If you have wondered where I have gone

The Centre for Disease Control has issued a medical alert about a highly contagious, potentially dangerous virus that is transmitted orally, by hand, and even electronically. This virus is called Weary Overload Recreational Killer (WORK). If you receive WORK from your boss, any of your colleagues or anyone else via any means whatsoever - DO NOT TOUCH IT! This virus will wipe out your private life completely!

If you should come into contact with WORK you should immediately leave the premises. Take two good friends to the nearest grocery store and purchase one or both of the antidotes - Work Isolating Neutralizer Extract (WINE) and Bothersome Employer Elimination Rebooter (BEER). Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your system.

You should immediately forward this medical alert to five friends. If you do not have five friends, you have already been infected and WORK is controlling your life.

Finnish cold remedy

Old Finnish tip for flu:

Sink your feet into a bowl full of vodka, dry them and put warm wollen socks on. Crawl to bed and sleep tight. This will only work at the first stages of the cold.

(Thank you J.!)

Mourning

Chocolate and strawberry cake

Ingredients for the dough:
6 eggs
150 g sugar
vanilla sugar
100 g flour
30 g baking powder
50 g butter
50 g cacao

Ingredients for the cream:
0.5 l sweet cream
0.5 kg cooking chocolate

Ingredients for the filling:
0.2 l sweet cream
250 g strawberries

Instructions for the cake:
Divide the egg white from the egg yolk and make solid snow from the egg white. Electric mixer allowed for this operation.
Mix the egg yolk with sugar and vanilla sugar and add four spoons of warm water. It is best if this is done manually. The fluid has to become light yellow and has to grow and be full of bubbles. Add liquid/soft butter and sieved cocoa and mix for a while.
Slowly add egg white snow to the yellow liquid and mix carefully until the dough becomes uniform. Sieve flour with baking powder to the dough and carefully mix.
Prepare the baking model by covering the bottom with baking paper. Preheat the over to 175°C. Put the dough into the model and bake for 50 to 60 minutes at 175°C. Let the cake heat down in the baking model. Best is to cover with a cloth and leave it to rest during the night.

Instructions for the cream:
Slowly heat the sweet cream. Break the chocolate into small pieces and melt it slowly in the cream. Once melted leave the chocolate cream to heat down. Best is to leave it to heat down during the night. Once cold, mix it with a mixer for a couple of minutes until you get slightly lighter and easy to spread cream.

Cut the cake into 2 or 3 level. Put some liquid over the lower level of cake, e.g. coffee mixed with white rhum, milk mixed with rhum, Marascino. Spread with some chocolate cream and cover with strawberries cut into halves. Cover again with chocolate cream. Add another level of cake and put over some liquid. If this is the last level cover thoroughly with chocolate cream and spread the cream also around the cake. Add strawberries for decoration.

The cake needs to rest in the fridge for at least 2 hours before being eaten! It is best to share it with friends! Bon apetit!

Electricity bill

Finally the day arrived I have been waiting almost 1 year. It has been almost one year since I last paid my electricity. But, do not get me wrong, I would love to pay it, I wanted to pay it, I gave several calls to the electricity company in Brussels, I even had friend going there asking them to bill me.

And today I found a lovely envelope in my mailbox. At least I thought so. I was happy to expect a bill. But..., yes, of course, there must always be but if you live in Belgium. The electricity company only sent me a letter asking me to provide them with the counter numbers, which I have already done several times. However, not this way yet.

Is there any other place in this world where the companies do not want us to pay bills? Is there somebody else in this world or is it just me being so strange wanting to pay my bills?

Goodbye IE

Welcome Firefox Mozilla:)

My IT friends will be proud of me. Now I am off to read Learn Linux in 24 hours:)

Augmentative

Not writing anything for almost a month is real pity. But that does not mean that I do not have ideas. I am diligently writing them down, so I do not forget about them. Here is one and it is not really something I could be proud of as a Slovene.

I have to admit that I never think about my mother tongue, Slovene, from the point of view of a stranger. But the other day I have been asked how we form Augmentative in my language. What prefix or suffix do we add to the word to make Augmentative. I was thinking and thinking and came to sad conclusion. Yes, it is true and sad, Slovene language does not have Augmentative. For now, let us say, because who knows what brilliant Slovene linguists might invent (or maybe they already have and am not informed:).

ice-cream (EN) - sladoled (SI) - gelato (IT) - sladoled (HR) - glaciajxo (EO)

"Augmentative" in Slovene only exists if we add an Adjective in front of the Subject:
Huge ice-cream (EN) - ogromen sladoled (SI)

As for some other languages:
gelatone (IT) - Augmentative for ice-cream in Italian
sladoledina (HR) - Augmentative for ice-cream in Croatian
glaciajxego (EO) - Augmentative for ice-cream in Esperanto

On the contrary, the Slovene language does have Diminutive.
sladoledek (SI) - Diminutive for ice-cream in Slovene

According to a good friend of mine there is a simple explanation for why Slovene language knows only Diminutive and not also Augmentative - because Slovenia is so small that is does not need Augmentative.

But, I will investigate further!

Read more about the Augmentative here.