2 Сына Raamatud

Сергей Лукьяненко, "Спектр":

Это в раннем детстве, подобно всем мальчишкам начитавшись приключений Эраста Фандорина, Мартин обесцветил себе перекисью водорода волосенки на висках, ходил повсюду с лупой, расследовал страшные тайны наподобие исчезновения классного журнала из запертой учительской (за что был бит восьмиклассниками). В зрелом возрасте игры в сыщиков уже не так привлекательны, особенно, если этой работой ты добываешь хлеб свой насущный.

Wow! Today I got a card from the tiny island of Mauritius, somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. That place only has a million and a half inhabitants, and 19 postcrossers! (Israel, for comparison, has 137). That's the equivalent of winning the lottery, in Postcrossing terms :)

I don't usually buy books on the "week of the book", but since everyone around me was buying, I decided to spoil myself just a little bit. I got me the "Bilingual etymological dictionary of spoken Israeli Arabic and Hebrew", by Abraham Stahl. A very serious book, in two volumes. Here's a little joke from the preface of the book, translated from Iraqi Arabic into Palestinian Arabic, and into English (the last one I did myself).

Sane3 il-kaslaan.
wa7ad qaal laSana3o: qoum shouf, qa3ed maTar ya la?
qaal lo: na3am, ya sidi, qa3ed maTar.
qaal lo: minnein Sar 3indak ma3loum?!
qaal lo: halqeit faatat min Sob il-quTTeh mablouleh.
qaal lo: qoum iTfi il-lamba.
qaal lo: ya sidi, tghaTTi lafoq raasak bil-l7aaf.
qaal lo: Tayyeb, qoum sakker il-baab mli7.
qaal lo: rabbna yi7fazak, ya sidi. qadeit lak shughultein, ushughlet ttalaateh qoum inte iqdiha.

The lazy worker.
A man said to his worker: get up and look, is it raining or not?
He replied: Yes, master, it is raining.
He said to him: How do you know that?!
He replied: Just now a wet cat passed by.
He said to him: Get up, turn off the lamp.
He replied: Master, cover your head with a blanket.
He said to him: Very well, get up, close the door firmly.
He replied: God help you, master. I already did two jobs for you, get up and do the third yourself.

This is the kind of cards I like. Soft, moody, and unpretentious.

Saw the new Star Trek movie yesterday. I hadn't known it was a prequel to the whole TV series, but that made it even better. It was great to get to know the characters as young people. For one, I didn't know why Bones was called that, or what was Uhura's first name. When young Mr. Chekhov yelled a nice little obscenity in Russian, the whole theater exploded in laughter. I won't tell you what it is. Go see it. 5/5 on the wildernesscat scale.

One of my Postcrossing cards, intended for Brazil, made a 4-day round trip, and ... landed back in my mailbox. There were no postal marks to explain the non-delivery, just lots of orange bar codes at the bottom. Without thinking twice, I threw the card back into the mailbox. Now I'm having seconds thoughts about this. I should have taken it home, and removed those codes. The card is bound to bounce again :(