Crisis and catharsis at the fleamarket

Helluva year so far.

Let me recap the blogless months. I visited the States and got engaged to a lovely Statesian lady. My father passed away. I got married, in Scotland, in a kilt, to said lovely lady. I visited the States again. Now I'm waiting on the outcome of a petition for a visa to be able to live with my wife stateside. All while trying to breathe life into my start-up company and keep the pennies flowing in, while stopping too many pennies from flowing out.

Helluva year so far.

One of the issues with moving (and moving in) after 44 years of singledom and 12 years in the same flat is that I have stuff. Too much stuff. And it can't all cross the pond and fit into the new flat apartment.

Solution: fleamarket.

I could just try to tip all my stuff into the big communal bin, of course, but that (a) wouldn't bring in any pennies and (b) isn't very socially/environmentally sound. I like money and recycling.

The problem is what to sell and what not to sell. Some stuff is a relief to get rid of, in the manner of baggage that you never knew you didn't need. In other cases, if you decide to heart-wrenchingly part with an item, and a week later it still hasn't been sold, what the heck is wrong with it anyway?

Plus, my living-room is full of plastic stackable boxes, and likely to be so for a few months.

Ah! Life, eh?

Two bits divide

For grits and shins (as you might almost say), the bits of Bruce are dividing in twain.

You may consider this a bit rich, considering that no bits have been posted here for a year. However, the business bits are now elsewhere. The personal bits (or what I choose to reveal, which lately is less than a nun in a space suit), remain here.

Business-minded bods may please feel free to click thus:
thetextbiz.blogspot

Intercultural indices of the breakfast egg

There I was, with two other naked blokes, talking about eggs.

No, really. If you're Finnish or if you've spent any significant time in Finland, the situation seems less foreign. It's a sauna thing, see. People discard their clothes to sit and sweat together, and pass the time in either perspiration-soaked silence or small talk.

This time it was small talk. Which meandered in the direction of intercultural diversity.

At this point, I should explain that I've just returned to Finland after a bout of globetrotting to and from the two Uniteds: Kingdom and States. The Kingdom is much as it ever was, and maybe much as it ever shall be. The States, on the other hand, is still an object of some cultural puzzlement.

Or to put it another way, the States makes me feel like an object of some cultural puzzlement.

An infamous misquotation hangs in the air, with the two same nations still divided by the same common language, and the authorship (Shaw or Wilde, both Irish) still unresolved. But at this moment, the pith seems to be epitomised by eggs.

Actually, I'm spreading the yolk somewhat. It's not an Anglo thing, it's European-North American intercultural diversity hanging like an improperly punched chad in the frontal lobe of my mind.

One much-regurgitated personal tale from the Bulgaria of old concerns my favourite menu item of the times: Хемъндекс без Яйце (that is, 'ham and eggs without egg').

The lack of said breakfast item in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall is neatly juxtaposed by the market saturation on the other side of the pond in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Lehman Brothers.

There still, the unwary European traveller can be befuddled by waitresses who, intent on earning their 20% tip, want to know whether the eggs are to be 'over easy' or 'sunny side up' (and whether the sausages are to be 'patty' or 'string'; and which of any number of variants of milk/cream/milk-cream mix is to be preferred).

And hence it strikes me, with not a little irony, that in Europe I may not understand what is said, but I do most often get the meaning. In America, where we have that common tongue, I can mostly tune in to what people say. The puzzle more often is what they mean.