I once was a writer...

I realize I'm not married yet, and that I am asking for advice well in advance of my real needs. However, last week we experienced a situation that neither of us (my fiancé and I) knew how to handle. Since I do not want to get into the personal details of our lives (I promised Honey I would never do that), I will present the situation as an analogy... We happened to find ourselves, one day, without toothpaste at home. After all the normal bickering (Honey: How can you NOT notice that we are running out of toothpaste? You know all you have to do is ask for money and I will give it to you so that you can go buy toothpaste!  Me: How do YOU not notice? You brush your teeth daily, just as much as I do, and since you have the money YOU could have gone and bought it... ), we decided to go together to buy the toothpaste. We quickly kissed and made up because it is stupid to quarrel over toothpaste, and it was neither of our faults. I mean, nobody wants to wake up on a Monday morning and ...

Michel Foucault said that he who holds the language holds the power  -- and that is why translators are the people who are changing the world, and have been doing so for centuries. Millennia, even. It is not enough to posses knowledge, it is important to be able to transmit that knowledge, to share it, to teach it. The problem is that not everybody will be able to understand this knowledge, unless they, too, are in possession of the skills necessary to understand. Translation is not just a matter of identifying the word in the source language and replacing it with the equivalent in the target language. If that were so, we translators (and I dare now include interpreters as well) would have proven to be obsolete in the late 1980s. Our success, our importance to the world, even, is the task that we perform, the impossible that we achieve: we are able to find the perfect oxymoronic juxtaposition of faithfulness  and beauty  in a target language from a source language. Ye...

My cousin, the dancer, was featured along with her husband in the local magazine, The Colchester Circle. I wrote the article featuring them. Now they are both famous in Colchester, and I am an international freeelance writer for magazines. Well, I did it once... but once is enough to brag, right? Read the whole article here . Go to page 36 to read my article about them. Congratulations to Eddy and Goyo, and to The Latin Rhythm. By the way, if you happen to be in Colchester, check out their salsa lessons. The will surely find your right foot, if you happen to suffer from the all-too-common "two left feet" syndrome. http://www.latinrhythm.co.uk/ info@latinrhythm.co.uk

(This Pre-Christmas Post replaces the Monday post for December 26. Back to the normal Monday schedule on January 2, 2012) As you may already know (oh, come on, I'm sure you know), we have very large, illegal, guerrilla leftist movements in Colombia. We have tried to combat and defeat them for over 60 years, and we are slowly winning the war against them.. but we still have a long way to go. Before I go on, please allow me a little of your time to get on my soapbox and explain a couple of things. Listen, dude, we (Colombians) are not against leftist movements, like people (such as Chávez and his dictatorial regime, for instance) want to make you believe. We welcome the left, because we are well aware that without a left there can be no right, but rather meaningless unilateralism . Our nation was founded in 1810 based on leftist ideals. We, all of us, all of us Colombians, used to be leftist rebels who stood up against the Spanish monarchy. And we won. We understand and celebrat...

Dear Santa, I hate being a housewife. I do. I really, really do. And I realize how unorthodox it is to begin a "Dear Santa" letter with a statement of hatred, but I just need for you to understand how important my first world problems  are, and thus help me by sending me a maid for Christmas . If you're going to send THIS maid, make sure you let me know so that I can send Honey  far, far away from home during her working hours! Santa, I hate being a housewife. I love Honey, though he has not yet made me his wife, so maybe I am not technically a house wife - perhaps next year I will ask for a big rock on my ring finger. But look, Santa, look at how pressing this maid issue is: I need a maid more than I need to be legally married! Santa, God blessed -and simultaneously cursed- me with great attention to detail. Which means that a task (like washing dishes or folding laundry) that would take the average housewife 15 to 20 minutes, takes me 30 to 40 minutes. Becau...

I got good news today. News so good, that I almost forgot that my heart is broken because the owner of the cat took away my cat. News so good that a friend of mine thought I was pregnant - no, not pregnant. Let's hope for a ring before we hope for anything further, yes? So the good news - ready? I finally have the official, signed, sealed and delivered documents that make me a Masters student at the Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel. YAY! I get to begin my masters! Finally! Just in case you're wondering, it's called "English and American Literature, Cultures and Media." And it will be amazing. But don't worry - not that you are worrying. I still have to continue with my German course. Some crazy thing about "When in Rome..." Only, for me it is more of a "When in Germany..." thing. And so, because it was my huge dream and all, I ain't allowed to complain no mo' . When it's too cold outside and I must be off to stud...

It was in that moment when she realized that she had to make a decision. Right then and there. There was no time for stalling or doubting or waiting. A decision had to be made, and she was the only one who could make it. It had to be her decision, because it would change her life forever. Yes, it would of course also affect the lives of the many people who surrounded her, of the many people who surrounded her because they loved her - because they love her. Yes, their lives would also be affected by her decision; but they would not be woken up in the middle of the night with the question, "Did I make the right decision?" circling in their heads. Their lives would too be affected, yes, but with time they would forget, the pain would go away, the anger would fade, the incomprehension would wither. But not for her - no, most definitely not for her. This decision, the one that she was facing in this very moment, would transform her in ways she had not even become to fathom. This d...

I had quite an adventure last week. Although, now that I find myself trying to organize my ideas to write down my awesome adventure, it seems that it was not so awesome, and also not so much of an adventure. In any case, what happened afterwards was cute. The bus on which I was riding home last week crashed. It was a little scary and very, very stupid. It was not our driver's fault: the other bus actually came into our lane and broke the window of our bus with his side-mirror. Busses here are so long that the driver did not hear the sound of the glass crushing; thus began the most funny process of communication. "Hey, tell the bus driver he had an accident", said someone at the very back; "Hey, tell the bus driver the window's broken", said someone closer; "The window's crashed, tell the bus driver", said someone else. OMG. The message was drawing closer to me. So I started thinking: Window = die Fenster . Broken = gebrochen , but a window ...

In many languages, such as Spanish and German, there is a formal and an informal way to address "you" (second person singular): tu  and usted  in Spanish, and du and Sie  in German, respectively. The problem is, the pronouns for the formal voices are very similar (if not identical) to the pronouns for other voices. Let me make the situation VERY clear with what I did yesterday. In case my teacher is reading this, es tut mir SCHRECKLICH leid, wirklich!! My classmates exasperate me. That's unfair, not all of them do. Actually, only two of my classmates (out of 12) exasperate me. Seriously. I want to hit them sometimes (but physical aggression is illegal here in Germany). They get into these absurd, pointless discussiones with false (and fake) arguments. Tuesday is my least favourite day, and at the very last class (tired, sleepy, hungry and cranky), they got into this discussion: The Police is Singular and Plural. Well, no, the teacher explained: you can't count ...

Bearing in mind that as of Tuesday I go back to being super busy --well, as busy as a University Student should be-- and wanting to find the appropriate way to optimize processes; and seeing that the Internet offers plenty of options for automatization of optimized processes; and accepting that I am a little embarrassed every time I send an E-Mail, as if saying, "Hey! Read me!"... well, I'd like for you to register to my Blog! To the right of this column, ------------------------------------------------------------------------> above my picture (courtesy of Rosita Lama Muvdi), there is a text box under the title "Follow by E-Mail", where you can enter your E-Mail address. By doing entering your E-Mail, you are registering to automatically receive every new Blog entry. If you seem to be facing problems or inconveniences, please don't hesitate to contact me, and I will gladly solve these issues for you. I would be so awesome as a customer service repr...

I don't need fixin'. I'm allowed to complain, I'm allowed to feel uncomfortable, I'm allowed to not feel good. Also, I'm allowed to express my discomfort out loud. You're allowed to not like my whining, and you're allowed to whine about my whining. It's your prerrogative: my rights end where yours begin, and viceversa. What you're not allowed to do is fix me, especially when I don't need fixin'. Some people think they need to fix everything and everyone, and that they need to provide answers and solutions and fixin's. Dude, if I want your answer, I will ask you a question. It will be direct and straight forward. It will be impossible to miss. It will be something along the lines of, "What do you think I should do?" Then, only then, I want you to fix me. Otherwise, leave me alone. You might think that, if I don't want your answers, I should not ask you questions. Well, that's the thing: I'm not asking you ...

Before going into the details of the test, which is what this post really is about, I want to say a word about the test names. What's the deal with test names? Is there an International Test-Naming Committee for international tests that need names, maybe called the InTeNC? Why must we have an IELTS or a TOEFL? Those are tests for non-English speakers, so why must they be given names that even native English speakers have trouble pronouncing? The Test DaF is not difficult to say, but silly. It makes me think of an incomplete Daffy Duck. Anyway. In  a couple of weeks I will be taking the Test DaF - exactly in 14 days. The Test DaF is a test that measures the test-takers' ability in Deutsch (German language) als Fremdsprache (as a foreign language). I'm kinda glad it's named after it's German initials; were it in English, it would be the Test GLaFL. Not the G-L-a-F-L, but the /gla-fl/, all said together, as if it were a word. Like TOEFL is a word: toe, as in a fi...