Iceland declares state of emergency over volcanic eruption threat

I had to call an attendant up to understand how in the word to turn the shower on (there was a long skinny faucet the water poured into the tub that had to be turned clockwise) which she said she was confused by it too and had someone show her. It was in an older Icelandic hotel that used their natural hot water (sulphur stinky but i didnt mind) from the ground for showering or any type of hot water use.

Of course, Iceland has a total population of a mid-sized city, so we're talking ~21k Polish people compared to ~4k Danes.

> 12h time can also carry a subtext or impreciseness

There's an additional twist where 12h time is expected to be precise: when being asked for time, many a time one would answer with 12h hour + smallest delta with ±2min error margin, and only sometimes 24h, possibly rounded:

"it's 10 to 3" (3h moins 10): could be 14:48 or 14:52, 14:53 would be "5 to 3" (3h moins 5). This has a slight bias towards the highest, as usually people ask so as not to be late somewhere, so 14:52 could be answered as either "5 to 3" or even "3" depending on urgency. Someone answering "3h52" happens at time but it's fairly rare and feels a bit odd; usually happens out of some habit when reading time from analog clocks.

It's also fair to say 14:45 when it's actually 14:41, but basically nobody would say "quarter to 14".

Also, "noon" is often understood as a quasi-synonym to "lunch", and could actually mean maybe up to 2PM for some, or even 11AM if there's some preliminary social or logistics expectation: "we'll come for noon" (on vient pour midi) has a different context-dependent subtext than "we'll arrive at noon".

> you add something like “in the morning”.

"In the mornin'" ("du mat'") is indeed used as a quasi-marker, a replacement for AM but only when ambiguity needs to be resolved, which it rarely does given known context about activities or people.

Often it's used for emphasis e.g earliness: "woke up at 4" has enough context to gather that it's in the morning but has a neutral, factual tone to it, whereas "woke up at 4 in the mornin'" evokes "what? shitty night I bet, you must feel terrible"; or lateness "we were out yesterday, went to bed at 4 in the mornin'!" similarly prompts "oh looks like you had some fun!".

Sometimes it is used in jest on 24h time. An answer to the above could be "15 in the morning? are you out of your mind?", implying that person would stay up late the night before or in self-derision about one's oversleeping habits.

It's vanishingly rare to literally say "in the afternoon", generally this is inferred or explicited from conversational context, as opposed to a marker: "let's see each other tomorrow afternoon, let's say around 3?"

As much as it would suck to lose a power plant (we are already on the edge of energy shortages), it is far worse to lose hot water supply to Keflavik. They'd have to quickly build up electric heating capacity, which will make energy shortages.

There also GNSS and laser interferometers that watch for displacement of land.

Early warning and prep is key. And this isn't an 'emergency', yet. It's an 'Alert', to prepare people for the worst.

And even if they interrupt service it's not like they aren't expecting service interruptions anyway (given the whole imminent volcano eruption)

But you kind of learn what you have to do, and what you don't want to do. Over the last weekend, we had similar winds and over the evening we heard some loud crashing, popping and overall noise. You kinda don't want to go out near trees with those winds as branches can fall - but at the same time, the wind might have blown over trees onto the roads and if some late night driver hammers into those... it'll be inconvenient for everyone, at least. We ended up meeting like 3 neighbours on the road checking out if the road is clear and had a good laugh with them.

Later on we figured out someone had launched some fireworks... dang guys.