Jun. 5th, 2006 04:46 pm
Six Odd Things #2: Besteck
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muckefuck#2: I employ silverware like a reverse European
I wouldn't've known this about myself if e. hadn't pointed it out one day during a family meal. For those of you wondering what I'm talking about: Europeans tend to keep knife in one hand and fork in another. They don't switch hands, as most Americans do; they cut as they go and they don't rest their cutting hand in their lap when not in use. I'm left-handed, though, so whereas most Europeans would have the knife in the right hand, I hold mine in my left.
What I find oddest about this is that I have no idea how and why I picked it up. It's true, I did live in Europe for a while, but I almost never dined out in anything resembling a formal setting. There are European customs I adopted deliberately during my stay, like writing the date day-month-year or starting with the thumb when counting on my fingers, both of which I do to this day. But this wasn't one of them.
Both my younger siblings have also spent a considerable chunk of time in Europe and/or dining with Europeans, but my sister (who was once engaged ot a Spaniard) still eats like an American. My left-handed brother (who actually married a Spaniard) also uses knife and fork like a European, but a right-handed one. Now that's just plain weird.
I wouldn't've known this about myself if e. hadn't pointed it out one day during a family meal. For those of you wondering what I'm talking about: Europeans tend to keep knife in one hand and fork in another. They don't switch hands, as most Americans do; they cut as they go and they don't rest their cutting hand in their lap when not in use. I'm left-handed, though, so whereas most Europeans would have the knife in the right hand, I hold mine in my left.
What I find oddest about this is that I have no idea how and why I picked it up. It's true, I did live in Europe for a while, but I almost never dined out in anything resembling a formal setting. There are European customs I adopted deliberately during my stay, like writing the date day-month-year or starting with the thumb when counting on my fingers, both of which I do to this day. But this wasn't one of them.
Both my younger siblings have also spent a considerable chunk of time in Europe and/or dining with Europeans, but my sister (who was once engaged ot a Spaniard) still eats like an American. My left-handed brother (who actually married a Spaniard) also uses knife and fork like a European, but a right-handed one. Now that's just plain weird.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
yyyymmdd
I spend endless time trying to convince developers that if they are going to put a date into a filename to differentiate versions, please god just tack it on the end, and use yyyymmdd format. With leading zeroes. 'Cause then it sorts!
I myself picked up writing my dates in the weird "dd Mon yyyy" format from Oracle. In the default state for Oracle (once upon a time), if you typed your dates in like '06 Jun 2006', you didn't have to use a string-to-date function to get it to be recognized. I promised myself at the turn of the century that I'd use four digit dates fanatically, and when I change my habit on writing my checks each month, I found myself writing it in the Oracle default format.