Pokémon opening & languages & cultures in common

So yes, instead of preparing the presentation I will hold tomorrow, I'm doing very useful stuff: listening to anime songs of my childhood in different languages, mainly the ones I "know". Quite productive, yeah... How beautiful is sharing a common culture! Which one do you like the most monsieurs?

Spanish (Spain):


English:


Swedish:


French:


Catalan:


Spanish (America):


German:


P.D.  The Digimon song, btw, has two versions: the cool one (German, Spanish) and the awkward one (French, Swedish for instance)

This post is the milk!

But what the milks? Provided that it's been a couple of months since I wrote here for the last time, I guess I should have plenty of topics to choose in order to come back here with style! For instance, this summer I had again a super nice experience with white courtains in the UK like the ones in Sweden... However, I find myself about to talk to you about milk! But what milks have I done with my life? I used to had style here in my dear blog...

Milk! Have I said hello? Hello!!! Long time no see you!

So. Last year in Sweden... hum, two years ago, in Sweden (wait, I have to leave you a sec and cry) (...) (Ok guys, I'm back) As I was saying, it was one year and a half ago when I talked from time to time with my very appreciated German friend Jonas about expressions in our respective languages. And it turns out that those conversations clearly inspired the idea for this post, so I write this in memorial of such discussions. The milk! How much I miss them!

THE MILK - Spanish C2++++ level lessons  

But what's milk here in Spain? That white liquid that many of us drink in the mornings? Well, you should know that there is nothing quite like eeeh...  relaxing cup of café con leche!!! (coffee with... milk) (in Plaza Mayor)

But this is not the point. Well yes, it is, milk is what it is and that's milk. But Spanish milk is this and... much more! Let me introduce you all the meanings I can think about the word "milk". Sorry for the messy translations. I actually find these expressions quite hard to translate, I hope that they make sense at least.

Go at all milk (Spanish: ir a toda leche) -> Go very fast, at full speed.
Go shitting milks (Vete cagando leches) -> Leave as fast as you can. e.g. "You bastard, go shitting milks from here if you don't wanna die!"
I shit in the milk (me cago en la leche) -> A way of cursing. e.g. "I lost the plane! I shit in the milk! What do I do now?"
Not whatever nor milks (ni lo que sea ni leches) -> Not whatever nor any other stupidity you might say. Used when we don't want to accept sthg someone says. "Have you cleaned your room?" "No" "Why?" "Well, I had to procrastinate..." "Not procrastinating nor milks! Clean your room now"
The milk of [introducenoun] (La leche de [introducirsustantivo]) -> A huge bunch of [introducenoun]
And one milk! (¡Y una leche!) -> No way! e.g. "John, clean your room!" "And one milk!" (and he goes on doing whatever he was doing)
Milks! (¡leches!)-> Fuck! Expresses complaint.
Milk! (¡leche!) -> Oh god! Expresses amazement
The milk! (¡la leche!) -> What the...?!/ The fuck!   Expresses surprise or lament. Slightly different from the previous one, though still it makes no sense at all. To be more accurate: the milk of non sense.
This is the milk (Esto es la leche) -> This is very cool. e.g. Word of chu is the milk
To give yourself a milk (Darse una leche) -> To crash (e.g. with your car), to fall (e.g. to the floor). Normally in a very cruel, gore and spectacular way. e.g. He gave himself a milk with his car.
To give milks to each other (Darse de leches) -> To hit each other, to punch each other. e.g. They gave milks to each other and ended up with a very funny purple face.
He has very bad milk (Él tiene muy mala leche) -> He is really bad tempered.
What a bad milk you have! (¡Qué mala leche que tienes!) -> What an arse hole you are! What very bad intentions you have!
You are the milk! (Eres la leche) -> You're super cool! / You're super nice! e.g. David is the milk of guy. And very humble too.

We have 15 meanings!! That's the milk of meanings!! Any more suggestions? I'm open minded, it's been a long time since I last wrote here but you should not have forgotten that I'm a guy of the milk! haha

Hope you can use them! And I mean in English haha!  (I did it very seldom in Sweden, but it was so funny) This was the milk of post, wasn't it?!  Write you soon!

A relaxing cup of café con leche in "La plaza Mayor" in Madrid

P.D. Ok, this post might have to do with the absolute trending topic this week in Spain: the speech of Ana Botella, "Ana Bottle" amongst friends (bottle of milk), to the International Olympic Committee. She's the mayor of Madrid... and the protagonist of the couple of videos I've put here today. The perfect proof of how much we Spaniards suck at English. And oh yes, I have many more proofs than just this! 

Comprehending the utility of white curtains

And I will explain myself.

What I feel like a quite stupid habit in Europe is not having blinds at all in the rooms of any building. I mean: in summer blinds do not disturb in any way (you just put them up and done), and while you sleep they help to make your room darker. Since in summer there are more hours of light but sleeping is not a very illuminated job, it kind of makes sense to me having blinds to darken your room. Doesn't it?

"Oh, but we have curtains to avoid the light to come in"

Hmm, I don't really know what to answer to that. Because what I'm experiencing is that a very common thing is that curtains in rooms are white, and I can say that I'm quite aware of the utility of white curtains: none. Why do I say this in such a radical way? Simple reason: because when I arrived last year to Sweden, I was waking up at 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 o'clock in the morning just because the curtains did not avoid at all the entrance of light in the room. Therefore finally I went to Ikea (the independent republic, you know) and bought one curtain with one of the darkest tones I found. Every night I unfolded such a curtain and put it over the white curtain I had. Then in the morning, I folded it back again and... done!

My Swedish room, one random morning. With the dark blue curtain still protecting me from the evil light. And a cool Swedish flag, just in case you didn't realize about it.

 Now I'm back in Spain, living in a city as Barcelona. And I have blinds, yes. Which do not work very well, there are some spots where the light can come in. So I have to use the curtain too. And guys, guess which kind of curtains I have to use.

White white, pure white. Peeeeace!

You were brilliantly right! How the hell can this be understood? What should I do now?

Very deep dilemmas haha. I'll try to take a piece of advice from my bed. If the white curtain lets me sleep, of course.

*It's not that I don't like light, on the contrary! But what it's true is that I like darkness when it comes to sleeping.

The "give back 1 €cent" news

Quite a messy week... but since I'm moving to Barcelona, I guess quite understandable!! Anyway, as I don't know if you're quite interested about this, I will be quite direct from now on: do you like non sense news?

Because I loooove (love love) absurd news. They provide a funny topic to talk about, and allow you to break a bit the speaking topics routine. Who doesn't know the Belgian driver who went to Zagreb by error? (REALLY, if you don't know it, the story is completely worth it,  WAY FUNNIER than it is this [great] blog post in fact)

When we Spaniards travel abroad, we many times see things well done. In such cases, we tend to say something like "Spain is different", because here these things are done differently. Normally when we see well done things, ye. And now, I'm gonna cry for a minute, wait.

Done. So. This news I'm gonna talk about today (Spanish URL, srry) will allow you to understand this "different Spain" (you can put again this post in the category "spot the differences" I'm doing lately) Because dear readers, this news I'm gonna translate you today is the "1 eurocent story"

Visualize it, ok?

Spanish state claims for a cent which had been overpaid to unemployed woman

In the claim letter, she was reminded that if she didn't pay to the bank before a month passed, she would have to pay an extra 20% fee

A young woman from Tortosa has been involved in a bureaucratic mess because she had been paid one extra cent than corresponding to her unemployment benefit.

Following the common procedure in such situations, she received a registered letter claiming the devolution of this extra cent. "When I read it, "- she says - "not only I discovered the state requiring me this cent that, btw, I hadn't realized; but I also was said that if I didn't pay it back in one month, I would have to pay an extra 20% fee over this cent"

The letter also explained her that after this voluntary refunding period she hadn't done it, it would start the enforced recovery process as stated in the article 32/2 of the royal decree 625/1985.

But this wasn't the end of the process for this cent, because this woman had to go to the employment office to give evidence that this debt was already paid off.

"But once there, I was said that without a previous appointment, I could not give any receipt nor do anything", so she had to come back other day to solve the problem.

"I guess this is the normal procedure for this matters" - she concludes - "but something must not been working right in this system if they need to spend a probably higher amount of money for asking back a sad cent"

Asterix and the 12 tasks. Do you remember this one?

The Shrike. And the shrike.

Have you read Hyperion? No? Then you should! One of the best science fiction stories I've read, if not the best (though that's a hard thing to say) Yes, you read it? Then you know the Shrike, our dear friend the Shrike:

"Uuuuuuh"

One definitely feels respect for him. The Shrike.

Yesterday afternoon I was playing to a trivial game for Android, and I was asked what a meridional shrike was: a reptile, a bird, a fish or a mammal. What would have you said? Provided the first image, what would have you said? Just guessing, I thought "ok David, this is gonna be most likely a reptile"

No! No, it wasn't!

What is it then? What have you guessed guys?

What a shrike actually is... this:

"Uuuuuuh (?)"

WTF???????????

... and this is how a myth falls down...

Folding helmets!

Yei, good idea isn't it?

Two weeks ago I had a group dynamic (or whatever it is said in English) for a job selection process. When I asked Saúl, one of my very beloved friends, what you're asked to do in this processes, he told me that one of the few things you can actually "prepare" is to bring a commercial idea and be able to defend it in front of the others. I guess it has more to do with what he studied, but well, it was not so hard so I just thought something. What? Keep on reading, keep on.

Two weeks ago as well, there was some kind of "polemic" here with a new law to be argued in Spain (Although I felt it was more a "let's say this and let's see how people react"). This law would aim to enforce cyclists to carry a helmet on their head. Obviously, there was a strong opposition from many groups, since this would definitely decrease the number of users who take the bike.

Not, if they use a folding helmet! Muahaha, I had my brilliant idea for the group dynamic (actually I had another two very cool ones, less eccentric though) So, I dove in the Internet. And I found them!

One of the kind of foldings I've found

And this is the second common type of folding I've seen. Way worse than the first one, isn't it?

Not quite practical though... they're still too big when folded, I think. But, this is definitely a very cool first step! Don't you think so?

Biking to the infinite! I attach a very cool pic I took last Monday in my hometown, Saragossa, where the Expo 2008 (water and sustainable development) took place. The sculpture which appears in is named "Ebro's soul", and it's actually quite self-descriptive I believe: a man holding some kind of "soul" (or whatever you imagine). Ebro btw is the river which passes by Saragossa, the one which carries more water in the whole Spain. I'll show you some pics some day just to let you laugh for a while hehe)

So this is the pic I took:

Right now I can say without any doubt that this is part of my soul lalala

I actually took more pics, but this it not the point of today's post!! Furthermore I wanna re-shoot them one day it's not raining. So, as Jean-Marie, other great very beloved friend of mine has just written to me: Don't worry, be happy guys! Vi hörs!*


*This is Swedish. "We listen to eachother" could be the quite literal translation. The correct one... don't know, I'm not a native English speaker hehe.

Si toma no maneje

Jau! Jefe indio saludar hermanos en lengua madre. Vaya, que toca cambiar a castellano por un día. ¿Y eso por qué? Pues porque me da la gana, básicamente. Y también porque esto es difícil de explicar en inglés. La combinación de ambas es como el Kinder Bueno, perfecta (y pensar que no lo conocen en América...)

¿Qué he de explicar? Bueno, el título de la entrada habla por sí solo. Y es que este último par de meses he tenido la oportunidad de conocer un poco más de México, particularmente de sus carreteras. Y como siempre que los españoles hablamos con gente de otros países latinoamericanos, es muy divertido constatar nuestras diferencias en el uso de la lengua. Porque si tú eres español, y de repente te encuentras con...

Si toma no maneje

habrás de admitir que como poco, una sonrisa se te escapará. La sutilidad que tiene el "si toma no maneje" a mí me resulta quasi-cómica... ¡y sin embargo pensar que millones de personas lo verán como lo normal! Vete tú a saber qué pensarán del "si bebes no conduzcas" de por estos lares...

Pero es que... es que... pero es que...

¡¡¡Pero es que cada señal es menos sutil que la anterior!!!

Esta también desarrolla las aptitudes matemático-lógicas

Sutileza

Que dí tú que esta campaña me parece menos hardcore que las que nos hace la DGT por aquí. Efectivas, por otra parte. Y claro que vete tú a saber las campañas que se hacen por ahí, a lo mejor también son equiparables. O no... I don't know! Leave me alone!

De hecho estoy aprendiendo un puñado de cosas curiosas acerca de cómo llevan las carreteras por esas tierras. Y que la verdad son... raras. Venga va, que sé que queréis una al menos. Así pues, os iluminaré con un Ejemplo Ilustrativo: el otro día veía cómo un animal muerto en el arcén, en vez de coger y llevárselo al sitio de turno donde se hagan cargo del cuerpo... cogían y lo enterraban al lado de la carretera. ¿Qué? ¿Pero por qué? ¿En qué clase de mente...? Hum, veamos. Damas y caballeros, permítanme hacer un proceso lógico-inductivo equivalente al de la señal de arriba (la matemático-lógica no la gore)

Animal muerto enterrado al lado de la carretera -> Atrae carroñeros al lado de la carretera -> Como por la carretera siguen circulando coches, otros animales pueden morir -> animal muerto-> se le entierra al lado de la carretera -> atrea carroñeros al lado de la carretera -> [...] -> cementerio más grande del mundo/genocidio.

GE-NO-CI-DIO.

Y a todo esto con una foto de un señor sonriente con su pala sobre el agujero que había ya cubierto haha.

Y como si no puedes mejorar el silencio no digas nada, y yo ya he empezado a desbarrar y he dicho todo lo que tengo que decir, os invito a reflexionar sobre estas últimas líneas. Porque hay mucho de lo que reflexionar ahí, sí sí.