Calton Hill from North Bridge, Edinburgh

I've had a couple of clear afternoons after work to wander around hilly Edinburgh, and managed to get a SIM for my phone so I've got a local number for a bit. Telephony has come a long way - they give the SIM away, so long as you buy minutes. That's the way it should be - the network is just a dumb utility line. Of course my coworkers think I'm carrying around multiple phones.. HA.

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I used to think this nation's obsession with admonishments to "please do this" and "please don't do that".. stickers everywhere was over politeness, but I'm speculating now that this might actually be some sort of passive-aggressive neurosis that is expressing itself. Signs on a construction area about "Parents are especially responsible for children tresspassing.. blah blah" and signs all over the customer's office about where mobile phones can and can't be used and to plead with people to "respect their colleagues and not walk through their aisle" on the way to the canteen are nothing but fodder for passiveaggressivenotes.com. There's some serious work to do for therapists here, but perhaps it's beyond all that.

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I caught the Peter Jackson film District 9 tonight, and thought it both cool in the grimy splattery effects, and clever in the execution. I've always admired the linguistic talents of the Dutch, so the role S. Copley played as Wikus knowing the prawn language(?!) totally suckered me in. That and the total affinity for bureacracy. The Dutch have that down pat.

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I'm 12 days from being home... and looking forward to it at this point. I did have a nice steak here in Scotland for dinner last night.. I never really think about the fact that almost everything in Germany is a pork dish, until I get somewhere for a steak. It was quite delicious, but we have them bigger at home, with large glasses of iced tea. Mmm.