(no subject)

[slemslempike]

[Poll #2002554]

I'm going to Tanzania in two weeks! Sunday to Sunday, staying in a hotel that promises to be QUIET. I can't guarantee that I will ever leave my hotel room as what I'm mostly looking forward to is SLEEEEEEEEP. If I do, though, I'm looking forward to going to some small museums, wandering around the old parts of Stone Town and seeing buildings older than 10 years, eating nice food, and most of all not seeing the same effing faces over and over again. I am sacrificing the opportunity to download more television in order to leave my laptop at home, where access to email and files will not tempt me to do any work.

I am going to try and mix marmite and cheese into my pancake mix tonight for dinner. If that goes badly wrong I have leftover chicken chow mein. And some tea cake marshmallow things that aren't as nice as Tunnocks.

Comments

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

I demand that you answer your own poll!!1!!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Counsel mustn't lead the witnesses! Rest assured, I shall come back at the end to express my incredulity at those who get it wrong.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

Are you implying that your flist are so conformist that they'd "cheat" by looking at the answers first?! I'm deeply shocked!!1!! ;-P

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

I think I say 'cokey' but I am not 100% sure and have now confused myself. I suspect I used to say 'pokey' but 'corrected' myself at some point in childhood.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

The only pokey-ers are North American, which ties in with the reason for this poll, which is that I hired more Brits so we ganged up on the N Ams in the car the other night to tell them everything they were wrong about, and they were horrified to hear about the (much more sensible) hokey cokey.

[wonderlanded.livejournal.com]

Australians! Australians also reject the 'cokey' nonsense!

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

My "something else" relates to the start, not the end. Obviously everyone's right when they say "cokey", but I'd sing "Oh, Hokey okey cokey" rather than that double "oh".

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

That sounds rather good. I mean, it's stll WRONG from my point of view, but I could see it working.

[majea.livejournal.com]

Hokey coken?! What madness has befallen LJ?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It is you crazy North Americans who are mad! It is the hokey cokey, which nobody can deny. My American and Canadian colleagues have tried to. They were wrong.

[majea.livejournal.com]

Yes, but your poll does not represent an accurate sample from both hemispheres. Population wise, the US and Canada are much larger than the UK, Ireland, and Australia, so more people in the world say hokey pokey. Therefore, you are wrong. The end.

[wonderlanded.livejournal.com]

Dude. The Australians are on your side on this one.

[whatho.livejournal.com]

I'm mildly torn on 'jolly good fellow' because I think I learned 'and so say all of us' first and then encountered 'which nobody can deny' and now hear both more or less equally. And prefer 'which nobody can deny', because it's demanding and hilarious. But I plumed for 'and so say all of us', 'cause it was first. I am not in the least bit torn about the hokey cokey.

[whatho.livejournal.com]

I looked it up on Wikipedia (it's a slow day here). I shan't spoil it with my findings, but loved this:

'In some parts of the United Kingdom, when singing the song to the driver of a bus or coach, usually on a specially commissioned trip rather than a standard scheduled journey....'

I wish they'd omitted the last clause and left Wikipedia readers with the impression that UK passengers regularly sing 'For he/she's a jolly good fellow' to bus drivers.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It does sound rather like the trips are commissioned solely for hte purpose of singing For He's A Jolly Good Fellow to the hapless driver.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Well no - obviously one wouldn't be torn by the hokey cokey. Because it's the hokey cokey, and NOTHING ELSE.

I have now looked further at the wiki page, and found this: "Many people find it difficult to leave the correct pause in the third iteration of "For he's a jolly good fellow"". I am going to paranoid abut this from now on.

[alltheleaves.livejournal.com]

Are you going to Zanzibar? I hope you will be as thrilled as I was about going to Freddie Mercury's house.

I saw a sign asking what if the Hokey Cokey is what it's all about and I am still pondering on that.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I am going to Zanzibar! I do plan to see Freddie Mercury's house, though I am not a very big music person so it might not be as thrilling as it was from you.

[alltheleaves.livejournal.com]

I'm not a big Queen fan but I do love that, given how traditional some aspects of life are in Zanzibar, they were still hugely celebratory about the Freddie Mercury connection. Where will you be staying? It's expensive but I recommend a day trip to Chumbe Island. And a day trip to the rainforest to see the monkeys.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I'm staying at the Zanzibar Hotel in Stone Town, nearish the ferry termial. I have made no plans whatsoever, but am very open to cool day trips. What's on Chumbe Island that I might like?

[alltheleaves.livejournal.com]

Chumbe is s a marine preservation area where you're not allowed to fish or scuba dive to protect the coral reef (the whole island is coral skeleton). From what I remember something like 80% of the coral species that grow in East Africa grow on that reef and the fish populations are incredible. They take you out snorkelling and it's stunning, when we went there was a "fish watcher" in our group and she said there were lots of unique species (and she told us an awful lot about all the fish she had seen all over the world), and it was amazing. Also lots of turtles which was really exciting for me. And we saw a very pretty green snake but it was in our hut and might have made us jump a mile high.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

I saw a sign asking what if the Hokey Cokey is what it's all about and I am still pondering on that.

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind. The answer is blowin' in the wind.

[felinitykat]

Argh, I just had to look up the Jolly Good Fellow lyrics (both sounded equally 'right' to me) and apparently I've plumped for the US version. I blame too much American TV in my childhood and not enough real experiences of singing that song.

The Hokey is of course, though, always and forever the Cokey (the Pokey? wtf?).

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia claims that in New Zealand it's called the Hokey Tokey. And seems to suggest that the Hokey Pokey name came first, which does nothing to diminish the fact that it's WRONG.

[joyeuce]

Hokey pokey is an old term for ice cream, I think. "Hokey pokey, penny a lump" has just swum up from my subconscious, with connotations of ice cream.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I think it's a kind of ice cream in New Zealand still. I meant to try some but never managed it when I was there.