Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

Savvy_Sue

droopsnout wrote: »

Sirop?? Tu parles français?

Mais oui, bien sur, un petit peu! But while I once used to know how to write the accents on a keyboard, I have now lost that skill. Actually I've forgotten where most of them go, but that's another matter. I have a Post A level Diploma!

Do you not live near that FANTASTIC (British designed) bridge? And did I not tell you we went there for my final pre-brain-surgery holiday? It's a few years ago now, and we went in February, which was flippin' freezing, and we had to take DS3 with us. So to keep him happy, one day we went go-karting / quad biking. At least DH and DS3 did that: I huddled in the little hut. We weren't sure they were open: we were certainly their only customers that day.

Anyway, over coffee to thaw out, Monsieur asked what these mad English people were doing here in February. He was more polite than that, of course, but I managed to explain, in my best French, that I had a benign brain tumour, and they were going to cut it out soon, and this was our last chance for a holiday before it happened, and I wanted to see THAT bridge. I didn't add 'before I died', because I was not going to admit the possibility in even a tiny bit of my mind.

We also went to see the Wolves. There was a lot of snow there, and I couldn't get the hire car up the hill to the car park, had to walk up and be rescued. :rotfl:

We have friends in Melon Country, and went to see the crocodiles last time we visited them! Which is a fair few years ago ... And a few more years before that, we spent a holiday with them in Vasles, the Sheep Capital of Europe. Quite a way from you, I believe, but should not be missed by anyone visiting Futuroscope.

BTW, my friends in Melon Country sent me a picture of flooding a KM or so from their house at the start of the week. M. le Maire phoned them throughout the night urging them to evacuate to a public building no higher up than their house, so they stayed put. He's not going to put up with any talk of English bad weather in future! :rotfl:

seven-day-weekend

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

We also went to see the Wolves. :rotfl:

I take it you mean the beautiful carnivores and not my home football team?:rotfl::eek:

And I agree - THAT bridge is absolutely stunning!!

Hope you have recovered fully from your brain tumour Sue. How worrying it must have been.

seven-day-weekend

Je parle francais un peu aussi und spreche Deutsch ein bisschen.

!Pero hablo español muy poco y vivo en España!

!Tengo muchos años!

(Don't know how to do upside down exclamation marks).

donny-gal

Tried to reply twice and lost he posts both times - will be back later, but just wanted to say welcome backe MW.
DG

droopsnout

Accented characters

You can type accented characters on a UK keyboard by holding down the ALT key and typing numbers into the numeric keypad - NOT the numbers at the top of the keyboard.

So û is achieved by holding down the ALT key and typing 150.

The upside-down exclamation mark is done by ALT 173, and the upside-down question mark by ALT 168.

You can have fun (says something about my life!!!) by playing with all sorts of combinations of digits. Try starting with 128 - but there are interesting characters on lower numbers, too.

If you don't have a numeric keypad to the right of your keyboard (as on a standard laptop) there is another, lengthier, way of doing it by typing &#nnn;

That's ampersand, hash, a three-digit number and a semi-colon.

The character is determined by the number you type. The numbers in this method are not the same as the numbers using the ALT key! If you type &#1 61; (remove the space), you should get the upside-down exclamation mark.

You can find an exhaustive (and rather exhausting!) list here.

This bloomin' site still won't show an e-acute, though!!

Savvy_Sue

droopsnout wrote: »

Sarsaparilla ... Oh the nostalgia ... The smell of it wafting across Blackburn covered market ... Or in the Temperance Bar in Rawtenstall ...

Ruddy disgusting stuff.

Don't they call it "root beer" in the States? Or is that something else?

Edit, to answer myself: Sarsaparilla is made from Sassafras and is indeed known as root beer in the USA. The Temperance Bar in Rawtenstall is the last surviving Temperance Bar of 24 once owned by the Fitzpatrick family. Vimto was also sold in Temperance Bars before it became more widely available.

I am not sure that any of this is the same as Sirop d'Anis(e). Which is a very sweet, very aniseed-y flavoured thing, the like of which I've only ever seen in France. We may have first bought it thinking it was Pineapple. Fortunately I liked it. I learned, in subsequent years, that there was NO substitute for taking your own squash to France if you had fussy children.

Now, no need to show off sdw, DH has ASTONISHED groups of Americans by being able to recognise Latin as Latin in inscriptions, and even work out what bits of it meant, and he's no linguist! :rotfl: And I took the wind out of the sails of a VERY pompous postgrad student who resented being asked to show his first degree certificates and said "you won't be able to read them, they're in Hebrew." And I said "Oh, I read Hebrew." I wonder if he'd have preferred us to say "Go and get a certified translation then," which would have cost him money.

DS, I used to know the most common combinations, but I fear now that my brain has enough to deal with, despite being fully recovered or at least as good as it gets, so I'll just apologise for the lack of accents. Or work it out in Word and copy and paste ...

And yes it was the carnivores not the football team.

droopsnout

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

that aniseed sirop?

That's what you said, Sue! I had to guess your actual meaning, and, of course, being a bloke, got it a bit wrong, lol!! I thought you were writing in English and spelling syrup specially for me.

So this is what you mean?



You're quite right about French syrups for English kids! But you try getting French kids to eat jelly!!!

Savvy_Sue

I think that's what I mean. TBH it's so many years since I had any. I don't remember it being that make. (William? What sort of French name is that?)

It's not alcofrolic at all. And no, I don't like that lethal stuff - absinthe? Is that still banned? Or just made weaker these days?

droopsnout

I'm afraid that the French language imports more and more Anglo-American words all the time ...

The bottle I posted contains a non-alcoholic syrup, but I can't tell you much about it, because I stay well clear of this kind of product. I'm allergic to water, you see, so am able to partake only of alcoholic drinks ...

Absinthe was made illegal by 1915 in many places, but in fact recent research shows it to have been no more dangerous than other spirits. There were numerous 19th-century notorious figures associated with the "green fairy", and they probably established the drink's evil reputation. Absinthe is now manufactured again around the world.

I just love a lot of the artwork that surrounds the drink, especially this beautiful poster:



I thoroughly recommend the excellent Wikipedia article here.

lic

I discovered this thread 3 days ago, and have finally finished reading it!
I have enjoyed most of the posts, and am saddened that the £-E rate is hurting you all so much. Apart from you merrywidow(every clod has a silver lining).
Living in the UK and in fulltime employment, I have a house in Costa Blanca, which we visit as often as we can. Here in the UK we are told that the downturn is a global problem. If this is the case I am harbouring a suspicion that the ecomonies in all the Eurozone must be affected as much as ours. Obviously there will be slight differences in each country. But surely the underlying trend for all EU is that we are in recession. I suspect that the ECB and all member states are hiding the truth, and as in the 1980's are happy to see the £ drop like a stone!
Surely next year the £ will start to rise again, as the true value of the E will have fallen.
I have relatives in Ireland, they tell me things are very tuff over there at the moment. I know that Spain is starting to struggle, and I suspect France is too.
Perhaps you true expats could give us a brief rundown of what is happening on the employment front in your countries, not just for expats but for the indiginous people also.
I have a mortgage and benefit greatly from Brown's madness of reducing interest rates. It is not the right thing to do, and should be reversed. A lot of you have stated thet you are tightening your belts, because you are sufferig from the £/E rate, so why is it in UK when we are short of money and are told to spend our way out of recession? Utter madness! If the £ is to recover interest rates need to rise and sadly people will be forced to pay more taxes.
As for bailing out the banks it does not seem to be working, so the government should recall the loans. If banks go to the wall so be it, the sector will recover on its own eventually.
I know a lot of you are retired teachers so please forgive my poor spelling and grammar!
As for learning Spanish I have found the below sites very useful
www.notesinspanish.com
www.synergyspanish.com
Both are podcast based.