although as Ibsen wrote (via one of his characters) “The majority is always wrong.” Whatever than means.
Eventually, after a few court cases Windows had a system which was suspiciously similar to that of the Mac and all was well with the world. Then the ipod came along and Mac was the way of the world.
And at least I have an ipod (or three) and I find that walking into the electrical department of any reasonably sized supermarket and there are rows of inexplicable accessories for my mp3 player. I am now one of the majority. So I must be wrong!
All of preceding peregrinations were occasioned by Caroline’s observation that it was a relief to share a meal with someone with the same range of reference.
Living in a foreign country, especially one which is as near to us as Spain, one is struck by how much is the same yet subtly different.
Even with my limited Spanish I can tell when simple questions on quiz shows have answers that I wouldn’t have known even if I had been speaking fluent Spanish. I lack the basic knowledge of the faces of famous people; I’m not able to hum along with the theme tunes of childhood television children’s television series; basic facts of Spanish history, on a par with 1066 and 1215 and 1666, are unknown to me; basic understanding of Spanish geography are searching specialised knowledge for me – and so on.
In one way it is good to have a whole culture waiting to be discovered, but so much which is naturally acquired in a life time is only going to be imparted to me by accident.
Which is as good a way of expectation as any I suppose?
Who is spoon fed a culture ?
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