Funny linguistic joke falls flat. I’m sure the Bolivians would have liked it.
Even I, amateur linguist, translator and pun maker extraordinaire can have a joke fall flat. Apropos of nothing, except I was baby wrangling for the sweetest mama and baby pair today, and so I had some time to think when I wasn't swirling from side to side or doing a...
Brought to you from Electricity-free Wednesday (Chilectra vies with Telefónica for most hated service provider.)
It all started last night when I came home around midnight, and noticed the lobby suspiciously dark and the elevator out of order. The elevator is frequently out of order, so I dutifully trudged up the ten flights of stairs to my apartment, secretly thanking the gods...
SAG uses frightening ruminant imagery to instill fear in travelers.
Caution: You may spit out whatever you are eating somewhere around photo four. You have been warned. Four countries and seventeen hours later, I arrived to Santiago's spiffy airport and followed the usual hamster wheel to International Police, through the duty free...
Dead men don’t come knocking. Or do they?
When people ask me what languages I speak, I try to be fair, and say, just two, English and Spanish. But I can't help sometimes throwing in that I also speak Chilean. Chilean bears a striking resemblance to Spanish, but there is a point of departure after which you...
On coming back home, in bullet points, without the bullets
In which I report the following things which I have learned since last we spoke:Bathroom scales routinely underweigh luggage, by as much as six pounds according to the Taca check-in guy, who also assured me I would really like the airline (and if not, then what? Jump...
The war on stuff, and a solution they don’t want you to know about!
Here in the land of buy this and buy that, the trade-in-a-clunker car program is all over the airwaves, along with really bad news about driving sloshed out of your brain and up the wrong side of the interstate. Turns out that's not life-compatible. Terrible. Truly...
Inédito! (Unheard of!) Pecan pie in Chile! And language musing.
Today on my way to the land of pink and trivia games and measuring of pregnant bellies with soft woolen yarn (darnit, didn't even come close!) I took the metro. I did this because, despite major obstacles, such as the great pecan seizing of 2008 and also the very...
Colorless Santiago?
One day I was at BandH photo in New York, my second or third trip to the store, this time to discuss the possibility of buying a "penguin lens" which is what I still call my 70-300 (zoomcito) which I bought for the specific purpose of taking pictures of penguins on...
Santiago Nighttime Photo Safari
Since I (mostly) work from the depto. (apartment), barring any editorial emergencies that require in-person care, or any short-term spiriting aways to work on translations from the comfort of someone else's home, freezing cold and bleak days often find me in my...
What’s in a pichanga? Chilean food analogies that make you go hmmm.
In addition to word surgery, I do alot of other things with words. Mostly collect them into a word maelstrom, that I can choose from when I wish, but which I don't really know the etymology of or how they might be related to other words. Then I find out, and laugh and...
