The Daylight Saving Time ended last night when we moved our clocks back by an hour. It’s about 5:30 p.m. now and it’s pitch black. For the next two months, the days are going to continue to get shorter.
From Tesco with Love
I can’t help but point out another one of Kamal’s articles that we published on My Czech Republic this week. This one describes Kamal’s recent experience with the customer disservice – as I like to call the type of “service” that is still too easy to run into in the Czech Republic – at a Prague Tesco. Lo and behold, Kamal received a bouquet of flowers from Tesco the next day, with an apology and a dinner invitation. She sent it back with a note that said: “Prove that you have sent every single customer the same things.” Good job, girl!
Jagshemash?
Here’s my discovery of the day: It is not Czech!
It really wasn’t making any sense to me. Whenever I’ve watched a Borat episode on HBO, I’ve wondered why Sacha Baron Cohen’s Kazakh character greets the viewers with the very Czech sounding Jagshemash. What does Kazakhstan have to do with the Czech Republic? Did Mr. Cohen decide to throw all those “Eastern Europeans” into one basket and make them all speak one language?
Today I discovered that the phrase is not meant to be Czech, but instead is supposed to be the Polish Jak się masz, which of course sounds very similar to Jak se máš. Ok then. So it isn’t Czech. Good. But why Polish??
There’s a Borat dictionary at Boyakasha.co.uk.
The Dalai Lama Visited
The Dalai Lama paid his sixth visit to Prague, this time on the occasion of the 70th birthday of former Czech Republic president Václav Havel.
Our friend Kamal attended the Dalai Lama’s speech at the Žofín Palace and wrote an interesting article about it. Among other things, she points out the general Czech population’s lack of understanding of the world’s religions as it became apparent at the event. That of course may have to do with the fact that almost 60% of Czechs consider themselves atheist or agnostic, which in itself is fine. What is embarassing and alarming are the survey results that Kamal included. Should not believing be an acceptable excuse for not knowing?