If only my English were better

Wondering

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:44:00 +0000

if Diet Coke could run in France the campaign the Tom Colicchio "East Tastefully" campaign that combines the drink with haute cuisine and calls it good taste. Hum.

Cold war in the Andes

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:08:00 +0000

I wonder why they keep calling the tension between Colombia and Venezuela Cold War, when its actually quite warm, especially after Chávez call to arms.
Have I told you how thankful I am of having left the country? Oh... like a thousand times. Well, make a thousand and one.

Random conversation #7

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:58:00 +0000

—A New York Soup Kichten, diswashing section.
Aussie women in her 50s with bright pink lipstick: Where're you from?
Lily: [Bored of repeating it] Belgium, but grew up in Venezuela.
Aussie: Oh, exotic. Love exotic. I'm from Australia. I just moved here.
Lily: Ehhh... welcome?
Aussie: Yes. I miss Bangkok so much, the massages...
Lily: I thought you were from Australia.
Aussie: I;m from everywhere. You see, I'm a singer and songwriter. People describe my music as political, but I think it;s about humanity. So I go where the world calls me.
Lily: Ah.
Aussie: Yes, there should be no frontiers. No visas. No papers. No limits. People free to be with each other, where they feel like it.
Lily: Ah.
Aussie: Free to express their art, free to travel the world. Free to... Oh, wait my husband is calling. He stays at home, taking care of the farm and my two daughters. So I can be free you know. Will be back in a sec!

English is a crazy language

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:36:00 +0000

It's from a chain, but very much to the point of this blog.

1)The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Things I keep on my iDisk

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:44:00 +0000

iDisks are almost like those antique armoirs where you keep your childhood diaries. Every so often, you look through them and find something you didn't remember having written or lived. It happened today with this short story called There It Is, so I decided to post it. It's a little odd (not only when it comes to grammar) but hey...

Time after time she went. She sat there, silent, listless, lifeless. She never looked at him, smiled at him or snared at him.

Time after time he looked at her, stared at her, scrutinized her. He then took his palette knife and hatched her portrait. Sometimes in a few seconds, sometimes in a few hours.

In the first months, he went for subtle coloring, eerie contours. As time passed, his sketches became bolder. Sharper angles started to invade lines that were intended to be soft. Stronger shades began to take hold where subdued hues had presided. Broken strokes soon replaced elongated ones.

Time after time he tried and time after time he failed. He could see it in her eyes, filled with something grander than void. He could see it every time she left her seat, approached him slowly and observed what he had done. He had utterly failed, once more.

She never said a word. She simply left, after carefully making sure all of her belongings—never many—were in her bag, leaving him dreading her next visit and dreading even more the fact that she might never come back.

Time after time he wondered why. He asked her once, she didn’t answer. He begged for an answer twice, she just sat there, like a frog, a frozen piece of meat. He offered to pay her thrice; she disappeared for one, two, three weeks. He never spoke to her again. She never had.

He started to expect her and kept a stool in his studio just for her. It was left empty until her undecided step brought her to his door and he could finally breathe again. She breathed, yet so softly you could never hear it. Even silence was too loud to describe her.

Month after month passed and she still came to him. Month after month passed and he still painted her. The blooming pink turned ochre, the pale blue became teal.

Once there was a knock on his door. Hoping it was she he opened eagerly. It was not she. Cherished shades of ochre and teal vanished. It was another woman, younger, and everything but silent. Time after time she came and with her laugh filled his studio. Her talk could never be silenced, or her body kept still on a stool. She kept picking and picking between his paintings until she discovered a hidden canvas, where ochre and teal at once shot her laugh out of the studio and brought back the feeling of emptiness he almost craved. She looked at him, and for once, said nothing. She just stared at the canvasses, one after another. She then took her gigantic bag full of useless knick-knacks and left.

He just sat there, silent, listless, lifeless, waiting for the other woman to come back so he could start sketching, painting, living. When she finally came, he felt this time he would get it right. He didn’t. Not this one or the next one. Not in a month. Not in a year.

The laughing woman called: a gallery opening came through. Not for his abstract paintings, not for his still life paintings. Only for the portraits of a nameless woman, dozens of them, all of them failures, all of them lies.

He delayed the answer. He wanted to get it right. He kept trying and trying, time after time, month after month. Teal after black after teal. Ochre after orange after ochre. It wasn’t still right.

Throughout it all, she just sat there, silent, listless, lifeless. Her face wrinkling, her skin sagging, her joints creaking. His hair graying, his posture stiffening, his fingers faltering. Time after time.

When he finally said yes, he still hadn’t gotten it right. Perhaps, he had accepted defeat. She hadn’t. He knew it, although he could not read into her eyes, vacant of any longing. She checked the contents of her bags more carefully than she had ever done before, slowly walked to the door, left, and never came back.

He had no way of letting her know. He never had her address or any contact information. She was always the one coming to him. He had never dared to disturb the slight tie that united them.

And now, time after time she looked at him from the gallery walls. From pink to ochre, from ochre to orange, from orange to ochre, from ochre to pink; from blue to teal, from teal to black, from back to teal, from teal to blue, she looked at him. She was not silent, listless or lifeless. Her eyes were not vacant. She was as full of life as anybody he had ever seen. She radiated, pulsated, vibrated. And a room full of laughing people was suddenly silenced.

Time after time this happened until portrait after portrait was sold and the grandeur of her void was restored on the empty walls. He felt at peace and went back to his studio where a note awaited him. For the first time, he was to come to her.

She was seating, silent, listless and lifeless. Yet something was wrong, you could hear her breathing, barely, but you could hear it.

He approached her as she had approached him thousands of times; he even felt his pocket to make sure his wallet was there. She was neither surprised nor happy. She just sat there. He just sat there. Breathing together, slowly and deeply. At one point she opened her eyes a little more and something like a spasm seemed to wake her from her everlasting lethargy. She faintly pointed to a mirror. He took the mirror and pointed it to her face.

—“There it is, I finally see it,” she said smiling for the first and last time in his presence, her breathing back to silence.

For those who love to study a language and never learn it

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:09:00 +0000

This site is super cool: busuu.com. It has audio and there is community who corrects your writing exercises.

Immigrant Archive Project

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:42:00 +0000

Quite an amazing site that collects Latino Immigrant stories. Check it here.

Qué onda, buey

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:16:00 +0000

Referred by my friend L.
Interesting article from the NY Times: Where the Swearing Is All About the Context.

Better take out Battery Park City

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:10:00 +0000

There are things you always meant to have done but never did. Visiting the New York Panorama at the Queens Museum was one of them (as was checking out the globe from World Fair 1964).Did it finally Yesterday and was totally in love with the view. The full moon shone through the globe and the Queens Museum petily showed itself amongs the shadows (miscalculated time of arrival because of daylight savings).
I;m not a big fan of panoramas, but this one is so huge and accurate that you get a kick of finding your building, your boyfriend's, your work, your friend's, yoga, deli, anything that will make you stay there a little longer. They even have tiny little planes landing and taking off from La Guardia airport. When it came to downtown Manhattan however, we felt the Twin Towers' location felt odd. Just next to the Hudson River. Hum. And I could not find Battery Park Cinemas (I'm telling you, you start to look for the stupidest things). Anyhow, it took us 15 minutes to realize a whole chunk of the panorama (Battery City Park) was missing. And then we call ourselves New Yorkers. Pfff. Shame on us.

NY vs US

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:20:00 +0000

From writer Dawn Powell: “The familiar combination of open hearts and closed minds that represents so much of the country except New York, where we have closed hearts first, and minds so open that carrier pigeons can fly straight through without leaving a message.”
Read it @ thisrecording.com

P is for Pithy

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:18:00 +0000

This one really got me. Expected it to be related to pity, petty or some sort of illness. Hum!
Pithy: Precisely meaningful; forceful and brief; Concise and full of meaning; Tersely cogent; Of, like, or abounding in pith (from wiktionary).

A long, confusing and probably pointless post about feminism in civilized cities

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:50:00 +0000

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of posts from women bloggers about gender discrimination and the importance of having strong and intellectually sophisticated women voices representing us out there (I guess all chick lits should be banned.) They write with such energy and conviction that I feel lacking. I can feel anger when I read of women not been able to get medical attention or education in other countries, but I really don’t give a shit about the wishy washy tone of women’s literature or stupid male movies where we are just booties and “degrade” females.
I’m not saying I haven’t been upset at times: I’ve had my share of male colleagues who worked less (nothing) yet got the same (bigger) paycheck. But all in all, I’ve never felt the need to fight for my turf. Perhaps because I’ve spent my energy dealing with immigration troubles or, lately, obsessing about dish washing at soup kitchens and how to get some sham wows for free (you have no idea how difficult is to dry dishes with pieces of sheet.) Or maybe because as a good Scorpio female, I spent the first 12 years of my life wanting to be a boy (I was what they call in French a garçon manqué) and the next 12 years abusing the use of foundation and lipstick.
I think what I’m saying is that I’ve reached a point where I feel genderless. I’m a woman, yes. I love high-heels, yes. I have a male boyfriend, yes. I shop for make up like a teen (and then forget to use it), yes.
Yet I feel more like a brain that happened to fall into a female body and has come to love its idiosyncrasies, including excessively interconnected brain that fucks with concentration and hormones, than a sexy, voluptuous, cat-like person who is 100% of the time aware of her femininity.A person that can admire these women for taking a stand for a cause, but also wonders why they spend so much time either preaching to the converted or dialoguing (fighting) within females. What’s wrong with women who write corny books? What’s wrong with women who like to read them? There is also The Weldons, Atwoods, Morrisons and other extremely smart women. I don’t see guys saying: “Hey dudes, we have a problem, this guy here is writing another crappy mystery novel about a drunk detective who lives in the South and that one still think vampires are cool. This is making men look horribly bad. Especially with at all these strong female voices coming of age!”
Anyway, long post short: women should have the same right to write crap as men without worrying about all those weaker sex stereotypes.

Forget about bubble baths, it’s time for totuma baths!

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:12:00 +0000

When I left Venezuela in the mid 90s most people said I was overreacting. Violence would appease. Te economy would improve. Hyper inflation would become a thing of the past. Food shortages were temporary.

Yet, year after year, what I have been hearing has been the exact opposite. And each piece of news doesn’t gladden me in a “look-I-was-right-and-you-weren’t” sort of way.On the contrary, it saddens me more than I expected since I was never totally at ease with my Venezuela persona.

So yesterday, when a friend told me about the electricity rationing (although the country had amazing hydro electrical centrals and so much oil) and that Chávez was putting the blame on people for taking showers that last more than 3 minutes and asking them to clean themselves with a totuma, I only laughed for like 30 seconds. Then I felt like crying. So much so that I couldn’t even write an ironic post. However, here is a link for Chávez recipe for a 3-minute shower and here is a link for those of you who don’t know what a totuma looks like.

The story of the ball that fell into the tiny box

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:28:00 +0000

Those who know me, know how bad I am when it comes to any activity related to depth-distance perception. I can't park. I can't drive between two cars at more than 1 mile per hour. I can't skate fast if there are people nearby. I am so bad at calculating depth that although I can paint decent portraits, my landscape look like there were made by a five year old.
Yet the other day, when my work colleagues challenged me to throw a little ball into the tiniest of boxes ten feet away, I did it at the first try. I stood up with this ridiculous little anti-stress ball in my hand, saw the box, thought ball-box and threw it without further thought. My colleagues could not believe (neither could I). They tried to match my feat repeatedly and with varying techniques, but the freaking little ball kept bumping and going everywhere but the box.
Llater I started thinking that the real reason I got the ball into the box (given my inexistent spacial perception) was the fax that I concentrated on the what, not the how.
Wouldn't it be nice if I could apply this to daly life, focusing on what do I want to achieve, instead of getting stuck on the many possibilities (and obstacles) of doing it?
And, most importantly, if I focus on a Lily without an accent, will she show up without having to fork out for a lenguage therapist?

Bush stint as motivational speaker

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:40:00 +0000

Well, he can be an inspiration to study English. Although $5 to see him may be too expensive.
Read the full post @ Gawker.

Halloween is a sensitive time

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:30:00 +0000

Retail controversy arose after Target began selling Illegal Alien costume (green alien mask, orange jail-bail jumpsuit and fake greencard.) After protests from the Latino population, Target pulled it our from the stores.
Most people are wondering if we are becoming too sensitive and losing our sense of humor but I've been wondering how could he be an illegal alien if he's holding a freaking green card in his hands?

Image of the costume and more info at UPI and Mi Blog es tu Blog.

Totally hooked on

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:52:00 +0000

Gnossienne For Piano #1, from Erik Satie.

Swedish vampires

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:24:00 +0000

Fell in love with this, it's from 2008 but so cute. Never imagined that even vampires varied so much from culture to culture.

Talk about ethnic segmentation

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:22:00 +0000

Today, google decided I was the perfect customer for Mirta de Perales products. WTF!

A light one because it's Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:23:00 +0000

Scientist develop a Marilyn Monroe gene.

Analyze yourself (or your blog)

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:07:00 +0000

When I check the stats for my blog, I see that most of people who land on my blog have googled:
-Tips to learn English (Indian and Phillipinos), which brings them to this not so helpful post.
-Terms of endearments (Chinese), which lands them on a post that actually talsk about the lack of them in the Chinese culture.
-List of hot countries during the winter (England), which gives you a list a numner of "time rebel" countries who use half hour differences (at least some of them may be interesting vacationing spots. Hum!)

So much for stereotypes

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:37:00 +0000

Given that I’m the victim of stereotyping, I should know better than fall victim to that bad habit myself. Yet, yesterday as we waited for our Brazilian voice over talent I couldn’t avoid picturing him as a happy go lucky person that would sing the lines à la Caetano.
What arrived, however, was the saddest voice over man in the world. His clothes, his hair, his skin, his expression, all exuded such sadness that I almost cried. In his aura, he carried a plethora of heavy intellectual books, angst and dust.
When he read, the lines that praised a light and happy beauty product became the saddest little poem in history. So much so that our technician almost sliced his wrists. “More energy,” we would request, sadly. And he would go faster or in a higher pitch, yet still the saddest voice over we ever heard.
On take 20, exasperated, he asked: “I don;t understand. What is it that do you want?!?”
“Happy,” we said sadly. “We need, want, beg you to be happy.”
“Oh,” he said, and proceeded to give us a line so falsely happy that it sounded even sadder.

The cutest immigrants ever

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:52:00 +0000

Last week I met C. who does the most amazing illustrations ever. Originally from Ecuador, C.'s inspiration comes from NY multiculturalism. Check her blog here.

Culture can make you blind I guess

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:49:00 +0000

Yesterday I attended a book club for the first time. Book clubs didn’t exist in Venezuela (at least when I lived there). The only readers I saw where intellectual youths carrying copies of On the Road as the accessory du jour.

The book club consists mostly of retired English teachers who live in my building, who are smart with books and calories (caloric intakes of brownies and peanuts were a much debated topic). We discussed Brooklyn: A novel, from Colm Toibin, which describes the experiences of a young Irish who immigrates to Brooklyn soon after the end of WWII, grows into a different person and realizes it only when she goes back home for a visit.

After highlighting what we liked and disliked about it and debated the end—did the heroine had a real choice? Did it feel real?—one of the group leaders asked what was the book’s theme.

Silence.

She asked again.

More silence.

Maybe it was because they were all born and raised in NY. Maybe it’s because they never had immigrated. But none of them could see the underlying theme of blurred cultural identity and sense of belonging. Of the feeling you get of being divided. When you are here you can’t imagine living there again. And when you are there you don’t understand how you can take it here.

Once I pointed it out as possible theme, they saw it clearly.

I think what really surprised me was that although they understood the theme perfectly at an intellectual level; it’s totally out of radar when it comes to daily life or emotional perception of situations. It’s something they are not aware of although they live in a city populated by immigrants.

Chinese coyotes

noreply@blogger.com (Lily W) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:02:00 +0000

They speak Spanish with Argentinean accent, they run the biggest tortillas' chain in NY and now they this.