That illusive definite article.

“Why are you reading that with an accent?”,  was the question that was put to me this morning when Travelling Companion gave me a little brochure that gets handed out to visitors to one of the far off plant locations of the Company that Cannot be Named.   The brochure was obviously written by someone whose first language was not English,  and whose mother tongue was of a Slavic nature.  I can’t be more specific or I’ll get in trouble here.  So it seemed natural that I should lay it on a little thick.

And I mean, that’s only because that’s the way it was written.  We won’t get into definite and indefinite articles here,  or how we use them in English while others find they can skip that little annoyance. 

The somewhat sad part is,  this was something they were handing out to visitors arriving at the site!  Oh boy.   So I dutifully made some corrections,  printed it out,  and Travelling Companion will take it to work tomorrow.   Hopefully these hard working folks aren’t too proud to put it to use.

I have say,  this isn’t the first time I’ve had a look at something and was slightly horrified.   This kind of thing goes way back to when I worked for yet another Restaurant chain,  and some of the guys I worked with,  while being pretty sharp operators,  hadn’t really honed their ability to write coherent English.  I never got around to asking,  but I would have guessed that half of the supervisory staff had barely made it out of high school.

It got to the point when all memos would find their way to my desk,   just to be given the “once over”.   I think the origins of that procedure started with me tentatively asking one of my associates,  “Um,  what are you trying to say here?”  I had to be quite diplomatic,  since these guys were my peers.  

Here in Europe,  crappy English usage is pretty rampant.  I can sort of tolerate it, mock it even, but in a large multi-national company like TCTCBN,  there’s bound to be someone with a pretty good grasp of English who is willing to help out.  The trick is to not be too proud to ask,  which I think is the issue with these “Slavic” folks?

 Is good enough. Da!

 

OK, ‘nuff of that.   

Pretty normal day here in Wienerland.   Had another vicious thunder storm move through last night.   I had the place buttoned up,  thankfully.   It’s been an air-conditioning day today though.    Whenever there’s full sunshine,  we get pretty toasty up here on the top floor.

So,  let’s see if you can figure out what one of the activities was today?

 

 

 

 

It was/is really good,  but I think I’m done eating for the day.  I put the ground beef in the freezer,  since there’s no way we’re making supper now.   Kind of had burgers in mind.

See,  when we were in Slovenia a couple weeks ago, (is it already that long ago?)  as the way these things go,  the cousin in Sava loaded us up with a bunch of veggies from her garden.   The fresh tomatoes (*drool*) and peppers were easy to dispatch,  but she gave us this honkin’ big zucchini…

C’mon. Seriously?  

There was no damned way we were going to simply give it the heave either.  That would be just wrong.  Bad Karma.  Venial sin.  Whatever.  Maybe it’s the “farmer Bob” in me,  but throwing out food just doesn’t sit all that well with me.

Smallish,  normal sized zucchinis I can handle,  since they usually end up sliced up and either added to pasta sauce or on the BBQ,  but handling this big one was a bit of a challenge.

T.C. thought she’d try to find a recipe on line,  and came up with this rather filling cake kind of thing.  Awesomely good,  but wow.  Like I said,  one piece just about did me in.   And yes,  I realise it doesn’t quite look like the one on the website,  so bite me.   When you’re trying to decide what bake ware to have the movers pack up and ship half ways across the world,  sometimes you forget stuff.  We probably have that particular style of baking dish back home,  but just not here is all.   NOT going out to buy more either.  Got enough stuff.   And instead of smearing the roasted ground up pecans on the outside,  T.C. just added them to the frosting.  Tasted mighty fine to me.

 

Trying not to slip into a food induced coma here.

 

Keep your elbows off the table.

 

Thanks for stopping in.

 

 

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