Fugato

I just got visited by the TV people. Not the ones Carol Anne welcomed in Poltergeist. Nope, these are altogether more real. They are field agents of RÚV, The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service.

For non-Icelandic readers: RÚV is the state television and radio company. RÚV has the legal right to charge fees of anyone who has a television or radio receiver in their premises — regardless of whether they ever watch or listen to RÚV. Watch one of the privately-held TV stations? Tough, you have to pay RÚV as well. It is effectively a tax on anyone who watches TV or radio — i.e. everyone (except for stray nutcases like myself).

Now, that might seem OK: it’s state-run, like U.S. public access TV or the U.K.’s BBC, so presumably it has to be paid for by the state, and doing it this way is nicer than just doing it straight through taxes because this way people who don’t use TV or radio don’t have to pay — right? Well, sure, until you consider that RÚV is not exactly like U.S. public access TV. In fact, it is in direct, head-on competition with the private stations for commercials and sponsorships, and their material is similar to a considerable extent: cheesy US sitcoms and reality shows, new movies, etc. So they are engaged in competition … in which they get the advantage of mandatory subscription fees from everyone who does business with their competitors. Still sounds fair?

Now, a rather large number of people are not happy with this state of affairs, and a lot simply refuse to pay. Mostly by claiming they do not, in fact, have a TV. Granted, some people may be doing this more for parsimony than principle. In any case, what is RÚV’s reaction? Field agents. RÚV sends people out (our tax dollars at work!) to people’s homes to check. Honestly. They can’t enter unless permitted by the owner, of course, so they just ask. I’m not for such invasions of privacy, in principle, but in practice, I just invited them in, to remove all doubt on the issue, so that I wouldn’t have to have any more visits of this kind. I have neither a TV nor a radio in my home (I’m a little odd that way), so I had nothing to worry about. They apparently noted that in my demeanor; in any case they didn’t even accept the invitation, just checked me off their list, courteously apologized for the inconvenience, and left.

So, to all you people worried about their visits: apparently a cheerful invitation to enter, along with a bashful confession of being an internet nerd who gets his news from blogs and news websites, will convince them that you have nothing to hide. Try it out! :)

(And to all those people who do not invite them in and don’t want to seem incriminated by that: sorry. I guess I did not help your case. But hey, I have a better solution; chuck your TVs! Works wonders for your lifestyle: you can spend Friday nights home alone blogging instead of spending them home alone watching TV!)

I’ll give them that; these agents were perfectly polite. I’ve heard all kinds of stories of the RÚV field agents, some of them first-hand, all of them nasty, but these two did not fit that stereotype. So apparently the complaints about manners have been heard … now for all those complaints about the unfair competition inherent in the TV tax! Those have been ignored for a long time, and that doesn’t look set to change.

Fékk þetta sent í tölvupósti í dag. Tómum tölvupósti, með þennan texta í Word-skjals-viðhengi! Fyrir birtingu hef ég ruglað fyrirtækisnafninu, svo að lesandanum sé allsendis ómögulegt að vita um hvaða fyrirtæki er að ræða ;-)

Ágæti umsækjandi.

Við biðjumst velvirðingar á því hve langan tíma úrvinnsla umsóknar þinnar hefur tekið.

Búið er að fara vandlega yfir umsókn þína um starf hjá SJE. Því miður er ekkert starf laust hjá okkur þar sem reynsla þín og menntun nýtist sem skyldi. Því getur ekki orðið af ráðningu hjá okkur að þessu sinni.

Fyrir hönd SJE hf. vil ég þakka þér fyrir að sýna áhuga á að starfa hjá okkur með því að sækja um starf.

Ég óska þér velfarnaðar í framtíðinni.

Virðingarfyllst,

f.h. SJE hf.

[jadajada]

Ég hafði sent þeim línu af rælni þegar ég var í atvinnuleit … fyrir u.þ.b. sjö mánuðum. Þeir segja satt: þeir fara greinilega vandlega yfir umsóknir!

I love getting packages. When I arrived home from work today, there was a little package waiting in my mailbox.

Except it wasn’t quite little enough; it was lodged stuck in the mailbox slot. The mailman/mailwoman/mailperson had not managed to squeeze it in, and I couldn’t drag it in from inside [my mailbox is in the wall, opens inside]. So I stepped outside to dislodge it, which was easy enough. And of course I left my keys hanging on the mailbox door, inside, and the main door closes automatically.

Gulli: Hi, this is Gulli.

Neighbor: Who?

Gulli: Gulli. I live across the hall from you.

Neighbor: Oh, right. [Bzzzt]

[That's not as pathetic as it sounds. She is my neighbor's new roommate, hence the lack of familiarity.]

Having solved that, I trotted inside to take a look at my nifty new gift, from my employer.

It was an alarm clock.

Granted, it has some other stuff too: thermometer, hygrometer, neat little picture of a sun and clouds. But it still is an alarm clock.

Now, I arrived at work a little after 11 this morning. I have late mornings now and then. Frequently, actually. I wake up early, but always seem to have all kinds of things to do before wandering off to work.

I’ll find out tomorrow whether other employees got this too, or it was a targeted, subtle hint!

What’s my point with this blog name, Fugato?

Fugato

Means “in the manner of a fugue”.

Fugue

A musical piece in which there are several musical lines weaving together, each playing the same theme albeit with with variations.

It is explained way better over there. In a fugue, the musical lines (or “voices”) interplay in clever ways that make you think “how the heck did he make that all fit together?”

Typically a fugue starts off as just a single voice, playing a theme, and when it is done stating the theme, another voice joins in, and away they go a-weaving.

I don’t have a good sample of a fugue for you to download and listen to. But try out some Bach, e.g. the Well-Tempered Clavier. Bach wrote some pretty amazing fugues. Pay attention; there is plenty to catch there. And if you haven’t listened to a fugue before, it is probably going to be more confusing than cool. Give it a few shots.

So why did I name this site “Fugato”? Because I like fugues. Just like that.

Well, and because I think the idea of writing text in the manner of a fugue is rather cool. I’m not trying to do that, and doubt that I’d have much luck if I tried. But Douglas Hofstadter did write a pretty impressive textual “crab canon” in his bloody great book, Gödel, Escher, Bach.

A canon is similar to a fugue; the lines interweave in a different way, but they share the fundamental trait of “imitative counterpoint”. One famous canon is “Row, row, row your boat.” Now, a “crab cabon” (here’s one by Bach) is a canon in which the second half is a mirror image of the first half, both in time and in pitch. Douglas Hofstadter wrote a non-musical version of that, in the form of a dialogue between Achilles and the Tortoise; that is his crab canon.

Which is starting to stray a little from the topic of my site’s name. That being such an exciting topic, let’s stay on it.

The name stands in no relation at all to fugu, a fish eaten as a delicacy in Japan. Fugu contains tetrodotoxin, a neurotoxin 1250 times as poisonous as cyanide (whatever that number means). One fish has enough of that to kill up to 30 adult humans. That poison is localized in the gonads, liver, intestines, and skin of the fish; the actual flesh is “usually not dangerously toxic”. So when you eat a fugu meal, you are placing an awful lot of confidence in the chef.

That’s fugu. I just thought I’d mention that because I find it interesting. And although my blog’s name has nothing at all to do with fugu, its theme has a lot to do with mentioning things that I find interesting. That’s the idea.

After several weeks of completely-failed attempts to move my bedtime from 4am to midnight, I’ve decided to go radical on the whole issue. I’m trying the Pavlov approach.

I made a pact with myself: for each minute past midnight that the clock reports when I go to bed, I pledge to do two push-ups in the morning.

Right now, I’m headed for just over a hundred tomorrow morning.

Yesterday morning it was 114. That took a bit of time. I’m no ironman, I need breaks inbetween.

The first time was the morning before that, but I decided to postpone the initiation of this pact by one day, rather than do … 430 … push-ups that morning. Some glorious start that was.

The way I see it, I’m headed for either a disciplined sleep schedule, or formidable pecs and triceps. Or perpetrating pact breakage against myself, but that would be too lame. We shall see.

Last night I witnessed the fine heights to which a person’s restaurant manners can rise.

I was pleased to see Shalimar fairly full and lively when I got there for a dinner break from work. Shalimar is a small Indian restaurant in the centre of Reykjavík, just across from my workplace; it is often rather empty when I go there (typically at odd hours), but not this time.

The life was all coming from one table in the center downstairs, and soon enough, said life was accompanied by that joyous gift that benevolent strangers unselfishly bestow upon one another in public places: cigarette smoke. I had never seen anyone smoke there before, so I asked the waiter if the non-smoking space was upstairs — “No, er, it’s down here actually.”

Now, I am a little bit eccentric, and in particular, I am often unappreciative of those best things in life that are always free, such as punches in the face (rare), urination on my house (somewhat less rare), and second-hand smoke (far less rare, sadly). So I was somehow not amenable to the idea of eating my dinner sitting in the fine fragrance of shrivelled plant remains burning on somebody’s lips. That’s okay, it’s my little quirk, and I’m a young and nimble-footed kind of guy, and pathologically conflict-avoiding, so I just picked up my dinner and relocated myself upstairs, in the smoking section, which was entirely empty of both smokers and non-smokers.

But of course, it’s always less fun to eat alone. I think the good citizens downstairs realized that, and felt for me, because they were kind enough to immediately raise their voices to allow me some passive participation in the conversation. They proceeded to keep their voices at that level for the duration of my meal, with plenty of emotionally rich outbursts along the lines of I am not talking to you now, you swine, so stay the hell out of it, etc. That particular young man apparently did not share my trait of conflict avoidance. He certainly did not share my condition of sobriety. Anyway, at no point in the conversation did I feel the least bit left out. Their topics ranged far and wide, covering everything from each participant’s astute perception of the others’ moral failings, to the most contentious dramas current in Icelandic politics (none of which seemed to end up being definitively resolved at that meal, oddly).

And finally, I paid and left. They were still going strong.

Lessons learned, for my own restaurant behavior? Clearly I should try to get into the habit of producing some audio (and some odor) to stimulate those around me. A lifeless lump who just sits at his table sipping his mango lassi in silence — where’s the fun in that? I don’t think I’ll start smoking though. Sorry. I’m just not ready for it. Maybe when I’m older and more mature. And other suggestions for odor production are unwelcome, thank you.

Of course, after that solemn promise in my previous entry, I am obligated to blog about what I had for breakfast today.

It was oatmeal porridge. It is always oatmeal porridge, at least when I am at home. Sometimes other stuff too, but always oatmeal porridge. Oatmeal porridge is from heaven, in the same way that Coke, french fries and beer are from the devil. It is dead simple to make (chuck oats in a bowl, Just Add Water™, and salt, and stick it in a microwave for two minutes), tastes fine, and is really, really healthy. It packs protein and soluble fiber. It lowers cholesterol. It delivers blood sugar slowly. It is filling, keeps your appetite moderate. Oatmeal is a sworn enemy of blubbery waists; it has certainly worked well on mine. I love oatmeal. Whoever thought of domesticating oats instead of considering them a weed like everyone else did, should get a medal. We owe you, buddy.

Why did porridge get such a bad rep?

When I was a kid, porridge was the epitome of UFTYMMYE, Unpleasant Food That Your Mother Makes You Eat, except that my mother didn’t ever make me eat it. Maybe in the first few months of my life. I tasted it once at my aunt Helga’s when I was a tiny tot. Helga reportedly liked nothing better as a kid. Helga demanded porridge on Christmas Eve. Helga, like most of my family, does not walk the beaten path. Anyway, I don’t remember liking it then, but I also don’t remember disliking it.

What I do remember is that the conventional wisdom, the prevailing view held by everyone but Helga, was clear and unanimous: porridge was Bad. And so I ate less healthy stuff for breakfast for most of my life so far. How did that happen? What does everybody have against oatmeal porridge? Seriously. Ditch the Cocoa Puffs. And the Coke and beer and french fries, while you’re at it. Especially for breakfast. You’ll thank yourself soon enough.

Thank you, Snæbjörn, for suggesting oatmeal porridge to me. Sometimes we find wisdom where we least expect it. ;-)

There, I finally did it, started a blog. Weird that I didn’t do it sooner; I like words, at least in writing, and my friends are scattered across the globe, for some reason that hopefully has nothing to do with me. So I have full reason to blog; why haven’t I already? I harbor a lingering fear that it might be because I have nothing interesting to say. We’ll just have to find out.

I will write mostly in English, switching to Icelandic only when writing about things of no interest to non-Icelanders. I am writing mostly for my friends, and a lot of my friends don’t speak Icelandic.

[Edit: here I described my reasons for the original name of my blog. The reasons were almost as bad as the name. That name was scrapped, so there's no reason to discuss the reasons for it.]

I will blog just because I enjoy putting together words. And maybe because I do a lousy job of staying in touch with friends around the world; this way they at least know I’m alive, and the highlights (or at least the publishable highlights) of what’s going on in my life.

I like words and language, rather a lot. I will use weird words whenever I think of them. And if I think of a straightforward way to say something, and an interesting way of saying it, I’ll vote for interesting every time. People sometimes feel that that’s showing off. If you ever get that impression, please bear in mind that that is your problem, not mine. I do it because I enjoy it, not because I want to impress you, and if it bugs you, you are very welcome to go read something else.

This is not exactly “satisfaction guaranteed,” but I’ll try not to blog unless there is something at least slightly interesting to blog about. Interesting to me, that is. You may not be interested in obscure words, or software development, or self-referentiality, or Shostakovich — but at least I won’t be blogging about what I had for breakfast.