Planet Cola » Category: Funny

Scottish

Ring ring….

D: “Hi, Daughter of Mrs.X speaking.”

Me: “Hi, this is Anja, is Mrs.X available?”

D: “Yes, just a moment”

Background noise. Mrs.X is busy doing something.

Mrs.X from the background to D: “Who is it, love?”

D to Mrs.X: “I don’t know, I think she is Scottish.”

Must I be proud now?
Or is it a typical case of “if you totally don’t understand an English accent it might be Scottish”?

I told my boss (who also has a very strong Norfolk (British) accent) and he laughed and said that I can be proud of my English. How funny, because I only said these seven words.

The other week a customer asked me if my accent is from Southern Africa. A friend growing up in Johannesburg said that the accent down there is quite heavy. Weird, do I have such a thick accent? Impossible…I still sound German in my ears. Ok, maybe with a tiny bit of American-Canadian-Irish-Scottish-Mix from Nathan.

Funny enough, people are never guessing that I am German. Mostly they guess all kinds of European countries, but they never think of Germany. Even not all Germans that I meet know/guess that I am German when I speak to them. Yes, I’m talking English as fast and as German now…ha ha.

Funniest thing happening today

Jun 25, 2009 ~ filed under: A-life & English & Funny ~ 0 comments »

In facebook I have a request from a person (male) wanting to become friends, which means to actually be able to see my full profile on facebook and generally be able to exchange messages.
Normally I get quite a few requests from random people I don’t know or from people who know some of my friends but I don’t know the person.
This one is different, because the guy has no photo in his profile and no friends so far, which is a little bit weird. First I thought, ah, I would know a guy with that first name, but the surname didn’t fit.
Well, I think it is weird that I am the only person in his friend’s list then and why hasn’t he got at least a photo? Suscpicious….just spam?
I was too curious and wrote that person a message:

“hey, you added me as friend. who are you? do i know you?”

Today came the answer:

“Hello my dear Anja,
I´m a little bit insulted. I used to be your boyfriend. How are you doing?”

Social network befriendings…

Apr 1, 2009 ~ filed under: A-life & English & Funny ~ 0 comments »

Lately in my Facebooks message inbox.
A long list of mainly guys were sitting in my friend request line in Facebook for quite a while (months or so), until I decided to accept their “friends”-request (as I’ve read the ‘motivating’ blog entry of Julia).
Well, you can see what happened:

Guy 1:

hi how r u
i dont know wat to say here 1st time
just wanna friendship with u
hmmmm
and yah i dont know that i have to say that u look beautiful or nice or hot or sexy cause i know already so many guys told u before so i think leave it
waiting for ur reply

“Kind” as I am I answered:

Hi thanks, I just thought I give it a try and accept a few friend requests from people I don’t know.
I’m not available for flirting or anything like that.

Guy 1′s response:

hahaha
if i tell u so u will not belive me
but really when i was looking ur pics so i was thinking abt u that may be we will good good friends and really i mean it cause u look so naughty and fun loving so thats y i was thinking abt u like this
nd by the way i wanna tell u that i am no more in dubai now cause i lost my job 1 week ago cause of this fuckin recession and now i am at my home with my family:D
so tell me wanna be friends?

What would be my answer?

Guy 2 who was also sitting in my request line for ages:

hay there…Hw r ya?Do i know ya??U added me on your friend request..

My reply:

Haha, no YOU added me; a while ago. I thought you tell me if and from where we might know each other…haha! =)

No reply after that.

Guys!!

Correct spelling in “normal” English is totally uncool nowadays, I guess. I always find it really exhausting to read through these slang short forms of words. “hw r ya” “how are you”, come on, it doesn’t take 2 seconds to write this!

14666 x spam instead of ham in my Gallery2

Mar 18, 2009 ~ filed under: A-life & Deutsch & English & Funny ~ 7 comments »

D Ich weiss schon warum die Zahl 666 in Verbindung mit dem Teufel steht. Soeben habe ich festgestellt, das meine externe (bisher nicht so öffentliche) Fotogalerie 14,666 Spamkommentare inne hat. Ja, gehts noch? Ich habe mich schon länger nicht mehr mit meiner Gallery2 beschäftigt und überlege eh seit einiger Zeit vielleicht doch auf die zahlreichen kostenlosen Fotohoster (Picasa, flickr, Ipernity, ZenPhoto, etc.) auszuweichen. Nun weiss ich ja, wie man seine eigene Bildergalerie installiert, hosted, anpasst und hegt und pflegt und könnte mich schön zurücklehnen und das hosten jemand anderes überlassen, z.B. flickr/yahoo oder Picasa/g00gle. Ich bin schon seit einiger Zeit bei flickr und seit Kurzem teste ich auch Picasa und muss sagen, beide haben was für sich. Flickr würde ich allerdings wenn, dann nur in der Pro Version nutzen, was hiesse, dass es $2 pro Monat kostet, dann aber unendlich Speicherplatz bietet. Picasa bietet 1GB for free, was schon ausreichen könnte, aber wenn man Bilder in Originalgrösse hochlädt, ist das auch schnell ausgeschöpft. Ich finde das flickr Design nicht so intuitiv zu bedienen, wie Picasa, wenn man an die Familie denkt, die gerade erst mit den ersten Schritten im web anfängt. Für flickr gibt es allerdings mehr plugins für Blogs, um die Fotos einzubinden. Flickr ist weiter verbreitet; gibts ja auch schon länger.

Ist an sich ne feine Sache, mit ner eigens gehosteten Galerie (wie der Gallery2) alles unter Kontrolle zu haben. Aber so langsam sehe ich nicht mehr ein, jeden Monat 5 Euro zu zahlen, um (unter anderem) meine Bilder im Netz zu haben oder meinen Blog zu schreiben. Und da ich eh bald mehr Speicherplatz brauche, und ich es jetzt schon nervig finde, jedes Bild so klein im Speicherbedarf wie möglich zu machen, nur damit ich mehr Platz auf meinen Webseiten habe, werde ich wohl eine der bequemen Möglichkeiten wählen. Erstmal die AGB’s beider vergleichen…hehe! Wer kommt besser weg? Ich weiss ja, wie sehr alle auf G00gle schimpfen, aber ist Yahoo da so viel besser?

Zurück zu meiner Fotogalerie. Ich kann die Kommentarfunktion der Gallery2 natürlich abschalten, aber mag es, wenn jemand ein Bild kommentiert. Aber nur wenn der jemand ein Mensch und kein Spam-Roboter mit Linkschleuderfunktionalitäten ist! Und ich wundere mich, warum mein Hosting Speicher fast ausgeschöpft ist… löschen löschen löschen…von den 14,666 Kommentaren waren ganze 3 kein Spam. Hat vom Speicherplatz zwar nur um die 45MB freigeschauffelt, aber immerhin. So, und nun wohin mit den Bildern?

E I know why the number 666 is in connection with the devil. Just now I found out that I have 14,666 spam comments in my external (yet not so public) photo gallery. Just insane! I haven’t logged into my Gallery2 for quite a while. Also, lately I was thinking of switching to one of the free photo hosting websites (picasa, flickr, ipernity, zenphoto, etc.). Now that I know how to install, host, adjust and care and maintain my own photo gallery, I could lay back, relax and let other companies host my photos….for free (I know the hooks with photo licensing, which is the reason I didn’t use them yet).
I am paying $10(AU) a month at the moment, to host my blog and my photos, with having 1GB of space (now less than 200MB left). I will run out of space soon, if I don’t upgrade. The upgrade is another $4(AU) a month. Too much!
For unlimited photo hosting I could pay $2 a month if I use flickr (I already have a free account, which would not be enough for me), for example. Although I don’t like their gallery design and wonder how my family and the older generation would be able to navigate through?
Here I think Picasa is a bit better. Giving me 1GB for free and having a more intuitive gallery design (that even my new-to-the-internet-dad knows how to navigate through). So, I am already trying out Picasa (G00gle) and think 1GB could be enough for me at the moment. I really like their desktop photo management tool and how easy it is to upload the photos. That’s what I am looking for. Something where I can quick edit photos, making them smaller for web, giving titles or tags and online it all goes. I probably stick with Picasa for the more private photos and flickr for the special photos? I wonder how it works for both if you want to hide albums from the public…which service is handling it better?

Back to my own hosted gallery. I could switch commenting in my Gallery2 off, but I do like the comment functionality and I know that especially family and close friends like to comment on them. Damn spam problem though. I was wondering why my hosting memory is almost at the limit…delete delete delete…from all 14,666 comments only 3 haven’t been spams. Deleting them all freed up about 45MB memory, at least something. Still I only have less than 200MB on my webspace and need to think of either shrinking stuff, deleting or moving to free hosting sites (as mentioned above).

D #Hinzufügung:
Es gibt anscheinend Leute, die ihr gesamtes Leben via kompletter Fotosammlung auf flickr verewigen (und alles öffentlich, uiuiui)…scheint also keine Begrenzungen in der Anzahl der Fotoalben bzw. im Speicherplatz bei Flickr zu geben, oder? Bei den Picasa-thumbnails finde ich die regelbare Skalierung der Grösse allerdings ein nettes Feature. Bei flickr ist alles nur so zusammegeklatscht und alle thumbnails haben die gleiche Grösse. Dafür gibt es diese nette Alben in Alben Struktur, was Picasa wiederum nicht kann.