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Welcome to the blog! Živeti Slovenija is a Blog for those interested in the workings of another country - in this case, the quirky and exciting Slovenia.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Ironing euros while shirtless.

How many steps are there on this blogger's staircase?

Five and one half months...thirty days to a month...one step for each day...

That leads to about 165 steps. Today is step twelve, and I've missed two, so, I have a 16.6% chance of not blogging each day. Not the best odds, huh?

Anyway, Slovenenia joined the European Union not long after achieving independance. The official currency is the Euro (which makes it so much easier to travel from france to germany to slovenia without changing money). The euro is structured a little differently from the dollar. There are still one hundred cents to the euro, and denominations fall out like this: for coins, 1 cent, 2 cents, 5 cents (all copper) 10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents (a goldish metal) 1 euro, 2 euro. The one euro coin is silver on the inside, gold on the outside, the two euro the opposite. Then bills; blueish fives, pinkish tens, brighter blue twenties, brown-red fifties, and green hundreds, each with several distinguishing features. Alot prettier than US dollars, I'd say,

Our little apartment is lacking in several things, (I'm not complaining, it's the truth.) Cutting boards, painted walls (bare white) pictures, to name a few. It does have an iron, though, The nice landlord, Gorazd, obviously felt worried that we had an iron and no ironing board and left a large ironing board, brand new, outside our door. Just the thing we didn't need.

Embarrassed in Slovenia is bad today. A few days ago, when I was photographing the apartment for the blog, I walked out to take pictures of the elevator with no shirt on (I would only take a second). I get in the elevator to go down, and then realize that the elevator was already going down when I called it, and there was someone waiting at the bottom.

I was not disappointed. as the doors opened there was an old woman in a fake fur coat with a small four year old girl holding her hand. I said excuse me and bolted for the staircase.

I guess I'm lucky that the landlord hasn't had complaints yet.

G-man

1 comment:

  1. G-man, perhaps ya'll need a "checklist"
    1. shirt and shoes
    2. key
    3. ...
    when leaving the apt.

    I cut and pasted the following as Levitt is more articulate and succinct than I could ever be.

    "New York Times’ Freakonomics Blog review:
    If there is one topic that I have no natural affinity for, it is checklists. I don’t use checklists. I’m not interested in checklists. [nb: ditto]

    Yet, against all odds, I read Atul Gawande’s new book about checklists, The Checklist Manifesto in one sitting yesterday, which is an amazing tribute to the book that Gawande has crafted. Not only is the book loaded with fascinating stories, but it honestly changed the way I think about the world. It is the best book I’ve read in ages.

    The book’s main point is simple: no matter how expert you may be, well-designed check lists can improve outcomes (even for Gawande’s own surgical team). The best-known use of checklists is by airplane pilots. Among the many interesting stories in the book is how this dedication to checklists arose among pilots.

    – Steven Levitt"

    talking about "steps" ...

    “A decade ago, Israeli scientists published a study in which engineers observed patient care in I.C.U.s for twenty-four-hour stretches. They found that the average patient required a hundred and seventy-eight individual actions per day.”

    at least your steps aren't "life or death" ... just red face making.

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