...as you may have realised by now. But when someone at work mistakenly points out that the sentence I have just typed should say "follow up", not "full up", and the rest of the sentence says "until Christmas", I must say I get a bit miffed. Especially when coming from someone whose spelling I've already seen; I don't feel too bad about my English, actually, and it is improving every day. My oral English, however...ay caramba! I usually shut up, really, because I want everything to be perfect before I involve other people. Not going to happen, by the way. Which is really annoying. I will, because of my age, always have an accent. Argh! Anyway, this bloke at work speaks the most outrageously ridiculous Norwegian-accented English which embarrasses me. But he keeps talking to everyone and he's made lots of acquaintances there. I, on the other hand, keeps mumbling and only speak to other if I really, really have to. LOL! His accent is amazing, though. I didn't think anyone from our generation would speak like that, and definitely not if they'd already spent three years in English-speaking countries. (For Norwegians' reference: Think Thor Heyerdahl. See? Bet you Fredrik Skavlan's English sounds like James Bond's to you now!)

I'm going to moan a bit about British banking again. It's crap.

There, I said it. No, but seriously, I don't understand how they get away with it. Probably because the customers don't have anything to compare it with. You have to see my bank's Online banking service - click here. I think I agree with my flatmate when she tried to sum up the level of technology they use for everything over here: 'It's like they had a surge of computer technology when it started popping up in the seventies, and then it just sort of stayed in that decade'. I think it's slightly exaggerated, because they clearly have discovered the Internet and HTML...but only just. This online banking service I'm talking about, for instance -- you can do just about nothing with it. At least nothing compared to what I'm used to. And the security is sort of iffy. They're also making a big deal of the new chip and PIN cards over here now. To be honest with you, I've seen loads of people paying for goods with their credit or debit cards, and not a single person using cheques, so I guess it's the banks that can't keep up. Or it's because I live in a big city where people tend to embrace new things quicker.

OK, moaning over for now.

I just have to mention Space Cadets. Before the ultimate and probably highly nervewracking LIVE episode tonight, I must say that we've been watching the whole show feeling both emotional, happy and guilty. Emotional because we've kind of put ourselves in their shoes when they've gone into 'space', or 'a simulator in Ipswich', as the rest of us have called it, happy because it's been a lot of fun, and guilty because we're actually watching the show. I feel so sorry for them and I have very mixed feelings about seeing the live show tonight, when they're going to reveal the whole hoax. It's been a brilliant idea put to life, though. Very impressive what they've done, and I think it's much more about the crew behind the hoax than the unlucky contestants. I mean, swapping everything in an old US military base with their Russian counterparts just so that they wouldn't realise they were still in England? One of my favourite parts was the flight, though. The plane, I mean, when they flew for three and a half hours, taking lots of large turns and eventually ending up just a short ride away from where they started. And they were all amazed that they were in Russia, and how cold it was ('this must be Russia, it's so cold'), when in fact they were in Suffolk, slightly more south from where they began their trip. Our minds really make us believe the strangest things.

Current track: The Raveonettes - Beat City

Labels: linguistics, personal, technology, TV