Monthly Archives: January 2006
Palabritas del maldito día
I learned a few new Spanish words yesterday — ones I’d rather not have had to learn. Among them: la fiebre (fever); el malestar (discomfort); vomitar (pretty obvious); la diarrea (also needs no translation, but should not be confused with … Continue reading
Sabores del flamenco
Last night we went to see a great show at Barcelona Teatre Musical, one of the biggest theatre venues in Barcelona (which unfortunately means we weren’t particularly close to the stage, but still…). Renowned flamenco starlet Sara Baras and her … Continue reading
Posted in Music, Travel
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Las persianas
Why don’t we have these in Canada? Sure we all know about “Persian blinds”, but it seems nobody in our cities actually has them (they’re more a country-cottage kind of thing)… Here in Spain, it seems every building has them. … Continue reading
Posted in Spanish, Travel
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And now…news from the cockpit
Indeed, our pilot did announce the preliminary election results to us on the plane, as we made our approach on Frankfurt! To close the parenthesis I opened with the last post…we indeed ended up with a Conservative minority — a … Continue reading
Posted in Just...life!
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It’s Election Day In Canada
(cue the music) Today is the 39th election in our history — personally I think it’s my fifth. If we elect a majority, it could legally last until 2011 (five years)…yikes, let’s hope it’s not a majority government! We’re not … Continue reading
Posted in Just...life!
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Palabritas del día — alcantarilla
Well, I quickly polished off the chapter of las palabras de la vivienda, and have moved on to las de la ciudad. Here are a few from today’s studying… la alcantarilla — sewer. Lovely, eh? I put it in here … Continue reading
Posted in Spanish
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I got my mojo back (and by ‘mojo’, I mean digital camera)
After another lengthy trek across the icy city, I got my camera back! Even better — it’s fixed! If you recall, it was giving me weird dark splotches, so I took it in for servicing. $270 later (erf!), it’s had … Continue reading
Posted in Just...life!
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A second helping of beans, please!
Montréal photographer François Brunelle is working on an interesting project, looking for look-alikes who — other than their appearance — have no relationship to each other. Not necessarily famous people; just everyday folk. He got the project started after repeatedly … Continue reading
Posted in Art
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Discoveries, old and new: continents, dust and ice
Thanks to chocolatina for pointing out this story, about the fact that Columbus may not have “discovered” the New World (ooh, shocking!). Instead, it seems the Chinese explorer Zheng He may have done so, sometime around or before 1421. If … Continue reading
Posted in Just...life!
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Constrained Fictions #2
Once again, I thought I’d constrain myself by randomly picking a noun, an adjective and a verb (I won’t tell you which ones because that would spoil the fun) and also by forcing myself to use exactly 400 words (roughly … Continue reading
Posted in Writing
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