Tag: peru

  • 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.

  • The Sword of Omens is Real Yo!

    I still haven’t been able to locate a photo of me as a child in my family’s house garden waving the yellow and lime green plastic Sword of Omens I had as a child. However, these guys are designing weapons or designing pretty awesome real props, and have made my dorky childhood dreams come true.

    Its amazingness is beyond words.

    And YES. Even though Thundercats aired in the mid-80s, I saw them in the early 90s in their dub version, and it was still pretty goddamn awesome.

  • 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

  • My Journey Through LGBT Entertainment

    lgbt-blogathon-2013-full-contracorriente

    I wanted to make a personal post for this year’s LGBT Blogathon, so I tried to think about the first time I had ever seen a prominent LGBT character. Growing up in Peru, I don’t think it was ever an issue that crossed my mind- representation, I mean. It was sort of there, hovering in my subconscious, and if I had seen LGBT related content or entertainers, it was something that wasn’t broadly discussed. Now that I think back on it, it was like the Liberace example. He was flamboyant, but people that weren’t “in the know” didn’t know or wanted to accept that Liberace was gay.

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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

  • Kodomo Ningyougekijou – Me lo Contaron en Japon

    kodomo-ningyougekijou-children-puppet-theater-me-lo-contaron-en-japon-kaguya-hime

    This is the first time I ever found the Japanese name of this show. Kodomo Ningyougekijou (こどもにんぎょう劇場) or Children’s Puppet Theater, known in Peru (and maybe Latin America) as Me lo Contaron en Japon.

    Though the DVDs are available on Amazon Japan — at a whopping price of nearly $50USD (over 4500 Yen) per volumen at 3 episodes a bundle [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], which results into over $600USD for 36 episodes. WHY, Japan? According to its Wikipedia page, the show possibly has over 50 episodes, running from 1990 to 2011.

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  • We eat more than cows, chickens and pigs~ so what?

    About a week ago Nat Geo was showing a new episode of Tabu Latinamerica, which happened to focus on food. One of my favorite subjects. Thinking about food makes me hungry. But this is Tabu, so obviously we weren’t going to be talking about regular food. While the episode focused on Mexico and Venezuela, with their talks on eating rata campestre (countryside rat??? not from the sewers of course) soup, and… some kind of tarantula/spider?

    Anyway, part of the episode also focused in Peru, where they showed a town called La Quebrada, in Cañete, they prepare cat. I haven’t eaten cat — at least, not knowingly… though once while we were eating rabbit chicharron, we suspected we had been given cat because the “rabbit” was bigger and had more fat in it — but I’ve eaten a lot of other things. Of course, guinea pig is kind of a regular “bizarre” food, and I guess rabbit is bizarre to some people. Suri (the worm) is also tasty when fried (it’s almost like crispy pork skin), as well as an assortment of fishes~ Including the palometa (which I’ve heard it’s a piranha’s cousin LOL) and paiche. Shark’s fin soup and swallow’s nest soup apply.

    It’s kind of always been common knowledge that people ate cats in Peru- my family (and I’m sure many other people) often joked about it, it’s like joking about everything being chicken, or eating the insides of animals — horror movies and 4D jokes are perfect. Let me tell you, thank you Afro-Peruvians for developing Anticuchos. As a Peruvian who has finally learned to eat without asking (much), and not judge cultures by my own point of view, it saddens me to see people’s comments. Especially considering that we’re all Latin Americans.

    Does it feel good to call other people ignorant, or small-minded? Is it wrong to eat something just because you think it’s your pet? Is it not wrong that we eat cow so easily when Indians see them as gods? We’re eating their gods, sending them to slaughter houses, and people judge these people because they eat their pets in a non-industrialized way. This is kind of the same issue I had with The Cove [1].

  • Chicha Libre to the World

    I was browsing albums, when I stumbled upon this album cover by Elliot Tupac.

    chicha-libre-cuatro-tigres-elliot-tupac

    Of course, for those in the know, you’d know that’s a super Chicha style type of typography [1], so interested to see what it was all about, I did a quick search. You’d be happy to know you can stream all of the EP Cuatro Tigres on Soundcloud, as well as their new album Canibalismo. Chicha Libre is a multi-ethnic Brooklyn-based group formed by Americans, Mexicans, Venezuelans and French musicians mixing Peruvian Chicha music with 60s psychedelic music and stuff. It’s pretty trippy.

    I never in my life would’ve thought that I’d be sitting through more than one album of Chicha music. The most interesting thing is that there’s no Peruvians in sight on core members of the group. You can check them out on Facebook or Twitter. I’m not entirely a Chicha convert, but I appreciate the variety in the concept of the group. I do think they sound a lot like Chicha groups, but sing in English instead. Novelty, but it gets a bit tiring by the fourth track.

    Conveniently, the group was asked to do a The Simpsons tune for one of the episodes.

    [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/81093323″ params=”color=ff0090&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

  • Nuevas Regulaciones de SUNAT?

    Acabo de recibir un correo de uno de los servicios de envío que he usado informándome que ahora tengo un límite de 3 envíos (o un equivalente de $1000USD) como persona natural gracias a nuevas regulaciones implementadas por la eficaz institución de Aduanas que tenemos en el Perú. Gracias, SUNAT, por hacerme la vida más fácil.

    sunat-regulaciones-aduanas-2013

    Ustedes siempre tan eficaces! Haciéndole la vida tan sencilla a las compañías que dan servicio de envíos por internet.

    Express Mail Service FTW! $20USD no es nada si evito tener que lidiar con todos ustedes.

  • Edet Soft ‘Edet Paper World’

    I want this (Dutch???) toilet paper!

    The best toilet paper commercials we ever got in Peru were of Suave, featuring Luis Miguel’s hit song, Suave [MV] — that’s the only one that ever stuck in my subconscious anyway. That one, for the song, and there was another one of a little girl who wanted to go to the washroom at a mall or something, and she was only with her father. Obviously, he couldn’t go it to the ladies room, so she went in with her father staying by the door giving directions, where he spurts “ahora limpiate tu potito.” (now clean your tushy).

    We aren’t any remotely close to having this kind of toilet paper commercial.