Sunday Morning Thoughts – May 12, 2024

Rollercoaster of random thoughts

Something reminded me of how the self-scanning option at the supermarket was a total game changer for me. I think it was watching somebody having to grab all her things from her cart, putting them on the belt and then having to pack everything up after paying. (We never had people bagging our groceries here). I have what I think is called arthro-tendinitis (arthrosis paired with tendinitis or something like that) in both my thumbs.

Anyway, whatever it’s called, it flared up anytime I had to grab things quickly especially if it was three times per item in short succession: off the shelf, onto the belt, into the bags. The last two under time pressure. I’ve not had any major problems since I started scanning everything myself while walking through the supermarket. You touch each item once and put it straight into your bag. Such a relief. And also - much faster. Plus, you always know how much you’re spending because the total is right there.

Do you guys have wild garlic where you live? OMD seriously our forests are full of it right now and the smell is just – wow. I’m not a huge fan of dishes that contain wild garlic, but I will eat it. We put it in EVERYTHING when it’s in season. You really can’t avoid it. I love the smell in the forest. It’s very unique.

I came across a sign that used the word “Tümpel” for pond. I seriously had to look up whether that was a Swiss High German word or if Germans use it too. It sounded very Swiss to me. Sometimes it does get confusing. I’ll admit that. And in case you’re wondering it’s a German word too.

What a nice walk on Friday. The bus dropped me off at the starting point at 7.25 AM and then it was uphill – very steep. It was almost like climbing a wall. Well worth it though because walking on top of those hills was really nice. First it was in the forest then it opened up onto a kind of plateau. You could not see the valleys below on either side. There were a bunch of farms up there and cows. Really cute ones. The entire walk was about four hours long.

On the way home I really didn’t like the connection my public transport app spit out, so I improvised and ended up making it to Aarau earlier than the fastest connection the app had found – that’s a win right there. I even had time to grab some ice cream along the way. It was a bit counter intuitive as I took the train in one direction to the next bigger town and then went back the opposite way on a different train to get home faster. Anyway, you have to know the rail lines for stuff like that. It gave me a sense of achievement.

Mother’s Day and flowers. Well, I sometimes buy myself flowers – just any time I feel like it or when I see some particularly nice ones. I passed the flower shop of one of our biggest supermarkets yesterday and had a quick look. Yeah, nope. That wasn’t going to happen. Definitely not paying double what I usually would or even more than that. Also, they sold chocolates for a lot more than normal because it was packaged in a special Mother’s Day outfit. Of course I’m not surprised by that. I just would have loved some flowers.

You know what I bought instead? A book? Well, close but not quite. I bought another jigsaw puzzle. I’ll get several uses out of that. Made me happy. I currently have two puzzles on the go and no longer have a place to eat at a table, but there you go.

Then I went into the small Lüthy books branch next door and I almost told the salesperson that I’m expecting them to put my book on the staff recommendations shelf when it’s out as an actual book. It’ll start as an e-book. I held back, for now. I mean I don’t think they have any books in there by an author called Lüthy. It would just be good business sense to promote it, right? I have my doubts though as they already refused to give me a discount. Their loss, I can by my books elsewhere.

And then there’s this – the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC). I’m putting it in italics so people who don’t want to read this part can just skip ahead. I was out trying to see if the aurora would put on another display (I had totally slept through the beautiful red ones that were visible around 2.30 AM on Saturday). When I came back it was time for the results part of the show. And as I’m typing this the winning song just started playing on the radio. Weird that.

Anyway, I used love the ESC. Back when everybody had to sing in one of their country’s languages. In the 70s and 80s you couldn’t just go online and listen to whatever language you wanted. It was fun. The voting was political back then too. As in some neighbors always gave each other points while others never did. After the fall of the iron curtain, the change of the language rule – it was now a free for all and semifinals being introduced, it sort of lost something for me. Then came the new voting system and I was out.

There were some years when I taped the show and only listened to the commentary and not the songs. Terry Wogan and Graham Norton were just too good.

Last night I joined the voting at about 00.15. It was a professional jury vote first. Every country has a jury that votes. Nowadays it’s those votes that make up the results show (it used to be viewer votes). Problem with that is that those votes really don’t matter. The viewing audience can make all the difference. Those votes are added at the very end and we no longer know who gave who how many votes. They are just added as a total. It makes absolutely no sense to me and has really destroyed the format, but there you go.

So, last night Switzerland had a huge lead after the jury vote. If I remember correctly the Swiss French commentators mentioned that only one out of 37 countries didn’t give us any votes. It was the favorites Croatia … we found that a bit unprofessional, apparently. Why am I mentioning this? Well, the televoting showed just how political the event is. Israel got the second highest number of points. That was always going to happen – no matter the song. Other than that. The top five of the public vote and the top five of the jury vote were the same, in a slightly different order.

I still can’t believe Switzerland won. For the first time since 1988 when Céline Dion sang for us. This was followed in 1989 with our only ever Romansh entry by Furbaz. Now Nemo (the winner) made history again as the first non-binary winner.

Having that first non-binary ESC winner made me realize that I have no idea whatsoever how to talk about someone who is non-binary in Swiss German. It’s not as straight-forward as in English. In Swiss German we e.g. put an article in front of people’s first names when we talk about them. And that indicates what gender the person is. It’s a very gendered language and all the pronouns and articles come in all different cases – it’s a minefield. I will need to investigate this further. There is no consensus yet as to what language to use.

If we went with the German equivalent of they/them the pronouns would be sie/sie/ihnen (which is very close to the singular feminine sie/sie/ihr). So, that’s unlikely to work. And as I said there are those articles as well. The answer is not obvious. Similar in French. I’m literally scratching my head here. Swiss German (and German) isn’t ready for this. Lucky, I write in English. It is something we need to figure out sooner rather than later though. Until then I’ll happily read up on what’s been happening so far and will use any pronouns/articles people want me to.

I leave you with a picture of a moth. It’s not very big and it was trying to blend in. It’s the kind of thing you spot on a walk when you’re not in a hurry and actually pay attention. Just throwing that out there since I will be speaking about hiking in Switzerland on Tuesday. I will be talking about the fact that it doesn’t matter how fast you walk as long as you’re enjoying it. And that you might just see bugs, snails, moths, butterflies sitting on cow pads and other things when you take your time.

Have a lovely Sunday everyone.