Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

This morning was a great morning. And I needed a great morning. I woke up to discover that since I started my last health-kick, I have lost 7lbs! (Over three kilos to those Europeans who read this). And gone from belt hole 5 to belt hole 3 (not since yesterday obviously). So that was nice. And then while walking to the station I was accompanied by a squirrel on the way. And then university went really well. The only thing that would have made it more Hollywood, as far as happy days go, would have been if the squirrel and I had stopped and sung a duet together.

I'm 23 years old. Often I think that's quite old, but then the other day it dawned on me that it really isn't. It can't be that old - look at Elmo and Big Bird below. It's just that I very rarely get to act like a 23 year old, if you know what I mean. And by that, I just mean have some fun with friends. I love everything I'm involved in at the moment, really I do. I've tried a couple of extra things but they haven't really worked out, so I'll need to put my thinking cap on there. That's one of the reasons why I'm really looking forward to music school this summer.And I can tell you now that I definitely won't be blogging next week I'm afraid as I have a three day exam. This is a short post, but revision calls.

Coming!

This post was originally called 'Belts and Big Birds', but then I suddenly realised that that might be somewhat misleading as to the actual content of the post.

My Defence of Eurovision

I have decided to use my 51st post (please note how quickly this has appeared after my 50th post - I'm getting better!) to defend the Eurovision Song Contest. Now, I realise that this may not be the post of mine which gets most comments, but that doesn't matter. Since the contest, I've seen many people complaining about how the Eastern countries vote for their friends, etc. Much of this has come from Terry Wogan, who revealed his poor knowledge of geography ('Georgia must be near Serbia'), history ('Armenia is a former satellite state') and memory ('Baltic voting again' - before the Baltic countries had voted). I thought it was a great contest!

Here are some facts:

1. This block voting that Terry Wogan talks about - countries voting for their friends - is simply wrong. It's not countries voting for their friends at all. The borders of eastern Europe do not tie up with the borders between ethnic groups as they largely do in the western countries. Consequently, does Estonia always give good points to Russia because they are friends (which they most certainly are not) or because nearly 26% of the population of Estonia are ethnic Russians? Nearly 29% of the population of Latvia are ethnic Russians. I believe there are large numbers of ethnic Russians in every one of the former Soviet states. The same is true in the south - 38% percent of the Bosnian population are ethnic Serbs. The line 'Bosnia gives points to its best friend, Serbia', just isn't accurate.

2. Terry Wogan seems to forget that many of these areas - the 'ex-Soviet block', the 'Scandinavian Block' and 'the Balkan block' (interestingly, Wogan seems to use the terms Balkan and Baltic interchangeably) share celebrities. Did Belarus get top points from Russia because the two countries are friends, or because the Belarusian singer came very high in the Russian version of Pop Idol? The singer from FYROM is a big celebrity in all of the former Yugoslav countries. The Ark, from Sweden, are very popular all over Scandinavia. Cultures and tastes are often very similar between neighbouring countries.

3. Languages. Serbia sang in Serbian, a language spoken and understood in Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia and Montenegro (although Slovenia and Macedonia have their own languages too). They can understand the songs! If one year, every country sang in Serbian apart from maybe Hungary that sang in English - I think Hungary would get quite a lot of the British points!

4. 'No-one voted for the Western countries.' Yes, that's true. Including the Western countries. The only reason the United Kingdom got points from Malta was because many Maltese had decided to boycott the Eastern European countries - they were protest points. (The UK song had 'nul points' written all over it!)

5. Yes, it seems that Cyprus and Greece always give each other points (and Ireland often gives them to the UK, but that's ok), but this never affects the winning song. Finland won last year (never won before), Latvia and Estonia have both won recently (and got crappy points ever since).

My rant is over! Something must be right about the contest if nearly 11 million Brits watched it! I thought the music was of a high class too (at the beginning, before the Ukraine, UK and Romania got their hands on it...)

PS: Quite a lot of people seem to have been quite taken with the German performance. I can tell you that Roger Cicero's album Männersachen is fantastic (it's in German of course) and it's available from www.amazon.de priced €14.95 (if you want the version with Frauen Regier'n die Welt on it). A brilliant CD.

Me Again...

So... yes, I promised that May would mark the return to my days of blogging glory. However, May is turning out to be a bit of a sucky month in several ways, so I apologise for how long it's taken me to get this post done. Today was also coursework deadline day... Nuff said.

Point One
So, Katie (yes, the embargo is over and I can now mention her by name once more) finally delivered the Tagalog translation of the William Booth quote, so that's now at home in the right-hand column. The Slovak quote has also been updated (Anna managed to forget the pretty important bit about God). To celebrate the end of the Katie embargo, I will tell you an exciting fact about Katie. Sometimes, when she speaks, it's like she's a really bad actress.

Look out for that.

Point Two
I recently discovered a blog the other day, which I found very cool. It's the exact kind of thing I love. Two guys have decided to try and prove how global London is by finding a national of every single one of the world's 192 countries. Hence the London picture at the top of this post. This national has to be living here, not just on holiday, and they have to live in London - no commuters. This is the kind of idea I wish I'd had first... Check out www.worldinonecity.blogspot.com. They're up to 71 countries. Not bad, not bad.

Point Three
My health-kick is back on - I'm determined to carry round less of the lard by the time summer comes round. I've often started a health-kick and they don't usually last too long. But now, I've discovered that one of my tops accentuates my man boobs, so I'm wearing that one a lot to remind me of the task ahead.

Point Four
This is my fiftieth post - is that worthy of a mention?

Point Five
As all of my close friends will know (if you didn't know, then you're obviously not a close friend ;) ), I'm a little bit of a Eurovision fan. And the other day I was watching Swedish TV (as I do to keep my Swedish up to scratch) and they had a programme about Eurovision on it. It had a bit about how Georgia is in the Eurovision for the first time and what a massive deal it is for them to be accepted as part of Europe and start to look towards a new, exciting future after years of war and hardship. The President of Georgia even spoke to say how proud he was and how he had always longed for Georgia to be able to join in. You see how some of the Eastern European countries put in their very top performers and how seriously they take it. And then you look at the United Kingdom who sents in whatever rejects they can find who dance around with suitcases making pretty banal innuendos (although they do have nice voices). One guy said 'And this is from the land of the Beatles?' On the one hand it seems a little disrespectful and on the other hand it's kinda embarrassing.

But not half as embarrassed as I'd feel tomorrow night if I was from the Ukraine! Just you wait.

But it's all fun!

All that's left to say is:

VOTE GERMANY and

SLOVENIA!!!

(Obviously those are two different countries. It's not like Bosnia and Herzegovina or Trinidad and Tobago or anything like that. If you're from Germany, you'll have to just vote for Slovenia or maybe Serbia. Or drive over the border - there's one not far from you - to vote for Germany, but that's a little silly. OK?)

AAARGH!!

I needed that.

People, I am well aware that April was not my best month for blogging - yes, the posts I did put up were rather good, but I didn't really blog at the frequency I should have. I know. And I feel bad. But these last few weeks have been like AAARGH!! You know, when things you were excited about don't quite turn out as planned, etc. And I thought, well maybe people come to Mitchenstein to be entertained and or cheered up and I can't go throwing negativity around so I waited. And waited. Also, due to the amount of study I have at the moment, I haven't really had much else to blog about. And no-one wants to know about my translation from Norwegian or postcolonial translation theories if they're honest. And I think we should be.

So here are some positive things:

Point One:

This is a picture of me introducing Hokey-Cokey Elmo to Tickle-Me Elmo Extreme:

This was from October. but I thought this was a good a time as any to put it up.

Point Two:

And since I last posted, the William Booth Quote campaign (it's a campaign now, not a project) has picked up speed again and I now have it in Latvian, Greek, Korean and Slovak - so thanks to Evie, Haris, Tim and Anna. Unnamed Friend 1 also managed to get it for me in Tagalog. Before losing it. Apparently some of you can't see the Greek and/or Korean versions as your computers don't have the fonts... Well I can assure you they really are there - I can see them! 23 languages down, but... quite a few to go. Can YOU help?

Point Three:

So, Please Don't to Cry received quite a positive... reception. Keep your eyes peeled for Mitchenstein, the album, featuring Please Don't to Cry in an exciting Bhangra mix.