Lost in translation

My shadow in the river canal.
The sharp mid-morning light shows it as clean, which is nice. I cropped a good deal of over-exposed concrete wall from the top of the picture.
This is to give you an idea of how deep it is.
When it rains, it overflows and floods the highway running alongside.
Sunday morning and I'm sitting watching Youtube videos with no inclination whatsoever to attend to the pile of dishes, pile of ironing, pile of laundry, pile of papers, pile of... well, you know...

It started with me briefly visiting the social network sites to see if anything new was happening. Facebook - check. G+ - check. Twitter - ... oh wait... huge miscommunication! Twitter in English is bad enough. I usually only follow people who at least attempt complete sentences. Thing is, I do know some Brazilians and they're there too. My Portuguese is stellar, of course *koff* but my Portuguese in Twitter unspeak? Ha! A guy posted that I had 'accepted' his story and I haven't even spoken to him in a few months. I responded, thinking he had a bit of a cheek mentioning me that way. Turns out he was just rejoicing that a magazine had published his story and was sharing his joy. Oh... Oops! What a difference a tilde makes! A tilde, by the way, is a common part of Portuguese, like the ã in São, for those who are wondering.

Then a colleague posted this video. It's hilarious! Welcome to my world! Note, it is adult humour for the most part, so I wouldn't watch it with the little ones, though they wouldn't understand it anyway.

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And then I watched this... also funny and So true!

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Ooh! And on the subject of language, I wanted to show you the latest gem I found in one of the clothing chains here. If it weren't for the sequins, I swear I'd buy it to befuddle the world (outside of Brazil, that is).

Stop staring!

Marty posted a hilarious video earlier. It reminded me of a t-shirt Tat bought for herself on her SA trip a few years back.

Tat was still modelling on and off at that point, though, as life got in the way, it was petering out. In the peak of her time as a model, she couldn't walk anywhere without drawing attention, no matter how frumpily or austere she'd dress. She's still like that. She has the most beautiful face and radiates 'simpatico', as the Brazilians put it. Sympatico is a bit like congeniality with a whole lot more friendliness and niceness thrown in. Back then, it was just more so, combined with a gorgeous figure and curves most Brazilian girls get implants for.

So the t-shirt, which, sadly, had absolutely no effect on the desired audience because it was in snarky English...


The photo is bad. It was one of the outtakes from a totally fun photoshoot I had with her - hey, I lived with a model I didn't have to pay! But you get the idea. It was in-your-face shocking pink: Stop Staring. Grow Your Own. Tat wore the t-shirt on the plane coming home. She'd quite forgotten it until one of the air stewards did a double take and packed up laughing. He then called the other stewards to show them. Talk about an in-flight ice-breaker! Tat really needs to tell the story herself. It was funny.

I loved that photo shoot, incidentally. I often flip through the photos. The postures and expressions go much further than just showcasing a pretty girl. It spoke of a relationship between us. To this day, I match her puzzled frown with "You want me to do what?!" and much goofy laughter. The photo above has Tat covered in cat and dog fur. She had been distracted by the cat walking past. We tried to get the cat into the photos, but had to settle for one of Tat's vast collection of teddy bears in the end.



Of course, I got some stunning photos out of the shoot (my opinion, naturally).




Not entirely photographic excellence, but...

My dreamer... tomboy... lady... 21 years old.... still with childlike wonder at life and beautiful inside and out. Oh ok... I just used the t-shirt as an excuse to show off *grins*