Quantum Forest

I just like this poem by Elizabeth Bishop and I am parking it here so I do not lose it. What a contradiction!

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Gostaria, por favor, voce tem, Nova Zelandia.

Some of my co-travellers comment: if you speak in Spanish they will understand. Simple and slow English should do it. You are missing the point! Trying to use another language is fun and people tend to appreciate the effort. I have got discounts or an extra smile just because ‘eu estoi tentando’.

I know, I am butchering Portuguese but, hey, I am having a good time.

Foi ótimo te conhocer. Prazer. Quanto custa?

I would like to come back after studying the language for a while. I could be dangerous!

Written in Salvador’s Sofitel

As a traveller in a foreign country I need all the help that I can get, particularly referring to customs and to ‘how things work’^TM. Now, when someone offers me enlightenment on dealing with taxis, much better.

Taxi instructions over the baggage conveyor at Vitoria airport, Espirito Santo, Brazil.

Compare this:

You say it best when you say nothing at all — Lyrics of popular song by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz.

to this:

You better shut the f**k up — Overhead in the street.

QED (Quod erat demonstrandum).

Yesterday was Waitangi day, New Zealand’s national day. It commemorates the treaty that ‘created modern New Zealand’. Where do I fit in this day as a non-Maori, non-European person? Considering the demographic shifts, it is hard for me to see a bicultural commemoration is embracing a more modern multicultural country. So, where is the day for celebrating ‘modern-modern New Zealand’?

I am planning a short trip to Brazil later this year, so one of my ‘resolutions’ is to learn basic Portuguese.

I bought a couple of books to help me on this:

• Portuguese on 10 minutes a day, which is an easy and (very) gentle introduction to the language. It comes with stickers to stick on everything — including on ‘o computador’, flashcards and a detachable menu. I am using this one to learn the language.
• Brazilian Portuguese: Lonely Planet Phrasebook, which I will carry, but not really use much before the trip. I haven’t read this one much.

Both of them have the same problem for me, the pronunciation guide is for English speakers, which means that I have to think of the phonetics in English and then take it in my head to Spanish before getting the pronunciation. For example, the word ‘quanto’ is presented as ‘kwahntoo’, which I then interpret as ‘cuantu’.

Looking for a good, simple site and free site for learning the language I stumbled upon Sonia Portuguese: worth a look.

Albahaca is the Spanish word for basil, which was borrowed from Arabic together with a large number of other words. I have discussed before when is the start of summer in the Southern hemisphere: if the first of December or the twenty something of December (solstice). Both of them are arbitrary dates.

I propose another — even more arbitrary — starting date: the first time of the year when one eats fresh albahaca. Last Sunday (25^th November) I had a potato salad with chopped albahaca: sublime and mouth watering.

Interestingly enough, basil (scientific name Ocimum basilicum) derives from Latin basilicum and Greek basilikon meaning royal or king. Related words and names: basilica (the buildings), basilisk (the creature), basilic (the vein), pesto (basil is the main ingredient of one of the foremost contributions to civilization).

Statement: any garden worth its salt must have albahaca planted in a sunny corner.

This is an extended version of my post in Spanish.

I am coming back to my always unpredictable posting pattern. Well, I have written nine posts in Spanish at Tren de Carga, but they treat other topics that do not quite fit in this blog.

Maybe I am trying to tackle the issue pointed by Khoi Vinh: by posting short posts with quick, short term benefits one is avoiding writing long-haul pieces, which have an unknown pay off in what appears o be a distant future. This time I went for finishing two confidential reports and submitting a paper for publication. I discovered that I have material for about three or four more papers; it is just a matter of putting the time and finishing things. Or, as The now habit puts it, it is a matter of starting, starting and keep starting.

I have also been following a large number of design news through Monoscope and linked sites. It is a nice change and it helps to think from a diferent point of view: it adds perspective. Sort of coming back to the quote often attributed to Marshall McLuhan:

‘We don’t know who it was that discovered water, but we’re pretty sure that it wasn’t a fish.’

Coming back to writing in Spanish, it is fraught with danger of living in the past. I realised that I have been emphasising writing ‘old memories’ because it is what I remember the most in Spanish. That is certainly a route to stagnation. Thus, I am switching now to cover more recent —as in today’s — events and see how do they fit with the rest of the blog.

Thinking about contrasts

Today: Weather was great today in Christchurch. Went to downtown, had a trip in tram (some months ago I bought a year pass), went to the beach, mowed the lawn, went for a ride in scooter, had an excellent meal, visited a friend that just had a baby.

Yesterday: started at 5:45 am, took a taxi to the airport, my flight was cancelled. There was no point on flying later and arriving after my meeting. Wasted $35 on taxis and endured 2 hours of phone conference. They are so hard to follow!

Overall a good week.

One of the issues of living immersed in another language and culture is the slow — or not so slow — deterioration of the command of the original language. There is not enough practice, not enough interaction to keep it healthy and alive. To avoid this, I will be writing some posts in Spanish (hopefully) with a friend of mine.

Because this is an experiment, and quite different from the contents of this site it will be under a different name: Tren de Carga (Freight train). The name originates from a verse by Chilean poet David Turkeltaub, which says ‘vienes tarde otra vez, como tren de carga’ (you are late again, like a freight train). I am not sure why, but this verse has been stuck in my head for many years and this is the first time I have found a use for it.

I started working with a Spanish speaker Ph.D. student. One of the topics of conversation is the (always long) list of things that do not make sense in English if taken in a literal way. For example:

• To have a heart condition: everyone has a condition (good or bad).
• It is a quality product: good or bad?
• You have an accent: doh, you too.
• He has an attitude: everyone has one.
• So on and so forth, you get the idea.

Of course any language has a fair share of inconsistencies, strange turns of phrase or grammatical weirdness. Some classic Spanish cultural issues:

• One takes a decision instead of making one, as if there is a limited set of decisions available (for which I am not responsible).
• The use of reflexive as in ‘el vaso se cayó’ (the glass fell by itself). So, it is the glass’s fault not mine for dropping it.

The latter example puts the locus of control on the object not the person, so there is an issue of personal responsibility (or lack of it). This used to be a big difference, but English is catching up if not through language but via the legal system. Think of ‘tort law’ and ‘frivolous lawsuits’.

Just another day in language’s terra nulla.