the longest town name in the UK

Llanfairpwllgwyngyll is the short version, and even that is already impossible for ordinary immortals outside of the phlegm-spitting-land of Wales to pronounce. Double L's are pronounced as a mixture of the Hebrew/Arabic ch with an 'l' sound mixed at the end, which my Welsh teacher instructed me, comes from the right-back of the mouth. W is an 'oo' sound except with a 'y' attached to it when it becomes like in simple American English, as in wind... but why am I even spending time on this name, this isn't the full town name!!! Try your hands (mouths) at this,

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

yeah. maybe these pictures will help a bit,



the town received its name when the train was built from somewhere in England to Holyhead at the edge of Wales and quite close to Ireland (a port from which lots of boats leave towards the green land of ire) and this village was chosen as a station. a group of astute businessmen decided to give the town, a very boring little place with not much there, a name that would attract tourists. and what better than a name that has 58 letters in the english alphabet (51 in the welsh one...)? and well, even some welsh folk can't really pronounce it.

but this very nice lady from the tourist info was able to (and no she is not reading it from a piece of paper, but straight from memory!!!).



the town itself? a big shopping center which amazingly attracts loads of tourists simply due to its name! (hmm, yeah, we went there as well due to this fact).



the longest name in the world for a place? Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, a hill in New Zealand... if you really want to count - 85 letters!!!

Makeup sex

You know that feeling you have when you are breaking up with someone? That rock that is stuck somewhere in your throat, that heaviness in your chest? The feeling that you just need to end this, to finish this chapter of your life and move on, and then things will be better, the rock will be gone, the heaviness will dissipate? I have had this feeling once in my life, and have had it described to me on the receiving end once as well. And well, yesterday I had it, again.

With math.

It just seemed that every minute I was able to concentrate and think about the mathematical concept I was exploring (having to do with discrete graphs and the way they are divided into smaller graphs by a specific function), was followed by a moment of misery, with the rock in my throat, the heaviness in my chest. This was followed by a few minutes of the mind wandering in unfocused domains and by a few minutes of tracking and redirecting it. And then the cycle continued. Man, talk about efficacy and productivity.
So yeah, it seemed that the break-up was inevitable, we’d both continue in our separate directions. Somehow, I imagined that math would manage just ok on its own. It would be able to use strong, clear-cut logic to understand what had succumbed, to deduce that this was the best step forward, and to systematically continue on its rational path. I? I would be more of a humming bird searching for its GPS till it understands that it has been carrying it for quite some time.

And then today happened. Today? Makeup sex.

German Housemate and Holocaust Books

Andreas was one of Alex’s housemates when I initially crashed there about a year ago while looking for an apartment. He then finished his masters, minus the viva (the defense) and had moved to Spain. He had asked to come and crash with me when he had to come back to defend his thesis and I promptly agreed, assuming that at most we were talking about two weeks.
Wrong.
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I hadn’t read a Holocaust book in maybe 15 years. I always found them very depressing to read and hence struggled reading at my favorite time, before going to bed. This always lengthened greatly how long it would take me to finish one of these books. So I just simply avoided reading them after I went through the period in which my thirst of knowledge about my history and my people was great.
Then these past few months suddenly I read not one but two Holocaust books. Of course this had to occur when I shared my humble abode with a German friend, Andreas. Now let me say a few more about Andy German as he is listed in my mobile. He is a very very nice guy. He is also quite big as he does judo and is very fit. And strong. Shoot, the guy is strong. And just to set the scene, he does have blond hair and blue eyes. Not implying anything at all here, but just saying. Masha in the math department, did ask me once if there was anything weird about him or curiously wrong with him, just searching for a flaw, because how could someone be, in her words, so perfect, smart, strong, nice.
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The first book I read was a gift I got from the lovely Jo for my birthday, everything is illuminated. This book deals with a Jewish American guy who returns to Ukraine to explore his family’s roots. It describes the discrimination and conditions that the Jews there lived with before the war, and the horrors of what happened during the war. It also coincided with me finding out that most likely my maternal grandmother’s family (Guralnik) comes from Ukraine.

The second book, I picked up while visiting my fam in San Diego. It’s an Israeli book written by a contemporary author I recently discovered, and its called Our Holocaust. It talks about the author’s life (it seems biographical...) in the great shadow of the Holocaust, from growing up with his entire neighborhood seemingly composed of survivors who would not tell him their stories remarking, you are too young to understand. Then as a grown man, each one of them recounts his traumatic story of survival and the memories of those who didn’t. The book also deals with the fact that Germany somehow did not really prosecute fully a lot of the people who participated in the Holocaust and released many that were prosecuted, after very short sentences. It is a very powerful and moving book. This as I explained above, means its harder for me to read it - I still haven't finished it…

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Andy ended up staying for two months. Since during one of these months I ended up in the states, our shared time in the flat was not that long. And he was a very well behaving flatmate. Very quiet, relatively clean and helped out with a lot of the house chores. Still, many-a-time, I found myself angry with him. Almost always, for no apparent reason. It was one of those angers that is a volcanic interruption waiting to happen from the very core of your soul, a purely emotional and neurotic-like reaction. One of those that shakes your stability and makes you think you don’t really know yourself as well as you thought you do.
Now I never did actually erupt or release any ash, smoke or lava. And I am not sure Andy ever noticed the build-up that was occurring to me as I was flipping pages, but still. The mere fact that it was there, in this way, was a very new experience to me.