minus attention plus interest

Call me crazy, but the formula to success is the one in the title of this entry:

- ATTENTION
+ INTEREST

I can assure you those words will be my ground rules from now on. Let's see in a couple of months-period how everything worked.
I'm almost certain I'm in the right track.
But you'll have to wait until then before I open my mouth.

balloon

I'm sorry for the lack of new entries. If I could describe my week, I'd say that I'm like a character in a cartoon story.
Every word I say is in a speech balloon!

hey, what's going on?

Have you seen the smoke in the city? have you smelt it? have you felt it? have you coughed because of it? I can go on and on.

It started more than ten days ago and at the beginning nobody realized it.

I assumed that it was a fire somewhere else, until I saw this, this and this. What on Earth is going on?
It has never been seen or suffered before. Until now, that I can't breathe normally. By the way, have I mentioned that I'm allergic to those particles floating in the air? (so is my dog and the rest of the citizens!)

not a puppy anymore

My four-legged pet is turning 10 in a few days. Her fur turned from white with black spots to white with some black spots and grey hair.

Her face is also changing, though her good nature remains there: she stole a piece of cake yesterday, right in front of my eyes! (oh, it seemed she decided to have quite a celebration beforehand and directly helped herself!!!).

Now, as a good pet-owner/friend, I decided to throw her a party (and not from my balcony, as an old neighbour suggested many years ago, not at all a pet-friendly person, he was not renewed the lease of the apt where he was living because of his words!). I have never paid attention to this silly things, but it's a good way of spending some quality time with the family at this special moment.

Any suggestions for her present? (call me crazy, but in other countries, pets are VIPs and pet-owners RSVP for their pets' birthdays!!!).
And are there any cakes for dogs out there?

gravis

I discovered what that word meant in December, before Christmas. I was really worried as I didn't want my mother to be ill. At that moment, doctors said she was ok.

Yesterday the diagnosis was confirmed, "gravis" has landed in our world and even though two studies are on their way to reconfirm what has already been confirmed, I feel it's unfair.

I know, there up and downs in our lives all the time, but I thought I could take some time to gasp for fresh air until the next wave of tough situations appeared. I was hoping for it. I was praying and begging for it.

And I also know that gravis could be bad, though there are other deseases much more serious and painful. I know it, but it doesn't make me feel not a little bit relieved. I want my mother to be healthy, enjoying her life.

So I'll do my best to bring joice whenever and however I'd able to gather my own thoughts, feelings, digest them, and encourage everybody else.

But I don't like gravis, not one bit. And what's worse, there's no cure (it's a chronic desease).

lion king

I found out that the South is full of sea lions. I've seen some of them. In one of the ports. Just dancing hip-hop in the water.

Or was any other reason why the seaman turned the volume up when they were around? No, no. He said they liked music.

have you heard about...?

Oh, by the way, it's cinema we're talking about...

atardecer en el sur

Mi primer día en el sur fue algo realmente lindo: llegué con el atardecer, el mar calmo, y ganas de vivir momentos de tranquilidad. Porque a veces desenchufarse está bueno.

Y sentarse a mirar la puesta del sol también.

Es una forma de conectarse con uno mismo y con todas esas cosas que nos pasan, que a veces no podemos expresar en palabras.

Hace poco alguien que me conoce bastante me dijo: ¡Pero vos te lo pasás viajando! Y yo pensé, sí, es cierto, aunque no tanto como quisiera.

Conocer mi país y la gente que lo habita en los pueblitos que no están tan cerca siempre me pareció algo interesante, porque a todos nos pasa más o menos lo mismo. Vivimos ocupados sin siquiera mirar el cielo, o prestarle atención a esas cosas que nos hacen bien. Porque aprendimos que tenemos que trabajar todo el tiempo para ser felices, ¿o no? Pero, ¿la verdad? ¿por qué no disfrutar un poco lo que la naturaleza nos da y esos paisajes maravillosos? ¿la felicidad está sólo conectada con el trabajo? ¿o puede que mirando nuestro interior y lo que nos rodea también seamos felices?

A veces no sólo es una cuestión de mirar a nuestro alrededor, sino de observar...

Lost, House, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, etc.

Finally! They're back. I'm back to watch them all while Brothers and Sisters is in Spring's break.
Btw: do you know when it's going to be on again?

dictionaries

What if I bought a Spanish dictionary that is almost my age, and I couldn't find some dirty words?

dialogue vs monologue

Can you let me know the difference in meaning of one thing and the other? Because, after so many years, I see that messengers sometimes play a trick on you: you never know if there's somebody watching at the monitor (and not answering back), or if you were left alone just to air your stream of consciousness...

in the news

Argentina is a country known by its beef. And by the way we are when foreigners visit our country. And by our so many tourist spots. And by many other good things.

But in the last decade, we are also known by our cacerolazos (hitting our saucepans against their lids) to show that we are against the government rules.

Now that I'm back in the city, after a fourteen-hour journey in which I had to stop in every town (because truckers were blocking the routes while farmers just stopped cars to give people sheets of paper with information regarding the taxes our government set, impossible to comply with, according to them), I see the whole picture:

why can't we stop complaining and do something more productive than watching how things go wrong? Not exactly the country I enjoy living in!

Happy Easter!

I could not think of a different message. I lost my ability to think and write at the same time earlier today (my imagination was definitely gone!).
But I hope you'll enjoy the chocolate feast, hehe.
I promise to be more creative in my next entries. Oh yes, that's for sure (taking for granted that I'll be lying on the beach).
Keep your fingers crossed, just in case the storm heads south-east. "Me not like the idea"...

timetable

Oh! crazy, crazy time. Why are we ruled by our little tic-tac machines? Or by timetables?

Can you imagine a day when you can spare some time without paying a look at your wrist (or wherever you have your watch?). What would you do? Do you think you could survive?

Because I'm almost certain I could be on time even without a watch! (or maybe not that certain, now that I think about it).

caugh caugh and Easter

I am about to get a cold. I'm sneezing and caughing all the time, and what's worst, I'm about to travel.

And what about Easter? I can think of many ways of dodging it. First of all, can anybody tell me why Easter bunnies are so expensive this year? Even if that's one of the reasons I decided to have a late Easter with my family, I cannot say it's the most important one.

What I'm going to do is to bring some chocolate from the South of Argentina (I've heard there's fantastic chocolate in Puerto Madryn!).

wedding

Walking along the coast, I saw a small table with two chairs. Everything was covered with beautiful handmade tablecloths and white flowers. Some people were wearing their smartest dresses to be enjoying the beach, so I guessed there was something else going on: it was a guy wedding on the beach. Really nice, I thought.

I was tempted to take some pictures of the table, but you know what? They all deserved some privacy and decided to keep walking.

I wonder if this could ever happen in my country...

quotation

it's about moving in to a different place:

"Being here is like being with a lover whom you lost your heart to years ago and you desperately still want him, even now, but you cannot have him. And instead of being able to mourn for him and move on, it feels like each time I return here I'm again faced with that love of my life - and yet, unable to have him. So arriving here and knowing I have to leave again breaks my heart; and each time it does, a little bit inside of me feels like it dies.”

It rings a bell with me, I don't know exactly why... maybe it sounds like a cliché, but it's so real!!!

cats and dogs falling from the sky

Could anyone explain to me why El Niño is taking place in Summer??? And the reason why its's been raining for more than a week in the city??? And what about those waterspouts in the river?!

Something is wrong, wrong, wrong!

nice underwater experience

I thought that during my holls all sort of things could happen. They did:
1) I lost the bracelet of the hotel where I was staying (did I mention how rude the hotel manager was? She wanted to charge me what I'd already paid before leaving home!)
2) It rained almost everyday (at least for an hour or so). It turned out to be that it was the full moon that caused a change in the weather and wiiiiind (what was real was the cloud following me. It was right above me all the time!).
3) Planning scubadiving with people of my own country as partners wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. In fact, it was worse. This guy wanted to teach me how to dive (by the way, I took the course some years ago that lasted about 6 months, had my test in open waters in Brazil and everything went well, thank you very much for bothering me all day long because I didn't want to go his way. Did I mention this guy took a course that lasted a week in Brazil while on hollidays? And he supposed he could teach me?!).
Enough of my comments, some pics to show the precious fish I saw in the magic deep blue underworld (and there're more!). Now, when was I thinking of taking holls again?

sonnet in valentine's day

I read it more than ten years ago, when I was in the way to become a translator. It was the first formal approach I had to his work (though I had previously read some of his work). Of course I loved it. Today, I re-read it.
It made me sigh in the same way...

CXVI
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:-
O no! it is an ever fixed-mark
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his hight be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare

As I have never left Borges out of my library, there's a quotation about love: “Estar o no estar contigo es la medida de mi tiempo” (oh, the translation? something like "To be or not to be with you is the measure of my time"). Romantic, uh?