Categories
Rant

Tribulations of a Formerly Loquacious Human Being

I don’t consider myself to be a particularly articulate person, especially now that I’ve been an interpreter for so long. I’m always speaking on behalf of others, and rarely for myself, so words tend to fail me in conversation. I get nervous and even my pronunciation goes out the window.

Of course, this wasn’t always the case. I used to be a skilled writer and a somewhat pleasant speaker. Oh, here we go again with the griping about not writing and not thinking sharply and not speaking fluently! If only all that bellyaching would translate into actual action! But no—here we are again, months on after the last time you said you’d do something about it. Is today finally the day you’ll follow through on your word?

Anyway, maybe I’m digressing here, but I keep having this feeling that my English is outdated. I was watching Daria on TV the other day and everything sounded so familiar, so cozy, so much like things I’d feel comfortable uttering. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I stopped watching TV between 2002 and now, especially now that everything’s TV, but at some point I became disconnected from the public discourse. And then I started losing entire chunks of my vocabulary. I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I guess that the absolute passivity of today’s media consumption renders an active speaking brain limp.

I have stated here my intention to socialize more in order to bring my language skills back up to scratch. However, the world around me makes it hard (hear me whine again). Last night I had dinner with a group of people from Cavorite’s workplace, and I found myself desperately trying to entertain the guy sitting next to me, like fanning a flame that just wouldn’t catch. I started feeling nervous and second-guessing my every word, and then my pronunciation started coming out all wrong. I could see the guy’s face melting into utter boredom. Then life showed some mercy and the gathering was over.

At first I thought I was angry with myself for not being eloquent enough, but then I realized was I actually angry at was the fact that I had to be this guy’s buffoon in order to save our side of the table from falling into complete uncomfortable silence. How was that my responsibility?

Fortunately, life will keep throwing opportunities to get out there and try my hand at chatting and putting sentences together for other people. We’ll see how it goes next time.

Categories
Review

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism

Let me start off with a word of caution: this is not a well-written book. Its liberal use of various verb tenses mixed together is often confusing. And there are tiny details here and there that make it less believable. For instance, this is petty, but I couldn’t get over the fact that she described Bogotá as hot and muggy. However, beyond that lies something worth learning, something necessary. Something sticky that starts dripping on every second spent on social media, clinging to all that wasted time, turning it heavy. What are we doing? Why are we donating our time, our entire lives to these people? We’re nothing to them, and we’re getting nothing out of this transaction.

I can tell that this whole experience has been very hard for the author to process. It is clear she hasn’t yet come to terms with it, or rather, with the fact that she was a part of it, too. She claims the moral high ground repeatedly, but we must absolve her of all blame because she had a mortgage to pay and health insurance to secure. Financial reasons aside, it’s not hard to understand why she did not walk out of that genocidal Devil-Wears-Prada-esque job when it first started gnawing at her dignity. After all, this is a person who was ignored and belittled by her parents after a literal shark attack as a child. She does not know dignity.

To sum up, this is not the best-crafted book, and it can be infuriating at times, but what’s infuriating about it oscillates between the writing, the author’s cowardice, and the callousness of those she works for—those to whom we have generously granted our personal information and precious waking hours.

Categories
Review

The Let Them Theory

This book is proof that your viral post does not automatically qualify you as an author. I would even venture that publishing houses should not jump on that kind of bandwagon, but virality=money and money is king.

The creator of this revolutionary “theory” is super nosy and a control freak. One day, as she tries to meddle for the umpteenth time in other people’s business, she is forced to realize that she doesn’t have to be either, and now she’s convinced she’s the first human ever to make that discovery. To top it all, apparently the whole concept of this book—which is 95% fluff; you can absolutely notice the urge to reach a word quota—is plagiarism, ripping off from a (you guessed it—viral!) poem.

I need to step away from the “new arrivals” section on my library app for a while.

Categories
Rant

A Culinary Inventory for One Weekend in Bogotá

I spent the past weekend visiting my childhood home with my parents. Here’s an inventory of things I ate at different neighborhood businesses (mainly bakeries):

  • Changua [milk-based soup with eggs, green onion and cilantro] (and hot chocolate)
  • Arepa [cornmeal flatbread] with cheese (and hot chocolate)
  • Cow feet soup (and hot chocolate)
  • Rotisserie chicken with baked sweet plantains and salted potatoes
  • Leche asada [baked milk pudding] (and coffee)