car didn't start

I helped out with a car problem yesterday. Turns out the battery was seriously dead. When the auto service guy came by to give them a jump, it still wouldn't start. He tried first with a small, portable battery and next by parking his truck ("bakkie" in local speak) next to the car and jumping it directly. Minna called a local garage - across the street! - they put a new battery and it worked right away.

The battery was an old unsealed wet-cell type. I haven't seen one of those since the 1970s, as Minna mentioned. It's one where the electrolyte can evaporate over time so you need to pop the cap and add the sulphuric acid mix. I remember my grandfather having a jug of battery acid around to top off the battery, and a device for measuring the SO4 level though the density. It was a small bulb-type dropper with balls inside at slightly different densities. Specifically, a ball-type hydrometer. I've only seen the gel-type batteries.

This was a car-type problem I could help out with. I've replaced car batteries, and two starter motors. Replacing the one one my old '82 AMC Spirit was easy. Replacing Chuck's .. Datsun, I think .. was harder. It was hard to reach, and the first replacement part I got from AutoZone didn't work! The second did, which was a relief to me as otherwise I would have thought I was doing something wrong.

It's easy to diagnose too.

A difference between me and a mechanic is the mechanic said his next step was to check the alternator and see if it was putting out enough current. After all, why did the battery go bad in the first place.

guavas

Growing up in Miami, we had a guava tree in our back yard. Rather, it was right in the region where the side yard became the back yard. It was a slim tree, and not all that big. Not one which was all that interesting to climb, given the banyan trees in the neighborhood.

I didn't much like that tree. Maggots would quickly infest the fallen fruit, and the smell of rotting guava was rather strong. Worse yet was it was often my job to mow the law. With both the guava and mango trees it was best to go beforehand and pick up the rotted fruit as otherwise when the blade hits it -- splat! Bug/juice.

The mango tree wasn't as bad. Its fruit were bigger, fewer, and easier to spot. They had a nice gradation of colors, with green, red, and yellow skin, getting spotted as they got riper. The maggots were rarely as bad as with the plentiful little guavas.

This came back to me here at the Lehvaslaiho's in Hout Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa. I went through their gate and wondered what it was that I smelled. Apricot? No. Hmm. After some thought "guava?" Heikki didn't know. It was dark. The next day I looked. The fruit was a different shape, and didn't have bugs in it. The tree was also a different, broader, more lush form. But the bark had that thin papery bark I remember so well.

"fika" in the US

I visited Craig and Rachel (and David) before coming to South Africa. They live in California. We were driving down 101 and I saw the sign for a local amusement park/games place called "Scandia Fun Center." The sign in front had the word "fika." So of course I had to check it out.

It's a small amusement park with video games and amusement arcade games inside, go-carts, baseball hitting, and other games outside. Nothing like Sweden. Checked out the menu for the snack bar. Nothing at all like a Swedish snack bar. The closest was that Häagen-Dazs was available for sale. That ice cream name is a made-up word and sounds very strange if I try to pronounce it as if it was Swedish.

it's done

Well, it's done. About 10 days ago -- the day after I arrived in Pretoria -- I handed in my Swedish residency permit application. I could have done it earlier in the US but that would have been a bit more complicated. The Swedish embassy here is within walking distance while in the US I would have had to send my passport to L.A.

I started working on it after the Python conference. I spent a lot of time on my talk for the conference, then spent time working on my business plans. I think I can only write so much per week, and beyond that I don't have much time for blogging like this.

The first few drafts were very technical. I had many, many pages of different possibilities. Craig pointed out it was more that I was trying to convince myself that it would work, and not the Swedish government. He convinced me to drastically shorten it. The result was about 1/2 page for the plan, 1/2 page for marketing, and a few more pages for the other requirements. I only really talked about the consulting side of things. While I did mention some other possibilities I left out a lot of depth.

Ayton went with me to the embassy, to help with directions. The woman at the desk didn't know what to do so she got another woman to help me out. I said "I'm would like to apply for residency for Sweden as a self-employed person." She gave me the form to fill out. I pointed out that I had all the information ready to submit.

This was the first time she'd done the self-employed permit using migrationsverket's new electronic system. I figure there aren't many who apply to Sweden as a self-employed person, and of course even fewer doing so through the South Africa consulate. I had to pay R1000, deposited into their bank before processing continued. Took care of that, again with Ayton's help.

Sat around for a bit while she entered the forms into the system. There was a bit of confusion, again because of the newness of the process. It wanted "employer in Sweden", so she used an AstraZeneca contact. Waited some more .. and it was done.

Now the wait. Migrationsverket by email said it would be about 5 months before I hear back. I should check online to see how things are going.

Icelandic

Grr.. Can't use this new blogger account in Safari. Writing a new post causes the spinning ball of business to appear and drives Safari to 100% CPU. Firefox it is then.

I was tracking down the source of the name "Iceland." Someone else saw the Icelandic name "Ísland" and thought that it was the same as the English word "Island". It's not. Years ago I read that in the 1800s there was a mistaken belief that the then correct English word "iland" was derived from the French "isle" so they stuck an "s" in there that didn't belong. Silly grammarians. See this
posting and related threads for details.

I also looked up why Iceland got its name. Wikipedia's History of Iceland says:

The first Scandinavian who deliberately sailed to Garðarshólmi
was Flóki Vilgerðarson, also known as Hrafna-Flóki (Raven-Flóki).
Flóki settled for one winter at Barðaströnd. It was a cold
winter, and when he spotted some drift ice in the fjords he
gave the island its current name, Ísland (Iceland).

I decided to double check the source, which is the Landnámabók or "The Book of Settlement". I don't know Icelandic but my Swedish and the Wikipedia page were enough to get me to this quote:

Þá gekk Flóki upp á fjall eitt hátt og sá norður yfir fjöllin fjörð
fullan af hafísum; því kölluðu þeir landið Ísland, sem það hefir síðan heitið.

which I roughly translate as (guesses in []s)

[Then] Flóki went up the mountain [a ...] and looked [north over the ...] fjord
full of [half]-ice; [they] [called] [their] land "Iceland", [as it's been called since that time]

Lots of guesses, and knowing what it's supposed to say does help, but still neat that I could do it! Plus, I think Icelandic uses such cool letters.

ouch

To add to the list of things not to do: incautiously peel a potato with a brand new peeler. A 1/2 sq. cm of skin doesn't coagulate quickly. I'll wait a bit more with this bandage before replacing it with the 3rd.

Good thing I finished the first draft of my PyCon talk earlier today. Hard to type w/o me left index finger. This also means I won't be going into the hot tub this evening. Did I mention that this casita compound includes a hot tub?

have your cake and eat it too

I bought a book of English idioms translated to Swedish when I visited the UK a couple of weeks ago. It was a cool find. I've been asking people "give me an idiomatic expression" then looking it up to see the Swedish version.

Many of them mean the same, but not all. As an example, though not from the book, using "guinea pig" to mean a test subject is translated correctly to "försökskanin" or "researcher's rabbit."

Dana wanted to know "have your cake and eat it too." It's "båda äta kakan och ha den kvar" which is directly translated as "both eat the cookie and have it remain".

That ordering make more sense to me. In English at least "and" can mean a temporal ordering. "Go to the store and buy food" means "Go to the store and then buy food." If I have my cake then of course I can eat it. But if I said "eat my cake and have it too" then the conflict stands out.

Learning Swedish helps me understand my native language.