Category: Spanish

  • Which Race Box Do You Choose?

    Thanks to the American way of thinking, for a while now I’ve been thinking a LOT about race. It didn’t use to be a problem, I didn’t care about race because Peru was supposed to be this mix of races of white (mostly Spaniards), Andean people, Black, Asians (mostly Chinese and Japanese).

    For a while now, while completing polls and documents, people have added the race option that usually carries some of these: Caucasian, Native American, African-American, Asian, Polynesian, Latino, Other. Though, recently I’ve seen the added option of Mixed, besides the Other option.

    Perhaps I didn’t notice this before as I was a minor and my parents would be filling documentation, but I remember I’ve always checked the “other” option because I can’t consider myself Asian… and I’ve stopped considering myself fully Latin American because it just doesn’t feel that way any longer. Not when I’m nudge on the street as people either say “oppar Gangnam Style” or relate my slanted eyes to either Jackie Chan or Jet Li. I’ll actually take them over Psy and the horse-dance though.

    So I understand your pain, guys, for either being told they don’t fit within the black or latino communities, or being told to act a certain way.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT7_oQzDYMw

    Also, don’t forget Alexis Bledel speaks perfect Spanish unlike America Ferrera — come on, her Spanish is competent, but not in the level for the roles she usually gets — so not having Bledel speaking Spanish in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was a total missed opportunity since no one freaking expects Alexis Bledel to speak Spanish.

    And yes, Hollywood expects his latinas to look like Sophia Loren.

    I need to be a casting director and throw the whole casting process on its head.

  • Who Played Young Mako in Pacific Rim? Let Me Google That for You

    lmgtfy-ashida-mana-google

    Well, something worth pointing out from the Pacific Rim fans. How awesome is “let me google that for you” ??? It’s awesome. And perfect. So for those people that might be wondering- no, she’s not a newcomer, you guys.

    Here

  • Sharon Stone is Ageless

    Holy mother of $*#&$#

    This is Sharon Stone at age 55. (I actually thought, for a second, she could have been closer to 60). But this, this photoshoot for Revista Vanity Fair. I don’t give a care about Sharon Stone much, and a lot of what she talks about gives me a mad case of eye-roll, but this photoshoot by Norma Jean Roy is crazy good.

    sharon-stone-revista-vanity-fair-jun2013-norma-jean-roy-002

  • Your President Speaks Mandarin, but my Ex is Funny~

    Okay, I gotta admit South Korea- I’m jealous.

    Some of you may complain about the political implications of choosing Park Geun-hye’s party, but you’re getting the cake. This is coming from someone less privileged than you in terms of political options. I don’t want to talk about my current president, but since President Park Geun-hye just made a splash on my TV speaking Mandarin at a speech she delivered just this week at Tsinghua University during her visit to Beijing [1], which apparently is self-taught [1][2] (that’s even way more accomplished!), I want to give a good mention to my Ex-Pres.

    A couple of years back, when (now Ex-) President Hu Jintao was visiting the country when Alan Garcia was still president — and he gave us THIS SUPER AWKWARD photo of himself trying to hug/kiss Hu — Alan had the BRILLIANT idea of giving HIS own speech in Mandarin, even though he knows a lick of any Asian language (I doubt he knows anything about Asian culture outside what to eat at a Chifa [1], explaining why he tried to hug/kiss Hu, LOL).

    The end result is, of course, madly hilarious if you speak Spanish.

    Besides trying to sound out Mandarin, which you know it’s nearly impossible, he sounded out some “words” that sounded similar to other words in Spanish, included the now political-satire-classic “Soy chanchin,” which is a cute modification to the word “chancho,” meaning “pig.” So basically it sounded like he said “I’m a little fat.” Hilarious history in the making right there.

    Surprisingly, Hu had the biggest poker face EVER. He didn’t blink, snorted, NOTHING. He’s either the best politician in the whole wide world, or his team warned him about this Garcia Mandarin stunt and he turned off any of his hearing aid, if he used any.

  • Kaze Fuiteru~~~

    Who grew up watching the Street Fighter II series?

    I used to tape this every afternoon because I was never on time from school, they used to show it after Gargoyles on Frecuencia Latina, and then after we got cable for the first time- actually a few years after that, I think — Cartoon Network Latin America got all big on showing anime series, and among the Inuyasha or Rurouni Kenshin episodes they used to broadcast, they also had some of this.

    I remember they also used to show Sakura Card Captor and Corrector Yui [1, with latino audio].

    Around that time, it was when I was trying to google this song online but back then it was nearly impossible to find song information if you had very little info, especially if you didn’t speak the language. I did eventually find that this song was called Kaze Fuiteru (aka. The Wind Blows, 風吹いてる – by Yuki Kuroda), and that my friend had a CD with songs that were anime themes that contained the track.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pOqYuKIGZo

    Of course, the Spanish version they did [1] is not as good as the original. But I’m glad that they at least kept the original music, instead of changing it to something “hard rock” like in the American broadcast.

    Lookie 1, lookie 2

  • Los Premios Tony son más Grandes con Neil!

    When I translate things, I usually go from Spanish into English, so when I listened to (and obsessed a little) over Neil Patrick Harris at the Tonys, I thought that it’d be good practice for a quick English to Spanish translation exercise.

    Lyrics in English taken from Playbill.com

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  • Dvein’s Magma for Adobe

    I refuse to call this a music video, since it’s actually been commissioned by Adobe to promote their upcoming cloud system. But… it’s beautiful. All done by Spain-based Dvein. I’m uncertain about the credit to The Vein.

    Original Vimeo upload.

    There’s also a Making Of available if you’re interested.

  • Xiami Just Rolled Its Subscription-based Service

    xiami-subscription

    If you’ve (for some reason) been following this blog a while, you’d know that I’m a big fan of Xiami, the Mainland China-based music site that has never flashed me with a “this content is not available in your region” message. I’ve actually bought some tracks off of them, started way before iTunes became available in my country, and have continued with tracks that aren’t available in my iTunes store, or with overpriced albums/singles.

    It’s particularly useful for Chinese-based artists.

    In general, all tracks are priced at 0.8米 (Mi) and 1 Mi is 1 Yuan, which is about 0.16USD, which is like 1/10 of what iTunes charges. They accept Paypal as one of their paying options, which seems way simpler than paying with your credit card (I tried). And since Xiami is a community-based site, they give you points for activities. Every time you log in, you get points and once you log in for a whole uninterrupted week, they give you a red envelope which also serves to download tracks. If you log in every day for a month or a whole year, you’ll get even more for free downloads.

    Downloading tracks, adding albums, adding information (photos, lyrics, etc), participating in community discussions, and joining groups also gives you points to raise your Xiami level. Though, I still don’t know what’s that for, other than showing off and user respectability.

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  • How Do You Say…?

    My nephew (my niece is past that, I think) is at that awkward Third Culture Kid stage in which he’s learning Spanish after speaking Swedish. When he just got here (about) 7 months ago, he didn’t speak much. My niece at that time was awkwardly explaining things as “this and that” while pointing. Being slightly younger, my nephew has already picked up the language a lot faster — he even uses words such as “grandazo,” (kinda like saying “super big”) “oye,” (hey) and “ya pues” (come on!) — as if he’s grown up here. He even calls on the ice-cream man [1] with a nonchalant “amigo, amigo” (friend, friend).

    The downside to that is that he’s forgetting Swedish a lot faster too.

    At school, he’s not only learning English, but also Italian- this is why, when we’re at the dinner or lunch table (sitting by my side), he keeps asking me if I know how to say “x word” in “x language” — as a language buff, I know how to get around this stuff. Especially at the age of 5. LOL So while I dazzled him with my “Vad heter du?” to which he responded “Mommy, mommy! Amy knows Swedish!” to then ask me if I knew how to say “apple” in Swedish. I did. But apparently, he didn’t. He asked his mom the same question to make sure I was telling the truth, and she told him “it starts with ‘Ä’…” (which sounds similar to “eh”), so all giddy he responded “ÄLEPHANT!”

    Untitled-1

  • Even if I say so myself~

    I’ve got some pretty nice recommendations to share.

    yammag-amy-recommendations