Martyn Glanville: 2008

Minced boy

Image by FredArmitage via FlickrJUST HAD lunch.

A burger with onions, bit of salad. As I was filling my plate, a colleague remarked in Danish upon seeing the burger, "Ah, hakketdreng."

I replied in English, "See? That's how bad my Danish is. I just thought you said the burger was a "minced boy"."

"I did. It's slang for a burger."

Check the diary

Image by Agent Smith via FlickrONE OF the things I like about living in Denmark is how it operates, for the most part, like clockwork. A grand overstatement, of course, but there is a certain fixed routine about the place that gives one a sense of comfort - if you are obsessed about organisation and preparation like I am.

Christmas approaches and yet it was only a few days ago that my home city of Copenhagen suddenly went festive. A few days ago - the first of December. Now I can't move for lit trees, burning candles in windows and the sudden arrival of traditional and tasty little ginger biscuit snacks that can be found all over the workplace. If I remember England correctly, Christmas seemed to start at the end of August as shelves started filling with tins of Quality Street and Peter Kay 'best of' DVD compilations shimmered in their plastic wrapping at every checkout.

It's not just Christmas that works to a strict schedule. The ice cream parlours at the seaside seem to open on the 1st of May and close at the end of September. Nevermind if there's an indian summer where you could make a few quid more as people get out to enjoy surprise weather. No, summer has ended. Obey.

Danes holiday in the same fashion. The first half of the year in Denmark is peppered with public holidays, long weekends and so on (I read once they have more public holidays than any country in Europe, but I am not sure if that's true). Everyone goes somewhere at the same time, and you are expected to do the same. "Where will you be for the holiday?" I am frequently asked.

And there's the rub. As said at the start, I am an organisation obsessive, a person who loves timetables and keeps their watch five minutes fast to stay just ahead of the game.

But I am not very good at it. Where will I be for the holiday? I simply never get my shit together in time. We are always at home because we never remember to check when the holidays are. We never remember to conform.

So my routine is shaped by the routine of others. Others do things, while I am reminded that I forgot to do things.

It seems appropriate for Johnny Foreigners like me.

Synchronicity

SAN FRANCISCO - SEPTEMBER 09: An Apple employ...

A TOE-RAG found his way into my car the other weekend and helped himself to my iPod Nano. (Well, it was the wife's but that's another story.)

Lucky for me, he didn't look in the boot where my laptop waited, vulnerable and alone. There's not much crime in Copenhagen, but I was dumb enough to hide something away in the glove compartment so serves me right.

Anyway, with no iPod, I was forced to return to my old Creative Zen to listen to podcasts on the drive to work. First, I was incredibly annoyed at how difficult it was to use after getting used to the iPod. Then, when I got to work and hooked it up with iTunes, it sort of / seemed to work - some pods played as normal, others (Stephen Fry's podgram) didn't. Add to this four days out of the office and I just fell out of synchronisation.

Even buying a new Nano didn't help initially. Of course, combining it with iTunes was a step in the right direction. But I had a week or so's worth of pods to catch up on and only limited driving time to hear them in.

It reminded me of serial television and why I generally avoid it - I can't stand missing an episode because I feel like I'm missing something - jokes, references, story - in all subsquent episodes.

It was the same with the podcasts. Hopelessly out of synch, I knew it wouldn't get better. iTunes would just keep getting new material and I would feel compelled to listen to it all or face spiralling confusion and fear that I was somehow missing something.

Then I copped on to myself and just deleted all the stuff I knew I'd never get round to. Still rankles a little. Completism (my term, I think), is a dangerous condition.

I know I will only be happy again when the number of podcasts in iTunes synches exactly with the number on my device. Only then will calm, balance, yin and yang or whatever it is, be restored.

Foul technology, I loathe thee.

Attention rich, bad guys everywhere!

Saddam's Danish yacht for sale

Available for Bond villains and other would-be world rulers at a very competitive price. Has own operating theatre, mini-sub, and escape hatch (really!).

It's like someone looked inside my head

House of the Dead: Overkill

Spider-Man in Denmark

Image via WikipediaHE'S AN urban hero, Spider-Man. Does well in built-up environments where there are plenty of street lights, tall buildings and other paraphernalia which help him when it comes to locomotion. Thwipping web strands from lamp-post to lamp-post makes for easy transport.

Driving through the light fog this morning, I eyed the lamp-posts running the length of the central reservation on my beloved E55 motorway and I got an image of Spider-Man swinging from one to another. It occurred to me that Peter Parker's be-webbed alter ego wouldn't have much joy out in the countryside.

Put him in a field. There may be a tree or two. He could climb them. But I could climb them too. If luck was on his side, there might be a farmhouse and a barn. Perhaps he could spin a web between the two and halt a fleeing yokel who's nicked a tractor. I can run faster than a tractor. Probably. I suppose he could jump around a bit better than me, and use his enhanced strength to gain something of an advantage, but I can't really see outside of an urban environment how he'd be that much better than you or me.

Flat countries like Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium (that's flat, isn't it?) don't figure that much in superhero comic book literature (do they? I'm no expert so you'll just have to trust me). That said, in Spider-Man's 40-year plus history, I feel pretty sure he's not confined himself solely to Manhattan.

If anyone can furnish me with the issues where he comes to the Danish countryside, I'd be in your debt.

Sometimes I don't give TV credit

Morning photographs

GOT OUT of the car this morning after arriving at work and thought the emerging light and low-level fog was interesting. Snapped these on the BlackBerry. They are testament to why later BlackBerries have dropped the camera...

Strange concrete - Part II

MORE STRANGE concrete, this time being used to counterbalance a roadroller. You see this kind of stuff when you live next to an art museum. It was rather fascinating.

Strange concrete

I SAW this strange piece of concrete filling in a playground yesterday.

By design or accident?

Life on Mars

Image via WikipediaCASTRO GLUGGER Snr. lives on party island Ibiza, and has done for pushing two decades now. Dutiful son that I am, I've been visiting him regularly for many years. It's an easy place to visit, for obvious reasons.

A curious memory from my first trips there was the exchange of battered and usually bootleg VHS video tapes among the expat community. This was a time pre-Sky when all the permanent Brits on the island had by way of televisual entertainment was whatever dross was passed around - fuzzy copies of Fatal Attraction or The Witches of Eastwick (the sexual undercurrent in such titles gave them a currency). Now everyone there is plugging in illegal feeds from satellites and all the wonders of broadcasting are theirs for the taking.

As an expat myself, I don't bother with Danish TV to be honest. And those 350 DVDs I lugged over from England don't get watched too much. Instead, I'm borrowing English telly on DVD from my neighbours - also expats. I am doing what my Dad and his chums used to do.

I'm a bit more picky. For them, it was a case of anything in English would do. For me, I can have everything I want if I can be bothered to get it. Instead, I go by recommendations.

So far, I have been lent Marion and Geoff, which I enjoyed a great deal. More recently, I caught up with Life on Mars. This struck a particular chord, not because I have been knocked down by a car and woken up in 1973, more because I am a similar fish out of water, if you'll permit me such a comparison.

There's something vaguely Auster-ish about repeating what my father did in both becoming an expat and following the rituals of that state, then finding out those rituals concern the expat experience in some respects - Sam Tyler is an expat whose home is 2006 but finds himself in the early 70s. Just as Sam is never quite sure where he is and what is real, so being in a country where you are frequently misunderstood, looked at strangely, and even find the clothing frankly bizarre is a curious experience.

It's the freakiest show.

----------------
Written while listening to Pulp - Party Hard
via FoxyTunes

TDC, you helped me!

Image via WikipediaIT IS ALWAYS good to have an unusual problem.

It makes people curious. Doctors wonder why you have green spots on your neck, mechanics why your car makes that knocking sound when they've looked at it three times now, my wife when I put on a particular shirt.

TDC couldn't for the life of them figure out why my home internet was on the fritz. New cables and routers couldn't fix it. Multiple pings got no answer. They got really interested. It was like being a freak. All manner of folk called me. Just before they conceded defeat and sent out an engineer (clearly an admission of failure in our wired world), one rasping tech-head (named Henning) felt sure he could nail the problem given a bit more time. He begged a day. I gave it to him.

He fixed it. Just gave me a new IP address. Bang-flash, I'm back online. I don't know what they problem was, or whether they knew.

So the next time you have a problem, and if no-one else can help (and if you can find them... no!), make sure it's something weird. It gets the best customer service.

TDC, won't you help me?

Image via WikipediaI HAVEN'T written this blog post.

It does not exist because my home web connection installed by Denmark's TDC has been on the fritz for two weeks now.

So I haven't been blogging.

This is/isn't here.

It has not been knocked out in a few minutes during my work day because I am a conscientious employee. That said, some folk are allowed to smoke a fag for ten minutes a few times a day, so this is, er, my fag break.

It drives me nuts having no internet at home. I have been relying on my BlackBerry, which has gamely stepped up to plate, providing me with my weather, recipes, footie news, and Twitter posts. But it is not the real thing.

Plan is that normal service will resume next week, but we'll see.

I don't want to have to keep writing these blogs that don't exist.

----------------
Written while listening to: The 5th Dimension - Bobbie's Blues (Who Do you Think OfH)
via FoxyTunes

'Ej, 'Ej!

NOT READY for sleep last night, I completed my Danish homework and then slumped on the sofa and did a rare thing - watched Danish telly.

As usual, I started nobly, watching the news and trying to understand what had happened in my adopted home (something in Amager; after that it was all about Google releasing Chrome).

I'm not a great TV watcher, something not helped by having the world's worst cable package from yousee.dk. About a dozen really poor Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian channels.

Tiring of not really grasping the finer points of the news, I inevitably started flicking: white noise - nature programme - white noise - white noise - documentary about dead mountain climbers - white noise - Frost - white noise - cheesy Scandi soap - white noise - GOLD!

Pushing midnight, I stumbled across 'Allo 'Allo!. This curious effort of a sitcom has always held a strange fascination for me - a wartime comedy about French resistance to occupying Nazis as seen through the eyes of a randy cafe owner is weird enough. But the language is often the strangest thing. The French characters speak English with a bad French accent. The Germans speak English with a bad German accent. The English speak a toffee-nosed version of English - all chaps this, and right-ho that.

There is one character, a British SOE man named Crabtree dropped into France to spy disguised as a policeman, who is particularly odd. He is supposed to be fluent in French, but of course, he isn't. So he speaks English with a bad French accent. Eg, he might say the line, "I was just passing so I thought I'd drop in" as "Er was jerst pissing so Er thought Er'd drip in". The episode I stumbled upon last night was Crabtree's debut, and while he was new and his full comic potential yet to be developed, his general incompetence with language struck a chord with me.

I wondered if I spoke Danish as badly as he spoke French? I don't know. Interestingly, on many occasions now, my Danish has led people to believe I am Swedish. One chap refused to believe I came from England.

My colleagues always ask how my Danish is progressing and I always tell them the same thing: I won't say how good my Danish is. It gives me an edge if you don't know how much of what you say I understand.

But I like to think when I speak it, I am burbling in some Crabtree-esque version of Danish. That would please me.

Another hair-raising drive to work

Image via Wikipedia TORRENTIAL RAIN this morning made my zip up the E55 like something out of Wages of Fear.

The road out of the city transforms from urban street to motorway pretty quick, and in heavy traffic you often find yourself forced to take one lane instead of another.

This happened this morning, and as we drifted into motorway, I was stuck in the fast lane in a downpour that had the wipers working overtime. Behind me, a goon in a BMW was practically kissing my exhaust pipe, while to my right, a tattooed thug (sorry tattooed friends) was bunching me in.

Matey behind wanted me out of the way, while blokey to the right wouldn't budge. And the wipers couldn't keep up.

So you are left with little choice but to speed ahead and get clear of the box. My car has a gizmo in it that will record my speed in the event of a crash. For every kilometre over the limit, I pay a certain amount towards repairs. The pay-off for this is cheap insurance, and I'm no speed freak so the deal is sweet for me.

But by now I was pushing 120km in a 90km zone, in rain you couldn't see beyond, ploughing through near flooded roads, just to get clear of these maniacs all around me.

It was a bit of a nuisance, I can tell you.

Eventually, the chap on the right who'd kept pace with my accelerations, hemming me in, floored it a bit more and sprayed his way past me, giving me room to move over for the impatient Beamer behind.

It was my birthday not long ago. Am I really such an old man already that I tsk-tsk and disapprove of these crazy drivers?

Danes take a theory and practical driving test. They even have to take a first-aid course so they know what to do in the event of a road accident.

Good job too.

'Bigfoot' is monkey suit

Frame 352 from the film, allegedly capturing a...

Image via Wikipedia 'Bigfoot' is monkey suit

Who'd have thought?

Eastern Promises

Zulu Sommerbio 2008 | Alt om København kbh - AOK: "Mandag 18. august - Eastern Promises"

This is starting in 13 minutes in the park across from where I live, if you are into outdoor cinema.
Be quick, you can still make it. Bring a jumper.

Apple is not the only fruit

BUT BLACKBERRIES are not that much better either.

That's as clever as I get. The other night I was in the pub with a mate, counting and reminding him of each occasion he saw fit to produce his new iPhone to make a point. I understand this, I would be the same with a new gadget.

I liked the iPhone, I liked how you could be a Jedi to use it, barely scraping the screen with one's fingers to execute a command, the way the view tilted depending on which way up the screen was, and even the Wii-like motion control of a game he had.

Tucked in my pocket, and feeling a little inadequate was my work-suppplied Blackberry Curve 8310. It was my Anna Karen to his Penelope Cruz, let's not be mistaken. The iPhone's big screen was lovely, and the smooth and fast delivery of Google Maps looked especially good. My Blackberry has a smallish screen and chunky GPS (though it did navigate me home the other day when I got lost on my bike in Frederiksberg). Pete, the iPhone's owner charitably entertained my Blackberry when I finally produced it for the purposes of comparison.

For all its delights, I found myself wondering if I would buy an iPhone. I've read quite a bit about how it's a great personal device but lacking as, er, a mobile phone. I would be the same about a Blackberry, however. It is great as a work tool, and is already saving me time. But its usability leaves a lot, and I have found how to do most things I want to do on it by searching the web rather than getting any joy from the manual.

I'm not sure I'd buy it either.

I have such an on-off relationship with Apple. I started on Macs and switched to PCs because they could do the things I wanted to do. Recently, I found myself in need of a reliable podcast manager. I tried Juice (kept crashing), Creative's whadjamacallit (not compatible with my Creative Zen Stone Plus! What?!), and Winamp (banned by my corporate IT). In frustration, I turned to iTunes and have found it by the far the best tool for my job. So much so, I am thinking of - shock, horror - buying an iPod.

But let me drag you back from Apple again. See, I think I rather like the slightly botched, Heath-Robinson extremes being a PC user sometimes sends me too. I unpacked my PC from storage a while back, from a time when wireless networks at home were just being thought of. With no wireless card in the desktop, I bought a Belkin wireless adaptor. Didn't work, they said because it was not very compatible with my work-supplied wireless modem (it's all about channels and what wireless signals are sent on them). I was about to give up the ghost when I remembered I had a Belkin wireless router. Long story short, I whacked it into the wireless modem and bingo! The wireless adaptor in my desktop locked on to it straight away. What nonsense. Would a Mac user ever put up with such cobbled together contraptions. Doubt it.

Question is, why do I?

Castr0 Heights - MyMiniCity

Not sure what this is going to do, but let's see...

Castr0 Heights - MyMiniCity

Croc Shock

Image via WikipediaRETURNING FROM holiday is always a mixed experience. Sometimes, it is a relief to be back in one's surroundings where the grim reality that is about 49 weeks of your year is momentarily new again. And on the other hand, one can miss the elements of a holiday that make it so enjoyable.

I returned from a week in Ireland and a dozen days in Ibiza glad to be back. I'd had a fine old time but was tiring of living out of a rucksack. One item that did not make the trip home was an army green, imitation pair of popular plastic shoes, Crocs.

The preferred footwear of surgeons and chefs, these rotten looking things never held much appeal for me - not unless someone would let me loose with a scalpel or knife and spare me the consequences. Indeed, I am not the only one who has no time for the shoes. However, after yomping across the stony beach and sea bed at Cala Salada, Ibiza, son in tow, I needed some protection if I was going to avoid coral, sea urchins, and tangles of weed.

Mrs CG nipped into a cheapo shop and bought a few pairs for a few yo-yos and off we trotted, or should I say bounced. Whatever cheap, polluting rubbish they make these things from, it certainly puts a spring in your step. No wonder hospital and restaurant workers favour them, being on their feet all day.

I was surprised they were so comfortable. Course, a few days later after numerous dunkings in salt water, they gave up the ghost. Maybe the real ones are more durable, I don't know, but I have had my secret experiment and them clogs were a pleasant surprise. But, like the fact, I am genuinely moved by Krusty singing "Send in the Clowns" and Sideshow Mel finishing the song off, I am not about to admit it to anyone.

Hence this blog.

Google car spotted in Denmark?

Image via WikipediaTHE MILD hysteria about Google photographing places at street level to enhance their mapping service might have spread to Denmark.

Well, it will if I have anything to do with it.

I was bumbling down the E55 towards Copenhagen yesterday afternoon when I spied a suspicious looking vehicle going far too slow. After spitting forth bile at the driver's poor ability, I noted a strange looking device atop the car.

Could it be?

I resolved to find out. I flicked an indicator drifted into the outside line and whizzed past the snail of a car, getting a good look at the strange, rotating and yes, camera-like device on its roof. I then returned to the inside lane and waited for the roving camera car to catch up. My speed dropped, 110km, 90km, finally 60km - a dangerous speed to cruise at on any motorway, and let me tell you, my pulse was racing, sweat silvering on my forehead as I diced with death and investigated The Man, watching as he came ever closer behind me.

Eventually, Google car couldn't stand my slow driving any longer and overtook.

Checkmate. My phone ready, as he passed and dropped in front of me, I started snapping. Difficult with a mobile phone and one eye on the road.

But here's where it gets weird, and all a bit Three Days of the Condor, Men In Black, or The Parallax View, depending on your view on conspiracies. See, as soon as I'd grabbed a few photos, the Google car (if indeed it was that) took off. And I mean really took off. The guy floored it and shot ahead so quickly, I lost him in the traffic that thickens as you approach the Copenhagen outskirts.

Had he seen me taking pictures? And did he see my licence plate? And who are the big goons standing in my office right now erasing my Nokia's contents?

Or maybe the car was nothing to do with Google, and it was doing
something entirely innocent. Here are the pictures. I'll let you decide. Me? I'm reaching for my tin foil hat.

PC comes out of hibernation

Image via WikipediaLAST NIGHT, I finally got around to firing up my old Dell, which I brought over from the UK a few months back.

I hadn't used it in two years. Fired the old girl up and it was like a little timewarp, a transportation back to the moment when I last shut it down. (I remember it well. Twas the day before we left the UK, the house was a warehouse of packing crates, and I'd copied every last byte of data onto a portable hard drive. Chaos. Wouldn't recommend it to anyone.)

First off, it was Firefox 1.0 or some similar early version. It was loaded with various toolbars I'd forgotten ever installing (Urban Dead toolbar!). It was pre-iGoogle or Netvibes, so I was using live bookmarks for my RSS, and most annoying of all, the close tab button was on the far right of the browser window, not on the tab itself like with more recent versions of FF. Incredibly annoying.

Still, I got a bit nostalgic, then swiftly upgraded to Firefox 3.o.

XP had some work to do as well. 53 updates! Chugg-chugg-chugg, it went. But after an hour's worth of updating, re-configuring, and re-installing, I was done. I didn't mind doing it, it was like getting a new machine and playing around with all the settings. I got stupidly excited when I realised I had four devices all wirelessly networked, and started moaning that the wife wasn't home so I could hook her Mac up as well. She rolled her eyes when I mentioned this.

I wonder why?

Drunken Swede tries to row home from Denmark

Image via WikipediaTHIS UNFORTUNATE chap will be mocked and laughed at for years to come, but you know what I say?

I say salute the sea-faring hero!

Show me the man who hasn't embarked upon a hairbrained scheme after a few too many sherberts. Why, I myself remember nearly killing myself as a youth walking home in the middle of winter one night in Croydon 20 years ago, far too many pints swilling around inside me, a worn Crombie overcoat keeping the cold at bay. I thought, as the temperature plunged ever lower, that wouldn't it be nice to just curl up in a quiet front garden and sleep.

I probably would have died from exposure.

Probably happens a lot every winter.

But this fella, hail him, a septuagenarian no less, decides to row five kilometres across the particularly busy and choppy Øresund, to his Swedish home. Not content with this feat of seamanship, I like best the fact that he gave up along the way and entrusted his fate to the tides and currents.

The Danes are loving this story, I am sure, given their penchant for slagging the Swedes and their drinking habits. But I think this man should be commended for his initiative. The Danes, I am sure, would have considered it for six months, hired a brace of overpaid consultants to investigate it, and then ask the world and his wife if it was ok.

I'm Popeye The Sailor Man

Worst song ever:

I'm Popeye The Sailor Man – Mark Mothersbaugh – Listen free at Last.fm

Dane-gerous Driving

Image via WikipediaUNDERTAKING seems to be a commonplace occurrence on the motorways of Denmark. I notice it daily - mad souls veering from lane to lane because they absolutely, positively have to be there on time. Or not.

I just think they are shit drivers.

But wait! I have evidence. Well, a theory.

Ok, just a thought (and those are rare these days).

Thing is, the Danes have only recently come into money. The past ten or twelve years saw them realise the value of the enormous apartments and houses they have lived in for decades. (Apparently, profits from the sale of properties used to be taxed heavily, discouraging people to sell to earn a few bob.) So after they sold and made a packet over night, they all fancied themselves as well to do and went and bought motors.

Until then, they'd always cycled. What happened? Of course, they immediately started driving the same way they cycle - on a whim, haphazardly, capriciously. It's because their road heritage is on two wheels and self-propelled, whereas I come from a place and time (Croydon, the 1980s), where all any 17-year-old kid wanted to do was get a car.

Upshot? I'm a better driver.

So there.

CD Sales Down, LP Sales Up | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Tammy Parnell,
Loan Officer
"I think at this point people are just fucking with the record industry as a whole."

from The Onion.

Today I took a step towards integration

As of 2003, a Big Mac cost almost one Quarter less in Canada.

Image via WikipediaA MOMENT of minor madness that surprised me saw the on-the-spot purchase of peas during my lunch break. Danes love peas. They eat them straight from the pod, bag upon bag of them. Parents give them to their kids here in the same way that parents in the UK placate their raging offspring with Big Macs (at least, that's how I remember it).

So, for the princely sum of 20 dkk, which is about 20 British pence, I bought this cup for my afternoon snack.

I am eating them as I write this. See their green, fresh goodness. Enjoy the satisfying pop somewhat akin to squeezing a bulbous polyp of acne, as you burst the pod and break the still tethered peas from their umbilical cords. Yes, fresh, health vegetables.

They taste disgusting.

But I am still eating them.

Is this their power?

They are growing on me.

Help. What shall I do?

Next I'll be eating carrots after lunch like my Danish colleagues - apparently they are an excellent, natural teeth-cleaner.