I just watched the most beautiful and dramatic sports event — the women’s 5000m speed skating… Canada’s incredible Cindy Klassen won bronze, her fifth medal of these Turin games (out of five events entered!) and the sixth Olympic medal of her life. With that, she becomes a “legend” (as they keep telling us on the CBC coverage ;-) — no Canadian has ever won five medals in a single games or six medals overall (in winter or summer games).

The most tear-jerking part today, though, was Clara Hughes, who won the gold with an incredible come-from-behind performance. She is one of the few people in the world to have won medals in both summer (cycling) and winter (skating) Olympics. The amazing thing was to see her pour absolutely everything she had into the final two laps. It was almost superhuman. She was more than three seconds behind Klassen with less than a minute left (in the seven-minute race) — a huge margin to make up, but she somehow called on every muscle fibre in her body and tore through to victory by a second and a half. The look on her face when she found out she’d won, and her subsequent weeping collapse onto the ice, were wonderful to witness live. Moving and awe-inspiring.

A few silly ropa (or lack thereof) words for today, and a progress report on my Spanish vocabulary studies…

la hebilla — buckle (e.g. a belt buckle). But (I think) you can also use it colloquially to say something like this… Tiene belleza y encanto, ama animales peludos y sabe dar coba; no falta hebilla para ser un gran éxito en Hollywood. — He’s got looks and charm, he loves furry animals and knows how to suck up; in short, everything he needs to be a huge success in Hollywood. (And I mean everything, including a nice shiny buckle to dazzle the studio execs, who, like raccoons and ravens, love shiny things. Belt buckles have long been a key weapon in successful actors’ Hollywood-invading arsenals. Just ask Gov. Arnold, Ronald Reagan or John Wayne.)

la manga — sleeve. Not to be confused with the bambi-eyed Japanese comics of the same name. Also not to be confused with la mancha, which is a stain. It’s also the comunidad autónoma (think “province”) at the very centre of Spain (it’s capital is Toledo). Remember where Don Quijote was from? Yep, he was from “The Stain”. Now, it may not seem like the nicest name but apparently manxa means “parched earth” in Arabic. Oh, yeah — that’s so much nicer. Right up there in romantic value with Extremely Hard (Extremadura), the region just to the west of The Stain.

desnudo/a — naked. The related verb desnudar is to undress. Woo hoo! (Yes, how juvenile!) The unintuitive thing is that el nudo de la amistad isn’t referring those close friendships that naturists seem to form; it simply means “the ties of friendship”. That’s because nudo means knot. (Kno, it does knot mean nude.) In fact, it’s desnudo — strangely for us English-speakers — that means nude. If I continued being juvenile I might look for other not-so-tenuous connections between knots and nudity…but I believe the Internet already has plenty of that for you to discover under your own initiative.

Well, today I finished off el capítulo sobre la ropa — onwards and upwards! (Newcomers can learn more about my approach in this post) Here’s my latest progress report:

In the next capítulo, I’ll be studying a good Canadian topic, eh? It’s El tiempo y la tierra. Here, tiempo doesn’t mean “time”; it means the weather! And we Canadians love our weather…talking about it, at least. Al mejor tiempo, pasamos mucho tiempo hablando del tiempo.

Each week I listen to a number of podcasts (which ones?). I do my listening as I walk the mean streets of Montréal, trolling for a funky café to sit and read in, or write, or watch people, or scald the roof of my mouth with a chai latté. As I wander, I scowl at people and antisocially listen to my iRiver which has been lovingly prepped up with said podcasts.

On my regular listening roster, there isn’t normally a lot of humour — most of my podcasts are to do with writing, writers, Spain or Spanish (still haven’t found any podcasts on spanners). But today one of those “boring writing podcasts” had me chortling out loud and smiling like a lunatic as I strolled and dodged around harried mothers pushing strollers and hairy old men grumbling at harried mothers pushing strollers.

What was so funny (besides all that hair and strolling)? It was a rare Bookcast from Powells.com. Most of the episode (starting from about four and a half minutes in) featured writer John Hodgman — who I had not heard of before — presenting the areas of his expertise, live. And unlike many authors doing readings, he was a great performer. It’s hilarious, give it a listen. But that’s just my opinion, and I love all things made-up. Well, almost all things — I’m not so big on Kiss.

Well, in a huge disappointment (but, to be honest, not a huge shock), today the defending Olympic champion Canadian men’s hockey team was eliminated by Russia in the quarter-finals. But of course our defending champion women’s team didn’t disappoint, winning gold on Monday…

But the news today wasn’t all bad — not at all! We won medals in four more events, including two gold! Olympic newcomer Chandra Crawford won gold in cross-country skiing women’s sprint; the amazing Cindy Klassen won her fourth medal of these games (a record for a single Canadian athlete!) — a gold in 1500m speed skating; Kristina Groves made it one-two, winning the silver in the same 1500m event; we won a very dramatic and exciting silver in short-track women’s speed skating.

All this makes me think…what’s up with our men? Thank goodness for our wonderful women — they’ve won 72% of our medals (13 of 18 events) so far in these games. If you count the number of actual awarded medals it’s an even higher percentage (partly because there are 20 women on a hockey team): 41 of 51 medals received, or just over 80%! Go ladies!

It’s been too long since I’ve done one of these palabritas posts. But I’m still chugging my way through my Interactivo del vocabulario, still averaging around 10 words per day (I’m well over 1000 words by now; will post another progress update soon). Today, some adjetivos.

forrado/a — lined (see el forro — lining — and forrar — to line). Pero si alguien está forrado, it means they are well-heeled or well-off. Just be careful not to confuse this with estar follado… (-; Ahem, no translation offered here.

chillón/chillona — loud, gaudy. Después sus primeras vacaciones en Hawai, siempre llevaba camisas bastantes chillonas. — Ever since his first his vacation in Hawaii, he always wore loud shirts. This word looks deceptively like “chillin’” (a good memorization cue and nice tie-in to surf culture, dude!). Except that rather than a cool connotation, it has a negative one, I think. I suppose this is where opinions on what’s gaudy (or rather, Gaudí) are subjective…some people love bright colours and patterns, others find them…well, gaudy. As far as I know, Gaudí wasn’t involved in Hawaiian shirt design. Or surf culture.

amarillo/a — yellow. Simple enough — if only armadillos were yellow we’d have a great, if mildly dyslexic, memory cue! If you talk about la prensa amarilla, you’re talking about the tabloid press (I guess kind of like the “pulp press” in English, as opposed those more reputable “large-format” papers with their highfalutin don’t-rub-off-on-your-fingers ink). The expression almost sounds like — but is not — our “yellow pages” telephone directory. Nope, in fact that’s a worldwide phenomenon; they also have las páginas amarillas in Spain!

Colour note: Some colour adjectives — like amarillo, blanco and morado — swap the “o” for an “a” when applied to a feminine noun (as is normal with most “o”-ending adjectives). La pelota amarilla is the yellow ball. But it’s funny that others — “a”-ending ones like naranja, malva and rosa — do not switch endings to “o” in masculine. Instead, they always end with “a”. Also, when used as a noun (referring to the colour), they’re masculine: el rosa, el naranja. I suppose it’s as if they were an adjective and the implied noun was “el color”. Caution, though — some of these words also have feminine meanings: la rosa is a rose (the flower), and la naranja is an orange (the fruit). [If that weren’t enough, wait until you find out that el naranjo is the orange…tree! But I’m not going to tell you that; I wouldn’t want to confuse you more.]

fucsia — fuchsia (yes, another “a”-ending adjective). I think we pronounce this word incorrectly in English. I’d guess that the Spanish pronunciation is closer to the way it should sound. We pronounce it “fyoo-sha” in English, but since this flower (and hence colour) was named after a German botanist named “Fuchs”, it probably should have a hard “c” sound — as it does in Spanish.

I lied about all today’s words being adjectives — here’s a noun to round out this lengthy “lesson”:
el puño — cuff (on a shirt). But also fist (on an arm). Hmm, I wonder if this is where our wacky word “fisticuffs” (meaning fist-fighting) comes from? (-;

Canada’s fantastic women win hockey gold, beating Sweden 4-1 in today’s final game… Our third gold of these Olympics, and 14th medal overall.

It’s not a mocking thing — really it’s not! I truly love hearing the lilt (or lack thereof) of different languages and accents. Sound and imitation have always been very important to me. (Apparently I’m also pretty good at making sound effects!) So you can imagine what a thrill it was for me to discover this site, from George Mason University’s linguistics program. Shame on them for not having anyone from Canada’s maritime provinces (now there are some wonderful accents!), but it’s still fun to go around the world and sample different speakers. After a while, though, you do get a bit tired of hearing about “thick slabs of blue cheese” and “small plastic snakes”…

You see, you really can hear a difference (besides the speaker’s voice tone) between accents from Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto. And listen to the difference between a French-Canadian speaking English and a “France French” speaker. Also, see how different a Catalan native speaker sounds from someone born in Madrid. Fun fun fun (for a few minutes, at least)!

P.S. For those not in the know, of course the subject of this post is a reference to this 1975 Monty Python film.

Wow — Canada has taken off in the last couple of days at the Turin Olympics. Yesterday we won four medals, today (so far) three more. Our total at the moment is 11, tied for second place with Germany and Russia, behind first-place Norway (13). We’re even ahead of the U.S. (for now…enjoy it while it lasts). Today, the American women’s hockey team was defeated by Sweden in a huge surprise upset. Now we will face Sweden in the gold-medal game on Monday. Also today, amazing footage of “Mr. Bean” (Jeff Bean of Ottawa), whose skis both flew off as he was doing a huge reverse flip in aerial skiing. The landing was awful to watch, but apparently he’s fine (which means it’s okay to laugh).

Meanwhile, things are really “taking off” around Montréal! The temperature was +8 on Tuesday, then -10 on Wednesday, then +7 again yesterday. We’ve also had snow, rain and freezing rain. Then today, a huge storm came in, and tremendous winds of 100km/h, and a “flash freeze” — the temperature went from about +6 to -11 in a very short time. The wind was blasting all day, airports are closed, we have some power outages and very serious road accidents. In the prairies, temperatures are below -30 and some places are experiencing windchills of -47… Winter is here at last!

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 one printed page) in a little rapid-fire fiction. If I can make a story out of it, all the better, but if it just ends up being a scene… Well, that’s fine too. Here’s we go!

Valentine Advice

by El Jardinero Zurdo, February 15, 2006

   “What’s cooking, handsome?” said Louiqa from the hallway. Syd grunted. Intrusions are persistent, he thought. He was chopping celery — the heavy steel cleaver metered out a satisfying tap-tap-tap. There were six bowls on the counter, arranged in a row and filled with evenly sliced vegetables. Objects are organized spatially.
   “Look at me!” said Louiqa. She stomped her bare foot on the threshold between the warm hardwood hall and the cold ceramic kitchen. The loose panel made a sharp clack and Syd started.
   He slammed down the cleaver. “Do you actually want me to cut myself? Do you…” He looked up. “Oh.” She was in a red negligee with stockings and a garter. Skin is naked, he thought, females have milk glands. “Oh…”
   “Forget it.” She flicked her fingernails — freshly painted fire truck red — against the fridge. “Too late.” Then she turned and left, giving Syd a fleeting look at her g-string. Play involves rules. Her footsteps creaked down the hall. “You need to fix that floorboard,” she called back, “I coulda cut my foot.”
   “Lou, I…” Syd considered abandoning his celery and going after her, but when he heard the bedroom door slam he decided to let her cool off. Consider whether it can be measured quantitatively. He opened the cupboard and lifted down a bowl. He placed it on the scale and when the red numbers stabilized, he pressed Zero. Satisfied with 000g, he scooped green crescents from the cutting board and dumped them in the bowl. 187g. He cut more slices, adding one at a time until he had precisely 200g. Now he could start cooking.
   When he reached for the wok, he heard sobbing. He held his breath but the sobbing continued. He knew he had to act. This — the unpredictability, the lack of rules — was the worst part of living together. If a positive decision cannot be made quickly, rules are not obviously being followed. Obviously not. Syd placed the wok on the unlit stove. He was trying to think what that article had said. He should go and read it now, refresh his memory. Couldn’t, it was in the bedroom. With Louiqa.
   Syd sighed, untied his apron and hung it on its hook. He plodded down the hall toward the bedroom, silently mouthing: Is attention directed to the play partner? Attention includes watching, listening, touching and so on. Good advice.

Now, I may be the only person on the block not to have a cell phone, but…

Today, after doing some research into cross-platform audio/video chat applications — and after a friend’s recommendation — I finally decided that Skype actually was a legitimate thing. I tried it for a free Bell-esque trans-Atlantic chat. It worked fantastically well; the sound quality was just fine and it’s “infinitely” cheaper than the 10-10-Yak thing I was previously using for long-distance calls… (Yes, I know Yak now also has software to offer the same functionality as Skype — except they already support video chat on Mac.) Instead of 5 cents per minute within North America (and 6 cents to Spain), I get calls (to non-wired people) for a less than half of that. And of course, online calls to other Skype users are — say it with me — free. (”Free” is relative — you have to pay your $40-50 per month in high-speed charges, but I’m already paying that anyhow!)

Okay, so I know VoIP is not a new thing, and I’m way behind the times…but still, let me have my moment, here. Cool!