I'd Like Five Kilos Please?

Growing up my mom would send me to the store to buy a few things. She would say something like, "I need 2 onions, 3 tomatoes and a cumber". Now that I think about it Stacy sends me on similar errands. The point is when buying, in particular, vegetables and most fruit I think in terms of the number of tomatoes or apples that I want. Here in Bosnia things are a bit different. When you go to the market place you have to ask for fruits and veggies in weight. We usually don't buy a lot at once, so I'll buy a half a kilogram of apples for example. Right away this is seen as funny to Bosnians as they normally buy their produce in bulk, and almost never purchase less than a kilo (2.2 pounds) of anything. In fact it's not uncommon to see people buy upwards of 5 kilos (11 pounds) of a certain fruit or vegetable. Once I saw a lady with a cart full of red peppers. I'm sure it was about 20 kilos that she was buying. What they do with all this produce is beyond me, I'm sure they pickle it or something like that.

This blog was inspired by an advertisement that I saw this week. I was passing a furniture store that was selling foam padding. I thought, "oh, Stacy always talks about how our mattress isn't very comfortable... I'll go see for how much they're selling this foam padding." Walking closer to the window I saw some numbers "7.50". "Hmm, I thought... 7.50 a meter, that seems reasonable for foam padding." Then I reached the window where I was able to read the small print below the numbers "7.50". The advertisement was for 7.50 per kilogram. At that point I lost all my social composure and burst out laughing (laughing in public is rarely seen). Someone should tell these people that selling foam (basically a big sponge) by weight may not be the most profitable. I didn't go into the store embarrassed that I didn't know how many kilos of foam we needed for our bed.

To Google or not to Google-What Was the Question?

I'm slowly coming to terms with the modern computer jargon, especially these crazy verbs like: "Do you facebook?" or "try googling that". I hear people talking to each other in these terms and no one seems to question the correctness of this type of language, so it must be universally accepted. I laughed to myself the other day when I was thinking about how I would turn these words into verbs in the Bosnian language (I won't explain it because it would only be funny if you knew the language). Oh, and yes I am one of those guys who laughs out loud for no apparent reason. Man, I enjoy my inner monologue.

Now that I'm teaching English again at our reading room I started thinking... What would the simple past tense of "to facebook" be? facebooked? "Hey what did you do today?" "Oh I facebooked, and then I…". Then the present progressive, "I am currently facebooking", or the past progressive: "Man I am tired, I was facebooking until one in the morning". Okay, who knows this tense: "John has been facebooking all afternoon."

Alas, I can make fun of this internet culture no longer, I have relented and have joined my first online social network. Now you can find me facebooking with the rest of the online world. I wonder if C.S. Lewis would have facebooked?
p.s. - my spell check did not like these internet words… someone should inform google that they are now a verb. Oh, and if you can use the verb facebook in any foreign language... please leave me a comment.