Ok wow I just typed my first my very first words using the new keyboard I got today in Tatabanya and now that I have this Hungarian keyboard, let me see what it does: Tatab’anza hmmm no, the ‘ is supposed to be on top of the A, but that is ok, I am not going to be using this for Hungarian, not much anyway, and besides the names and cities would have to be reproduced in English spelling sooner or later anyway and we never went around spelling Zsa Zsa’s name (her LAST name ) with an accent, just Gabor and not G’abor –to say nothing of the fact that it was always pronounced ga BORE, instead of GAHbor, like it is done here in the homeland)
So what is going on is that I am looking at this Hungarian keyboard that has letters transposed on it(Z in place of Y, the zero to the left of the one, dollar sign and ‘e where we normally expect colon and semicolon-- I mean, those are the characters on the actual keys, the white writing on top of the black pushbuttons. BUT, because my pc is set up as an English language pc, it is not recognizing the electronic input as anything but a normal us keyboard. AH HAH, so all I have to do is what Mrs Underwood tried to teach me to do when I was in 4th grade and was taking private typing lessons from her, using her big Underwood typewriter (the name thing is a complete coincidence) and she kept saying DON’T LOOK AT THE KEYS LOOK AT THE PAPER which I did, mostly, just not when I was typing numbers, because that was sooooooooooooooo hard, and I still don’t with numbers, I always look at the keyboard, it’s just letters that I ignore and just type away blithely.
Internet is all fracked up (thank you Battlestar Galactica for such a useful word) here at the house. Had to go into school today to use it which was ok even though it was Saturday because I got brownie points as a result== it was exam day for prospective students, not that I had anything to do with that, but lots of teachers were there to administer the test and they saw that I was at school and I even had a moderately extensive discussion with the Director en francais sill vous plait about how things were going and I could truthfully say fine except for a few things at the apartment that needed fixing (did I mention the internet?) well there is also the balcony door that doesn’t close quite right and a broken shelf and some of the cupboard doors are out of whack, but hey, and I will be fine, really I will, as long as I find out WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, like oh yes, next Monday is short classes day, no nobody told me, I figured it out ALL BY MYSELF THANK YOU by studying the sheet posted on the bulletin board Oh yes, we are sorry, we forgot to tell you. And it is a damn good thing I do speak French and can speak frankly(ooooooh, don’t you love that pun?) to the director and say, you know, I am just clueless about the phototcopy machine here, it keeps asking me to input a code number and I have no idea what it is, and quick off we go to ZsuZsa, (not ZsuZsa the english teacher but ZsuZsa one of the main office secretaries) who informs the director that my code is 44444, I cant quite understand what they are saying because somehow I cant believe that such a transparent and hackable code would be assigned for something as sacred as the photocopy machine, but yes, that is the code and it does work and off I go and photocopy the textbook for my American history class (Paul,Perry, Lynn if you are reading this don’t get too upset –I have been repeatedly informed that Hungary gets some kind of pass on copyright laws, and even though this is a public school there is no such thing as state-provided textbooks, so…)
A N Y W A Y, like I said, I went in to fly the flag so to speak and use the internet, and then on the way home walked with one of the English teachers who was going to do some shopping and meet her son at the grocery store to go home, so we chat on the way to the store, about 20 min walk, and she is very grateful for the opportunity to engage in conversation, to be MEANINGFUL in English, not just repeat the conversations in the text
After our goodbyes I continue on to the lady who runs the vegetable stand and buy a whole bunch of veggiefruits—celery and tomatoes and cucumber bananas apples lettuce broccoli mushrooms plus some walnuts (big plump halves that strangely taste far less bitter than US walnuts) and a pound of birdseed (we’ll see if any of them start coming to the kitchen window)
So for lunch it is a big salad, then I keep putting stuff away, hang the clothes on the drying rack, organize myself a bit and then head off to the busstop to go to the mall in Tatabanya, a 10 km busride (about 15 min) where I spent about an hour in their equivalent of Best Buy (or is it circuit city, anyway, the one that did not go out of business), finally picking up just this keyboard and a new mouse (haven’t installed it yet, making do with the built in one at the moment), wandered around a bit, discovered that ALL (dammit, all!!) of the movies being shown there had the dialog dubbed into Hungarian, no Avatar in enlish with Hun subtitles, ditto for Sherlock Holmes, well FRACK is all I can say =and so I packed my disappointment along with my purchases and returned on the bus to Tata (OH VIRUTOUS ME—I got off at the bus station before the one closest to my house so I could (a) walk some more and (b) pick up some milk at the market because I am running low, but I got there just after 5 and they were closed. Is ok, they are open at 7 or so on Sundays, so I can still have my milk with coffee, only here it is 0%, 1.5%, and 3.8%, NO TWO PERCENT MILK I AM DYING HERE GUYS, so I’ll just have to buy two 1.5s and mix them with one 3.8, that will be close enough for private sector work I think.
No milk today then, but home and just fixed an omelet with onions and mushrooms and cheese using two eggs labled FRIS TOYAS, I should have checked what FRIS really means because these eggs had yolks that were the color of a Maxfield Parrish sunset, they were violently orange, like oranges off the tree orange, but what the hey I beat them up with a fork and cooked them in with the onions and mushrooms and a little Edam cheese and that was dinner and I had a beer to go with it and now I feel good and I have written all this stuff with my new keyboard I cant tell you how much faster it goes with a real keyboard instead of the little pc, well I can too, like about 300% faster, like WOWEEEEZOOOOM look at me mommy look at me type mommy see how fast I can type mommy mommy look at me……
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