More Catch-Up
Apr. 22nd, 2009 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreSouth African English: I have probably mentioned my fascination with variant English vocabularies here before and none is quite so fascinating as South African English. My favorite term is "robot" (meaning a traffic light) since I was so completely baffled by a set of directions in Pretoria which told me to turn at the robot. Most other oddities are Afrikaans words that have crept into English, e.g. "braai" (meaning "barbecue" and a word you can't go more than about 48 hours in South Africa without hearing).
I'm in the middle of reading one of Arthur Goldstuck's books on South African urban legends and ran across two terms which were new to me. The first was "smalls," apparently to refer to classified ads. The other reference was to a commercial being "flighted" on television. Obviously, that means "aired," but it strikes me as a strange usage and possibly a translation back from Afrikaans.
Printing Error of the Week: Ryan Zimmerman (and, possibly other Nationals players) were seen at a game a few days ago wearing jerseys that read "Natinals" on the front. The company that makes the jerseys apologized. I suppose it wouldn't occur to a baseball player to proofread his uniform.
Movies: I saw Duplicity over the weekend. I liked it, though I thought a few plot points were improbable at best. I was particularly pleased with a love scene in which one gets to see that Clive Owens has chest hair. Yes, I am shallow.
Another Baseball Item: Every Major League Baseball team but one is selling single game tickets for their entire season by now. That one is the New York Mets. I'd really like to go up and see their new ballpark this summer, so I wish they would at least tell me when tickets will be on sale.
Airfare: As I may have mentioned, I bought a ticket to Lima for under $250 for later this year. Today, I bought a ticket for a quick excursion to Fort Lauderdale in June. That cost just about $200. Don't even try to figure out the logic. (And, no, it would not have been cheaper to fly into Miami. In fact, the fares to Miami were all around $350.)
I'm in the middle of reading one of Arthur Goldstuck's books on South African urban legends and ran across two terms which were new to me. The first was "smalls," apparently to refer to classified ads. The other reference was to a commercial being "flighted" on television. Obviously, that means "aired," but it strikes me as a strange usage and possibly a translation back from Afrikaans.
Printing Error of the Week: Ryan Zimmerman (and, possibly other Nationals players) were seen at a game a few days ago wearing jerseys that read "Natinals" on the front. The company that makes the jerseys apologized. I suppose it wouldn't occur to a baseball player to proofread his uniform.
Movies: I saw Duplicity over the weekend. I liked it, though I thought a few plot points were improbable at best. I was particularly pleased with a love scene in which one gets to see that Clive Owens has chest hair. Yes, I am shallow.
Another Baseball Item: Every Major League Baseball team but one is selling single game tickets for their entire season by now. That one is the New York Mets. I'd really like to go up and see their new ballpark this summer, so I wish they would at least tell me when tickets will be on sale.
Airfare: As I may have mentioned, I bought a ticket to Lima for under $250 for later this year. Today, I bought a ticket for a quick excursion to Fort Lauderdale in June. That cost just about $200. Don't even try to figure out the logic. (And, no, it would not have been cheaper to fly into Miami. In fact, the fares to Miami were all around $350.)
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Date: 2009-04-23 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-23 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-23 05:21 pm (UTC)What always confused me is the variations of "pap" (braai pap, mealie pap, mealie meal, etc.): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pap_(food). By far my favorite staple at a braai. Every time I would ask someone about it, they would be confused and then spring another term for the same thing on me.
Re: baseball tickets. You can always go the stubhub.com route. We've done that before (tickets for BAL and TOR) and the premium isn't bad for hard to find tickets. I recently checked them for BOS-WSH in late June, and then for PHI and NYM on the drive home (but I think we'll only be seeing the Sox-Nationals game).
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Date: 2009-04-23 05:23 pm (UTC)But, spot-checking various dates (including November, during the school year), I was still coming up with $600 to $800 per seat.
Timing is everything, so I'll keep checking. Thanks again...
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Date: 2009-04-24 03:39 am (UTC)Re: baseball tickets, I would use stubhub if the games were sold out, but the Mets have actually not put anything past May on sale yet. So the only tickets on stubhub would be from season ticket holders who weren't planning to go and I'm not sure they would decide this far out.
Which Sox-Nats game are you going to? I'm going both on the 23rd and the 25th. (The former is with the MIT Club of Washington, but then I got a chance in the 2nd round of the ticket lottery and couldn't resist.)
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Date: 2009-04-24 12:40 pm (UTC)For those not experienced with this, it's a little bit like grits, except a bit more coarse, and perhaps cooked a little thicker.