Thursday, March 31, 2011

Confession

After 6 months in Switzerland, I still can't figure out whether to open doors via pushing or pulling.


Can you tell for the above picture? (In case you're wondering, the answer is "push".) The hinge is sometimes hidden, and the door jamb is nonexistent. Fortunately, I know I'm not alone in this problem, based on anecdotal evidence from some of my Swiss and European colleagues and friends as well as the prevalence of labeling on the doors themselves. My question is, why would such an awful design get put into such widespread use?? (Undoubtedly, it arose through the decisions of many committees and put many people into employment.)

Supposedly doors in Switzerland (or at least in my lab) are designed to allow quick departure from a building in case of emergency, which gives a quick-and-dirty method of determining the door direction. It isn't always correct, but it's a starting point if you find yourself at an unlabeled door.

Of course, being in Europe, even labels can't be a simple matter. High German and Swiss German use different types of "push" verbs for their doors! "Pull" is the same in both (ziehen), but High German uses "druecken," which means to push or press, while Swiss German insists that you "stossen" the door, a word for which LEO offers the following suggestions: to butt, to bump, to jab, to poke. Such violence in going through doors! I guess it's representative of the frustration one feels after attempting to pull open the door and then realizing it requires pushing instead (with people watching you all the while, naturally).

Monday, March 21, 2011

Bis(s) zum Morgengrauen

I recently finished reading Twilight as my daily commuter book. Why would I do such a thing, you might ask? Here's why: to learn German. That's right, I read Twilight in German as an educational activity. And you know what? It worked (to an extent). There are so many repeated words and phrases that I managed to learn a lot of vocabulary and sentence structure, as well as some "fancy" past tense verbs.

Sure, it wasn't all fun and games. Based on my experiences with German-English translations for television shows and movies, I'm guessing the translation pretty closely mirrored its English counterpart. And if that's the case, the writing quality is, to put it delicately, quite poor. I must agree with Stephen King in his assertion that the difference between J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meier is that Rowling is an excellent writer and that Meier can't write worth a damn.

The only reason Twilight took off the way it did is because Meier happened to hit on a really hot topic: first love. In the case of this book, first love is synonymous with everlasting love as well as total obsession. Similar to relationships in real-life, where the involved parties can get so wrapped up in the relationship that it becomes their world and skews time, time isn't uniformly represented in the book: the first half of the book takes place over a number of months, while the second half covers approximately 3 days.

The book actually provides a pretty good model for how to have an unhealthy relationship: one in which the girl is completely reliant on her perfect man to take care of her and save her, wherein she becomes totally and utterly obsessed with him and can't imagine going on living without him, one in which the man must have her underwing at all times.

Though really, you can't blame Bella too much, because she's apparently found the embodiment of perfection for a boyfriend. Perfect hair and teeth, clothes to make a model jealous, a hot car, muscular physique... what more could a girl ask for, other than super-pale skin and dark undereye circles? Oh wait, he has those, too! However, he and all his family members have one fatal flaw: they're hopelessly stupid. Stupid, because they go along with Bella's ridiculous plans of escaping danger by splitting up their numbers, unable to posit a better idea of their own! If there's one thing I learned from years of watching Scooby Doo, it's that splitting up is NEVER a good idea.