Blog

A Blogpost about my Blog

Despite promising to be more regular in writing and posting here on my blog, I must yet again apologise that over four and a half months have past since my last post. However, in the last couple of days, I have discovered that, even if I had written and posted a blog post, almost nobody would have read it. Because if you had put my URL into your browser, you would have received a message saying that it was unsafe to proceed because my website had security issues.

Back in February 2024, I renewed the hosting of rickyyates.com with Namecheap.com. Part of that deal was the provision of an SSL certificate showing that my website was secure. This should have downloaded automatically, but it didn’t 🙁 There was a bug in the system.

Having been alerted to the problem, I eventually contacted Namecheap to ask them to investigate it. This was how I learned about the ‘bug in the system’. To fix it, I had to go into my cPanel, a place I’d never been before, and manually insert my SSL certificate. It took at least six minutes and three clicks on the sync button, before it finally worked, having been assured it would only take one or two minutes.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the problem. Whilst now, when anyone put my URL into their browser, there was a message acknowledging the SSL certificate, my website was still being deemed insecure because of ‘mixed content’. Apparently, not all of the content on my website had been uploaded from a ‘secure location’. Don’t ask me how that happened!

The help desk at Namecheap suggested that the issue could be fixed by ‘adding a special line to my .htaccess file which locates in the root folder of my domain name at my cPanel’. I wasn’t at all keen to go there again 🙁

But fortunately, they also noted that my blog used WordPress and they suggested two possible WordPress plugins that might also fix the problem. An /ssl-insecure-content-fixer/ . I chose the second suggestion which had many positive reviews, and set about installing it, something I also had never previously done. And I’m very pleased to report that it worked!

My grateful thanks to my good friend & former colleague, Kathy Ferguson, who first alerted me to the problem and has regularly re-tried to go to my website whilst I was working on resolving it and fed back to me the messages she was getting. Therefore a big shout-out for her new blog https://staying-put.blogspot.com/ 🙂

Please let me know, if in future, anyone has an access problem Use email, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or even snail mail to contact me. And I do have a couple of future posts planned. One about how I became a hymn book smuggler into the EU and another about my recent trip to SW France.

Comments are most welcome & I will always try to respond to them. At the moment, there isn’t a captcha as it was previously causing difficulties to genuine commenters. But if I get inundated with offers of free Viagra or money making scams, I may have to reintroduce it. Here’s hoping I don’t.

All change!

Regular visitors to this blog will have noticed that, in the last 24 hours, its appearance has changed. After three and a half years, I’ve decided the time has come to alter my ‘theme’. No – I’m not changing the theme of what I write about. What has changed is the way it now visually appears on yours and my computers. I’ve adopted a new WordPress theme.

As always, when it comes to technical matters in relation to this blog, it should really be what my internet savvy wife has done. Whilst I outlined the appearance I wanted and am responsible for the photograph of the Prague skyline featured in my new header, Sybille has been totally responsible for implementing the changes you can now see. If you like what you see, her services are available to you – for a donation 🙂

Why have I made the change? Partly just to freshen up the blog appearance. But a major factor was that my previous theme was fluid. This meant that the way any post appeared on my computer was not necessarily the way it appeared on other people’s computers. It depended entirely on each person’s screen resolution. Seeing several blogposts as they appeared on other computers made me recognise the problem. Therefore, I am now using a theme with a fixed layout.

Inevitably, as you fix one problem, it is very easy to cause others. A quick journey back through the blog shows that a few photographs now run partly into the sidebar on the right. This is a problem I hope to fix in the next few days. But if any of my readers spot any other issues, please let me know either via the ‘Contact’ page or by leaving a comment.

I have also taken the opportunity to change the tag line for the blog. It used to say ‘Ricky Yates – a blog and more…..’. Now it’s ‘Ricky Yates – an Anglican in Prague’ which is a far more apt description. My thanks to ‘Girl in Czechland’, who has used this tag line for my blog in her blogroll for quite some time and which I’ve now chosen to adopt myself.

What has also changed, is the computer on which this blog is being compiled and published. Courtesy of a generous donation by one of the members of the St. Clement’s congregation, together with a contribution by Sybille and myself, I am writing this on a shiny new laptop computer which functions using Windows 7 and speaks to me in English! My previous machine had Windows XP, spoke to me in Czech, and was rapidly dying.

Once more, courtesy of my computer savvy wife, in the past forty-eight hours, the whole contents of my old computer – email, photographs, a vast variety of files – have all been safely transported onto this new machine. There are sure to be a few teething problems as, with Sybille’s encouragement, I’m now drafting this in ‘OpenOffice’ rather than ‘Microsucks Word’. But as far as I am concerned, it certainly is, ‘All change!’

If you like what you see – tell me. If you don’t – please also tell me!

Eating & Drinking in a Czech Bar-Restaurant

A wonderful example of Czenglish! © Sybille Yates — A wonderful example of 'Czenglish'! © Sybille Yates

One of the joys of living in Prague is being able to ‘eat out’ in one of the very many bar-restaurants that abound here. Provided you avoid the expensive ‘tourist traps’ in the centre of the city, prices are extremely reasonable, so much so, that some single people have told me that it is often cheaper for them to ‘eat out’ rather than try & cook for themselves at home. However, there are noticeable cultural differences between Britain and the Czech Republic in the way that you order, are served and pay for your drinks &/or meal.

As in Britain, most bars also serve food. But even if you go to a bar-restaurant just for a drink, do NOT go to the bar itself and say “I’d like two beers please”. No – go in and sit down at one of the free tables and wait until the barman/lady comes to you. If you just want a beer, taking a beer mat from the container in the middle of the table and putting it down in front of you, will indicate fairly clearly what you want. And if you forget to do this before your beer arrives, then the barman/lady will do it for you, before placing your beer in front of you. In the Czech Republic, beer glasses have to be placed on beer mats!

Do not try to pay for your beer when it is served to you. No – wait until you have finished drinking and are ready to leave. This may of course, be several rounds of drinks later. However, the person who has served you will have kept track of what you have had, either behind the bar or on a strip of paper left on the table on which the number of beers served will be marked. Saying “Zaplatim prosim” (may I pay please), will produce a bill which you then settle.

If you want to eat, do exactly the same as you would if you just want to drink. Go in, choose a vacant table and sit down. Only in slightly more upmarket restaurants will you be met at the door, asked how many people there are, and then be directed to a suitable table.

Czech menus have a number of interesting characteristics. For any meat dish, the exact weight of the meat will be specified such as 200 grams of pork, or 150 grams of chicken. There is of course, no way to check whether you actually are served 200 grams of pork rather than 191 grams of pork as scales are not provided! Often a meat dish will be served with little else other than a small salad garnish. Therefore you need to go to the ‘side dishes’ section of the menu where various forms of potato, together with other vegetables, will be listed. The advantage of this system is that you can choose almost exactly what you want to eat.

Prague is a city that is geared to visiting tourists. Therefore nearly every bar-restaurant has their menu not only in Czech, but also in English, German & sometimes also in Russian. But this is where you encounter a wonderful language which I have christened ‘Czenglish’. Very rarely do Sybille & I visit a new restaurant without descending into fits of laughter at the interesting English used to describe certain dishes. The menu on a Prague restaurant window shown in the photo at the head of this post left us creased up with laughter when we saw it last Monday. Clearly the bread to accompany the potato soup had been taken to Church and blessed prior to being served!

Czech people tend to be very particular regarding their own language and quickly correct anyone who dares to conjugates a verb or noun incorrectly. Yet they seem oblivious to the multiple mistakes that are contained within the English version of so many menus. My English Czech-speaking friend & Churchwarden Gerry Turner told me that he offered once to correct the English on the menu of a restaurant he regularly frequents in return for a free meal. The offer was refused point blank as the restaurant owner could see no reason for doing so.

There are two other cultural peculiarities that I experience every time I eat in a bar-restaurant in Prague. The first is the absence of place settings. Instead, soon after you have placed your order, a plate or upright container will be brought to your table containing your cutlery and paper serviettes. You take what you need from the plate/container and create your own place setting. The second is that, as soon as one person has finished eating, immediately a waiter will appear and whip their empty plate away, regardless of the fact that other people sitting with them are still eating. The reasoning behind this practice I have yet to discover but it happens everywhere we eat.

Normally in the UK, once everyone has finished their main course, the dirty plates and cutlery will be removed from the table and the dessert and coffee menu will be offered. Yet here in the Czech Republic, despite desserts (often the Czenglish ‘deserts’!!) being available, the opportunity to order them is rarely offered. If you want to have a dessert, you often have to specifically ask for the return of the menu in order to be able to decide what you want and place your order.

This post is my contribution to World Blog Surf Day being organised by Sher. Please read the next expat blogger in the chain by going to empty nest expat who is my friend Karen, currently back in the US of A but hopefully returning to Prague very soon once her work permit and visa problems are resolved. I am also asked to link to Anastasia Ashman who is an American cultural producer based in Istanbul, and is a creator of Expat Harem, the anthology by foreign women about modern Turkey. Her Tweetstream focuses on women, travel and history and she shares resources for writers/travelers, expats, Turkophiles & culturati of all stripes.