From Iceland — Sour Grapes & Stuff

Sour Grapes & Stuff

Published January 6, 2012

Sour Grapes & Stuff

MOST AWESOME LETTER:
Dear Grapevine,

my name is Fabio, I’m from Italy. 

A few days ago I was in Reykjavik with Alina and Elena, two colleagues 
of mine. We are librarians and we were at the University of Reykjavik,
attending a workshop.


Before coming to Iceland I had several prejudices about. Will I find trees? (Not a forest but I saw several) How many meters of snow? (none!) Have I to buy snow clothes? (it doesn’t matter) So, I filled my luggage with gloves, wool scarf and cap. But I didn’t use it. The weather was not so bad and the only problem was my lips broken by a cold wind. Lip balm was the right solution.

Another question was about the light. At the end of October, how many hours (or minutes…?) of natural light? Ok, it was nice. Volcanoes were quiet and we had magnificent days of sunlight we used to have daily trips around Reykjavik.
The city is incredibly peaceful. in Italy, what a mess!
People are really polite and we, tourists, were not so many.

 Elena and I stayed at the same hotel, so we were together a lot of time. At the end of our stay I called her my “fake wife”. We joked a lot and we had a wonderful impression of our workshop and stay in Reykjavik. What could we desire more?


Well, on friday morning, the 21st of october, may be 9.45, as usual, we went to the University library on foot. It was raining slightly so we had an umbrella. We were at the cross between Egilsgata and Barónsstígur, near the big church. Suddenly, while we were talking, a young girl asked us for permission and took a picture of us.

The road was almost deserted and it was so unexpected that we didn’t leave her our email addresses.

Elena and I live in different towns so we thought this picture would be a nice postcard from Iceland to hang next our desks. But how to retrieve that?
Could Grapevine help us?

Thanks anyway. Iceland is so beautiful.
My best
Fabio Zauli
Italy  
Dear young girl on the street who took a photo of Fabio and Elena on that rainy Friday morning on October 21 a little after 9:45 as they crossed Egilsgata and Barónsstígur, near the big church, if you’re reading this… please get in touch with us so that we can send that photo to Fabio and his “fake wife” who attended a workshop at Reykjavík University.
Best of luck to you, Fabio and Elena!


Dear The Reykjavik Grapevine. 

At first, I am sorry for bothering you with this sudden e-mail. 
My name is Yuu Noyama, an university student in Tokyo, Japan. 

I want to explain about the circumstances of Japanese the mass media at this E-mail.
There was the practice of demonstration against Fuji-TV, 21 August, Tokyo.
Today, I tell the practice of demonstrations in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka from 16 Sep. to 18 Sep.

In Tokyo, We did the demonstration against Fuji-TV and the major sponsor of him, Kao.
Participants ordered quitting the sponsor quickly to kao,
The assertions of participants of demonstrations against Fuji-TV at three cities are below.

”Apologize for doing indiscretion behavior to victims of the 2011 Touhoku earthquake.”
”Shorten televised hours of Korean drama shows.”
”Make more Japanese musician’s booking to music program.”
”Broadcast about this demonstrations at TV news.”

And, demonstration in Nagoya, where’s hometown of Miki Andou, Mao Asada, there was such assertions.
”Quit malicious editing at sports news programs and play-by-play broadcasting of skating events”
”Reform an denial behavior of program against Japanese skater, especially Mao Asada.”

But, Fuji-TV hasn’t remarks the statement to show the apology so far.
This company’s making the drama show forward October,
An Korean actress Kim Tae-hee, whose behavior have many diplomatic problems, will play 
the leading part at this drama show.

And there is an indefinite plan to the third demonstration in Tokyo at October.
To know deeply about this question, You should search the information periodic.
Dear Yuu Noyama,
Thank you for your sudden letter! We strongly support your desire to have a fair and balanced media. As journalists for this magazine we strive to maintain that standard of excellence. We’re not sure that we can make it to the demonstration in Tokyo, but perhaps our Tokyo-based readers will go. And best of luck to Mao Asada in the upcoming blading championships!

Hello,


The difficulty to learn Icelandic language for foreigners is as known as The
Northern Lights.
One of the cause for that is a shortage of good quality learning materials,
like easy reading online texts of current news, similar to www.8sidor.se in
easy Swedish.

One page of Grapevine, sacrificed for short articles (50-100 words) written in
easy Icelandic will be a huge help for those trying to learn this language. 

My personal experience is as follow – with 8sidor I have learnt more Swedish in
3 months (to be able to read regular books) what is more than I can do with 
Icelandic after 5 years of learning.
Best regards

Chris
Dear Chris,
The non-native speakers of this office couldn’t agree with you more. Learning Icelandic is no walk in the park. We’ll keep this mind in for our summer issues when we have more space and tourists and stuff!

Dear Line and Queue –
It was so surprising to see you both so frequently at Airwaves this year that I thought I would send you a letter to express my true feelings. Where to begin…
Line, I think you are a bitch. The best you can do is stick figures. You are endless. The only pleasure you brought me was thinking about how I was continuously stepping on your face night after night. One could only hope I confused your face with your nut bag.
And Queue, you’re just a “p” that got bitch slapped so badly you did a 180. Somehow you make European sayings uncool.
Maybe next year your handlers can keep you in places you belong, like super rad bottle service clubs. You have no place at Airwaves.
Your NYC Friend of Airwaves 
Dear NYC Friend of Airwaves,
thank you for your letter. Unfortunately Line and Queue aren’t around to answer you in person (we haven’t seen those fuckers since October—although we hear they occasionally drop in at Kaffibarinn), so we’ll have to say something on their behalf.
Now, we’re sorry you’re frustrated with Line and Queue (especially coming from a city where folks willingly stand in line for up to six hours to buy a burger) and we feel your pain. However, Line and Queue have been mainstays on the Airwaves line-up for almost a decade now and it seems they’ll continue to get booked to play the festival for the foreseeable future.
You’ll likely have to learn to live with those guys if you want to continue your friendship with Airwaves.
Now, a good trick to avoid them would be to steer clear of the hyped-up bands playing the hyped-up venues, opting instead to attend lesser-hyped bands playing lesser-hyped venues. A lot of those bands are really, really good (some of them suck, of course, but then that’s life).
You could also try coming a month early to Iceland and making friends with all the doormen at the popular clubs. Those guys are really nice, and they’ll probably let you slip past Line and Queue if you develop a real friend- ship with them.
Alternatively, you could pretend you’re some sort of music journalist or record industry executive person (do either of those still exist?). That has worked for people in the past (it also helps you score free records from un- suspecting Icelandic bands).
In any case, we’re already looking forward to seeing you at Airwaves 2k12! You could even drop by our office— there’s never a queue here.

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