Tuesday, 12 August 2008

Légion D'honneur and Olympics

As English speakers we can be very lazy to learn or speak other languages, life can be too easy for us, with much of the international travel environment being geared towards English.

I got talking to 3 men in the hotel from Germany, Estonia and France. It was like some kind of bad Paddy irishman joke.

The German was the same age as my mum and spoke English perfectly. He grew up in East Berlin. He thought that English speakers were stupid.

The Estonian spoke Russian and French and was very chatty, which is untypical for Estonia. They are usually quite dour.

The French man apparently spoke Russian and English. He also was in the army and was claiming all sorts of nonsense. I think he was some comic book hero who rescued kidnap victims etc. I asked him if he was in the Legion D'honneur (i might not speak French fluently but lets just say I know my way around)...yea he claims he was in that.

Now, thats when you know...you just know...you're being fed bullshit...why do people do this? Big things up to sound impressive? The Legion D'honneur is not a regiment of an army, and I am quite sure every single person living in France would know what it is. It is France's highest decoration. Bit like being made a Lord in the UK.

Some updates:

Phelps is a legend...we knew this...he is on target having won 3 golds out of 3, only 5 more to go...Go Michael Go...

And in the Diving pool, the UK pairing of Tom Daley and Blake Aldridge finished last, with Aldridge having a major spat in the press blaming it on his 14 year partner for "losing it"...now I watched the dives, and whilst neither of them were at their best, they both created a lot of splash on entry. So really, this bitchy outburst by Alridge is completely unnecessary...more here