twittered srk

_inbetween_ (who is totally evol btw) just alerted me to the fact that Shah Rukh Khan has a twitter account, omg. He joined on the second of January, and already he's got (only) 56,554 followers.

Including me. Because I am pathetic. Argh.

And the man does write a lot of drivel. And he can't spell!!!! Goodness me, as soon as you stray out of the purview of fandom, non-capitalised nouns and Domlijah-tinhattish mis-spellings and grammatical gaffes greet you at every corner.

But omg. SRK! And his icon, get this, is a photo he downloaded from his Nokia and it's him and his torso! *cringes*

In for a pound and all that, because now I'm going to follow Karan Johar as well. It's, um, good for my Hindi practice. Um. Which, of course, these dags don't post in.

Yes, I have been taking Hindi lessons since June with a lovely lecturer at teh Uni who used to be in street theatre in Mumbai. I actually managed an entire conversation about Christmas just before the holidays, and I can more or less read all the letters and read simple dialogues. I've only ever learned one language with a non-Roman script before (Russian) and one non-European language (Indonesian), and of course, Bollywood without subtitles beckons as the pot beneath the rainbow!

Rodney, btw, is still buried firmly within John but when this fic will be written, is not known. Keep encouraging me, though, and that might provide inspiration, *g*.

snow

Also: I love the snow!

It's a real winter!

It's fluffy and white underfoot, and makes that poufy sound when you step into it with your hiking boots. I live in the hiking boots, plus I wear two pairs of socks, long thermal underwear, two pairs of underpants, and 3-5 layers on top, plus neckscarf, woolly scarf, beanie, two pairs of gloves and winter coat for outdoors.

A friend of teh son's threw a snow ball and smashed our kitchen window today. The snow is harder than one thinks!

The cats leave pawprints in the snow. Sometimes the garbage bin lids freeze shut but come undone when tugged.

The bigger streets are dark brown and a bit slushy but our street is still white, as are all the footpaths because English people don't move the snow, they just sort of put up with it. In Holland, I noted, the first thing that was cleared after the Saturday's blizzard, were the cycle paths.

They are calling it 'the big freeze' here, and 'frozen Britain'. Where I'm living, it's not freezing. Also, as one letter writer to a paper pointed out, this used to be called 'winter'. A Finnish colleague told me that when he was home for Christmas it was minus 25 (!) and everything worked: nothing closed down and all the trains ran.

I was in Manchester and the uni closed down; our conference was moved to the hotel which was great because so convenient! And the hotel staff did not once sweep or shovel a path from the car park to the front door (!). There was a lot of snow in Manchester. Someone had built an 8-foot snow individual.

Where the trees drip, there are pockmarks in the snow. Blades of grass poke through the blanket here. In Manchester, there was no grass visible. When the sky is low and grey, it's snow weather. Then the clouds have a white blizzardy orgasm, and the sun comes out and everything is bright.