Friday, March 30, 2007

Na Kobunda! (Lingala)

After the success of my previous point-style post, I'm sticking to that format once again. (I'm sorry, but I'm really churning out good posts at the moment...)

Point One:
The project to get William Booth's 'I'll Fight' speech in as many languages as possible is really going well! I think a blog always works better if there's a project on the go. Since I last posted, the quote has been added in Dutch, Estonian, Lingala, Swabian German and two Swiss German dialects. And the Icelandic version has been improved - huge thanks to Anna, Philipp, Jóhanna, Lizette and the Clarks. So if you're reading this post and you speak another language or dialect fluently and think you can translate the quote (in the right-hand column) go for it! So, any Welsh, Scots, Gaelic, Czech, Russian speakers out there?! (or others, of course!)

Point Two:
Ok. This week, I was headed with Danni and Unnamed Friend 1 to a rehearsal in Romford. The journey was going very well (or so I thought). However, I wasn't on the road I thought I was on - which meant that I didn't follow signs to the road I should be on, because I thought I was on it. Got that? Anyway, we ended up in Rainham for a long time. We managed to get out of Rainham and into Romford - 'Great', we thought. 'We won't be so late now.' However, we somehow managed to completely bypass the centre of Romford and ended up right in Ilford town centre. Great. After driving around for a long time, we found a sign to Romford and followed it. Into a dead-end.

In the end, we just took any road that looked big and ended up in Seven Kings (I think that sounds like such a wonderful place). I know Seven Kings and was mightily relieved as we finally made our way to Romford Salvation Army. (Although slightly disappointed as we'd decided that if we didn't find it soon, we were going to go to McDonalds before going back.) And we were only 45 minutes late for the rehearsal.

But in order to keep the interest going, I gave Danni and Unnamed Friend 1 the Mitchenstein family history tour (as my parents lived in Ilford and Chadwell Heath and my mum lived in Seven Kings before that). So a waste of time was turned into a thrilling interactive history lesson. I think they'll agree.

And yes, on the way home we went through Harold Hill, but that's only because I'd never been there before and wanted to have a look round...

Only two points today - the other thing I was going to mention is how slow the blogging world has become recently, with lots of people taking huge blogging breaks... Things have improved since my last post, but not everyone is back to it yet!

Take care everyone.

And I thank you.

EDIT: Check out the poll in the right-hand column. Now, I know this isn't the hard-hitting journalism you've come to expect from Mitchenstein, but this was just a trial run. And you know it's fun anyway. (Looks like you'll need to refresh the page to see your vote added).

3 comments:

Katie said...

Haha. Even your rambling post can't do justice as to how long that journey actually was. And by the way, if I have mentioned you in all my posts by saying 'helpful people' (or whatever it was) then you have certainly mentioned me here!

I rest my case.

Unnamed Friend 1 (the effect is slightly lost here by the 'katie said' at the top of this comment...)

Glyn Harries said...

I don't think the Katie fast is really working for you. I think you just need to embrace who you are (and who you are is clearly someone mildly obsessed with Katie)

By the way, it was really good to see you on Monday. Sorry I didn't reply to your text.

Stephen said...

I can probably get you a Portugese version, but that depends on me remembering to ask my Portugese friends.

See if you can get "unnamed friend 1" to contribute to a Sat Nav for you next Christmas.

...And seeing how you find it necessary to number your unnamed friends makes one wonder how many unnamed friends you have - and does that mean that all the contacts in your phonebook are under the letter U?