The Glory of Carniola

Focus Contact Lenses Ate My (Eye)balls!

My right eyeball, with Sauron Syndrome.

Earlier this year, my local optometry ran out of Acuvue contact lenses, my preferred brand. Rather than wait for the next shipment, I decided to take whatever was available.

"What's available?" I asked the optometrist.
"Focus Monthly Lenses by CibaVision," he said.
"OK then," I said, "Give me twelve of their hydrophilic contact lenses immersed in sterile isotonic phosphate buffered saline solution."
"Who did what now?" he asked.

I eventually got the lenses. However, after trying the first pair for a week, I suddenly developed Sauron Syndrome. That's where your eye, which normally isn't on fire, suddenly catches fire. Or at least, it feels like it's on fire. I should mention that I've been wearing contact lenses for about a decade and have never had any problems, much less an inferno raging on my cortex.

I removed the lenses, switched to glasses, and let the fire burn out. I thought it might be an infection and decided to take it easy for a while. This Friday, after a month of wearing glasses, I decided to try the Focus lenses again. I put them in, and immediately went back to being Sauron.

So, two big thumbs down to CibaVision, whose contact lenses ate my eyeballs.

Moving right along: European Parliamentary Elections are going on today in Slovenia. According to one poll, the center-left Liberal Democrats of Slovenia (LDS) are expected to take 31%, followed by the main opposition party with 19%. The total results of the poll are here. I'll post something tomorrow about the actual results and the election. Right now I have to go put on an eye patch or something.

Martin Strel vs. the Yangtze River

Martin Strel prepares to swim the Yangtze. From his official site.

In September 2002, the Slovenian swimmer Martin Strel became the first man to swim the length of the Mississippi in a single attempt. He swam for 68 days before reaching the Gulf of Mexico, drinking a bottle of wine a day and losing nearly 40 pounds in the process.

Now he's attempting to swim the Yangtze River in China. (He already has both the Danube and the Parana under his belt.)

Here's a good story about Strel's latest adventure, from the Christian Science Monitor.

And here is his official page, which has tons of up-to-date info and will include daily reports of his epic struggle.

Best of luck to him!

The 5 Most Dangerous Slovenian Words

The Slovenian language is notoriously difficult and brutal. One bonus is that it's usually phonetic, like Serbian, so the words are read the way they are written.

I say "usually" because sometimes a slight difference in intonation creates a completely different word. And sometimes one word is clean, while the other word is not. And sometimes foreigners, such as myself, mix them up and embarass themselves. Here are the ones to watch out for -- the five most dangerous Slovenian words:

ZAHOD : means "west" in Slovene
ZAHOD : means "toilet" in Serbian

ZADOVOLJEN : means "to be satisfied"
ZADOVOLJEN : means (almost always) "to be sexually satisfied." I still make this mistake on a regular basis.

POSESTNICA : means "a female landowner"
POCESTNICA : means "hooker."

ZAPRT : means "closed"
ZAPRT : also means "constipated," which I learned after trying to ask a waitress if her cafe was closed, but instead ended up asking her if she was constipated. (Ali si zaprta?)

KAKAV : means "hot chocolate"
KAKAL : means "to crap." In Slovene, endings in "v" or "l" are usually pronounced "ow." So, Jaz bom kakav and Jaz bom kakal sound dangerously similar, except that one means "I'll have a cocoa" and the other means "I will take a dump." This can be made infinitely worse if adjectives like "large," "steaming-hot" or "creamy" are employed...

Something Slovenes Do Best ?

A Bosnian commercial for a Slovenian beer. Click to watch.

If you click on the image above, you will see a Bosnian commercial for the popular Slovenian beer Lasko. In it, a clumsy Slovene (wearing a ski outfit, of all things) enters a Bosnian disco, where he tries to flirt with a girl but instead falls down and accidentally hurts people. The voiceover tells us:

Slovenes may not be the best seducers, but there are things they do excellently... like Lasko beer. There they are real masters.

The slogan, as seen above, is: "Something Slovenes do best."

It's an interesting example of how the people of ex-Yugoslavia caricature each other, although this is the first time I've seen Slovenes joked about as clumsy. (The more common joke is that they are stingy or workaholics.)

"In the Disco" Bosnian Lasko Commercial (3.4 MB) Right click and save...

(Thanks, Pubec!)