St Stephen's Day - Double Lightning

Again no pictures, but Budapest certainly knows how to do a storm. Much like last year.

[OK, here's one, but it's not mine... the bolts I saw were slightly wigglier and more parallel. Click here to see the picture on its own page alongside numerous other nice lightning images.]

This year St Stephen's day, on which Hungarians celebrate King Steven (Szent Istvan, Istvan Kiraly) and the foundation of the Hungarian state fell on August 20th - just like last year; except this year it was a Monday.

Thus Monday was to be the great day for the Red Bull Air Race finals (which I didn't bother to go and see) and the fireworks along the Danube - which I was not going to miss, having been unable to watch them because of the great storm last year.

Because it is hot and humid, we were not unsurprised to see the sky growing black on the 19th, hoping that by the time the 20th came all stormery would be done. (It was - the fireworks were great!)

The storm of the 19th wasn't as devastating as last year's vihar, but from the comfort of the apartment window there was a good show of lightning - including "one" strike of a kind I have never seen before.

I saw a double-strike directly in front of me: two almost but not perfectly straight bolts whose tracks - at arms length they were about a thumb's width apart and I could see about a hand-span of the path above the roof opposite - paralleled each other on the way down.. including the small wiggles that there were.

How can one have two simultaneous bolts in virtually the same place following the same shape of path?

Another item for the Cabinet of Curious Stuff.

Heroes, Germans, Wombats! A Veritable Cornucopia of Stuff

Today's hero is Jancsó Ferenc, English speaking engineer at the Panasonic Service Centre (Kalotaseg u) here in Budapest...

Helpful - no make that very helpful - courteous, and above all, well... helpful! Give that man a raise!

I did have two dead camcorders - one, a Panasonic GS-120 remains dead owning to an influx of water from the great storm of last year ("Beyond Economic Repair", Internally Fubar'd, of just PFU!) despite his very best intent, but the other one, also a Panasonic now nearly 10 years old, has just been cured of its slight old age, slippy wheels and dodgy micro-switch and apparently now works just fine.

However, merely fulfilling one's job description isn't enough for real heroism: despite not-fixing the GS-120 I do now I have pictures of the water damage (Isn't it just fascinating? Shall I include one here? Yeah - then you too can share the thrill... later) and some information that might allow me to fix it myself one day... once I get it apart. In which case that repair will also eventually also be due to Mr Jancsó.

But, while we are on the topic of self-repair (c.f. Python, Monty "How to take your appendix out on the Piccadilly Line" The Brand New Monty Python Papperbok) just one piece of advice: beware of Japanese hoovers - they are not designed to be repaired and take phenomenal effort, great skill and tremendous courage (oh, let me see, what other heroic attributes does hoover repair require... honour, true grit, indefatigability, deep love of the Mother/Father land, etc. etc. etc.) even to open up - you do have to keep asking yourself

a) HTF did they put this *&^%$ together?
b) WTFTB if I pull any harder on this ^%"*&^ &%*(% !!!! cover? (WTFT break?)
c) WFI designed this (*$~# thing?

before you can even confront the problem itself. It took me two hours to get the last one open.

It is however an enlightening experience. Honestly. *

Hmmm.... hoovers.... reminds me of a rather unusual film I saw once... I think it was German (what a surprise!)

But, since we seem to have drifted from Japan to Germany, some handy hints...

BE CAREFUL! The German for hoover is "Staubsauger" - "dust sucker", definitely not to be confused with "Staus-säuger - which would be a "dust suckler". You will get very strange looks if you ask for the latter when you want the former (though if you do in fact want the latter I expect you're used to such things by now...)

Which brings me, and rather neatly I thought, to that handy piece of conversational German I acquired from Mr Bubley some years back, "Mein Beutelmaus hat verstopfung", or "My wombat is constipated".

Sadly, most Germans seem to have forgotten the word Beutelmaus, and know only "wombat", which is a shame; the etymology is quite nice...

If anyone knows of any equally pointless conversation gambits in other tongues, do let me know... (well, pointless for the audience - all the fun is in watching their faces as you announce in all seriousness the predicament of your marsupial companion animal...)

Ciao!

* If you would like to sign up for one of our occasional courses "Enlightenment Through The Repair of White & Brown Goods" please drop me a line. I also run workshops on

a) Capability Modelling with Alphabetti Spaghetti
b) Cosmology & Cheesecake: What THEY don't want you to know!
c) Impersonating a Giraffe (and other savannah animals)

and can whip up a course on almost anything given adequate incentive... money may mean nothing to me, but that doesn't mean I don't use it.

NB I think they must put something in my coffee today... this is unusually random stuff - even for me.

Wednesday

Expecting something exotic, erudite or eldritch?

Sorry, just wanted to say that it's effing hot here in Budapest at the moment... the little Vista weather gadget says it's currently 38C (well, at the weather station at Ferihegy airport as of 17:30 local time). Doesn't seem that hot to me, but I'm inside and the building is in the shade.

I was however woken up at 6am this morning (yes, I know what a.m. means, the emphasis was on this and I'm not going back just to edit out "am" now that I've made the point) by the heat of the sun shining on my right foot.

That's hot.

I'm hoping there will be a thunderstorm to clear the air soon, though thunderstorms here can be a little... excessive at times.

August 20th last year - a national day of some sort and the day of the Red Bull Air Race - it was also rather hot. Hot enough that only fools stood in the sun. We watched the air race and retreated from the furnace heat to the apartment to return to the banks of the Danube/Duna early in the evening to settle in for the fireworks show at 8pm.

We were as I recall (and the blurred picture attests... where's it gone?) wearing as little as possible - think T-shirt to keep off the sun, shorts and sandals, but in my case carrying rucksack with all the optical gear... 35mm camera, lenses, video camera. Who would have thought...

There were clouds and little flashes of lightning in the distance, Buda side.

Aha! Fireworks and lightning! That would be cool, I rashly opined. I love fireworks (school chemistry lab lost a bit of various nitrates to my home pyrotechnic experiments) and lightning (though I have learned I should be careful where I point my finger...) so it seemed a delightful, if improbable prospect.

The fireworks began on time. There was a gust of wind. Then there was a slightly stronger gust. Then it began precipitating. It might have been rain, but it seemed to sting rather too much.

Then it began to sting a lot - then it really began to hurt, and finally the doors to the chamber of winds blew open and voila - instant Force 9 gale. At the same precise moment the precipitation definitely became rain - and lots of it. We are not just talking Cats and Dogs, we are talking Lions, Tigers, Pumas, Great Danes, Rottweilers and Irish Wolfhounds, not cute kittens and happy spaniels.

Wind and rain demolished the catering stalls - the heavy vinyl not being quite up to a tempest; fortunately the demise of one gave us somewhere to shelter while the waters rose... as rise they did, even on the banks.

Eventually we had to get away (along with many tens of thousands of others), so we scrambled up the embankment, clambered through railings and trudged home. Happily we live not too far away, but it was a long wade home. We were lucky: sightseeing boats collided on the river, a couple were thrown overboard (don't know if they were ever found), falling trees killed two or three people; it was a dark and stormy night.

They didn't stop the fireworks: they didn't want to cause a panic - apparently overlooking the fact that there was already quite a lot of panicking going on... (which reminds me, must learn the Hungarian for "Help!")

But, that was the Great Storm (a vihar) of 2006. I think it was a Sunday.

But today's Wednesday, so that's OK.