If the team doesn’t screw up this weekend, we’ll be up in the semis, where we shall meet the winner of the América-Atlas playoff series.
Family means different things to different people. To some, it is only their parents and siblings. To others, it might mean several generations of people including aunts, uncles and cousins relatively removed from them.
That is the case in Mexico. Even though I don’t meet them very often, on my dad’s side I know around a hundred people who fall into the category of “family”, even though I don’t always remember how exactly am I related to them. On my mom’s side it’s easier, and I probably know less than fifty.
In family reunions, since I never knew who was who, I usually called people around my age “cousins” and adults “uncles” and “aunts”. Even though there were some exceptions to the rule, it did work.
All this because I was chatting on MSN about the family with a cousin who is the granddaugher of a cousin of my grandmother on my father’s side. And yes, she’s still family, and we still know about each other, even though she lives in a part of Mexico I seldom visit.
I was reading Batz's Journal, where she comments her views on leaving Barcelona after being there two years, and going away from those friendships she has formed during her time there.
I started thinking that in fact these days it's not so difficult to keep in touch with those you care about. With e-mail, messenger, skype, blogging and of course text messaging and voice telephony you can still keep in touch. These days video conferencing is not so difficult either, as many chatting programs have integrated it.
Around a year ago, I was in a very particular situation. My parents were living in Brazil, my sister in Mexico, my fiancée in Japan and I was in Finland, so there was a minimum of 8,000 km between one member of the family and the next. Keeping in mind the time differences, these utilities were a godsend, and now that I'm in Belgium I use them to keep in touch, as my friends and family are scattered all over the place.
This is much better than the situation in the Middle Ages, or even 30 years ago. In that sense I'm glad I was born at a time when this is possible.
Today I was a little bit blue. The sky was overcast, with this annoying drizzle that isn't even proper rain but still messes up my hair and my glasses, and it was just the proper mood for being a little pensative.
Even though I have my iPod in shuffle (all 3000+ songs), it played almost exclusively during the whole day songs according to the mood: "My way", "Sunday, Bloody Sunday", "Polly", "Ayer me dijo un ave", "Denial, revisited", "Pennyroyal tea", "The wind cries Mary", "Black hole sun", "Bibo no aozora", "Long Cool Woman", "Ánimas que no amanezca", etc.
Given that when I'm happy, the same shuffle tends to play more rythmic songs, I'm starting to wonder if my iPod is semi-sentient or at least rather telepathic…
To my four readers (Catón dixit).
Can you please help me select the best picture in this set?
24 hours of Flickr was an event in which Flickrites from all over the world documented their day in pictures. The best picture from that day is to be added to a pool, whose pictures will be printed in a book.
Given that my day was mostly spent indoors, and frankly I'm not that great as a photographer, I'm not sure which one is really the best. Can you, dear reader, give me a hand?
More Finns married foreigners (mostly men marrying foreign women), but there were less marriages and divorces overall in Finland in 2006 compared to the previous year.
In other news, there is less foreigners taking Finnish citizenship (mostly people of Russian, Iraqi and Somalian origin).
Doesn't help that years with non-permanent status don't count (as was my case, even though I lived there 6 years).
Uno de esos pequeños detalles que detesto es cuando alguien (generalmente españoles o del Cono Sur) escribe México con jota: Méjico, dada que tal es su pronunciación.
Aunque hasta hace poco la Real Academia de la Lengua Española aceptaba ambas grafías, en el 2005 por fin decidieron recomendar que se empezara a disminuir el uso de las grafías con jota (digo, ya era hora si el 25% de los hispanoparlantes en el mundo son mexicanos, con equis).
Lo que sí es impresentable es que hablando en español lo pronuncien como /ks/ o hablen de "Mexico City" cuando es la Ciudad de México.
Todo esto, porque en un evento de la Unión Europea se los comenté en un programa que tenían y por poco y ponen el grito en el cielo.
I guess some of my four readers (Catón dixit) may have heard that people in Spain tend to have very poor skills in languages other than English (and in the west of the country maybe French). Although I have some Spanish friends who do have a good command of the language, I guess this story shows that the reality is even more extreme than I thought:
So remember, learn some basic Spanish before you venture there.
Via Gwyn's Blog.
Me mandaron este link, sobre un vendedor de droga en Barcelona, que empezó a poner volantes en su área de operación. Eso es lo que yo llamo ser caradura.
No cabe duda que no sólo tenía problemas para escribir…