Tag: french

Stromae to Mosaert

After writing about Stromae the other night, I looked up to see if he had any tour dates in the US anytime soon.  Unfortunately, he does not.  However, I discovered that lots of his efforts have gone into his clothing brand lately, and that the brand is spectacular.  All of the clothes are unisex and super cool, are fair-trade, are made in Europe, have an emphasis on sustainable/organic fibers and eco-friendly sewing tactics (to waste as little cloth as possible), and are in limited numbers.  (The last part means that only a certain number, say 25, for example, are made of any one item.  So, for a t-shirt, there would be 4 XS, 6 S, 6 M, 5 L, and 4 XL made, and that’s it.  Once they are sold out, there are no more of that particular t-shirt made again.)  They also include a chart on the cost of production for many items, detailing how much money it actually costs to produce that specific item, thereby explaining why an item is being sold for its specific price.

Check it out.  Here’s the page all about their being an awesomely responsible company, from which you can click to the shopping area to see the awesome clothes, and here’s the page for the company as a whole, which is more than just a clothing brand – check out their About page found on that one.

I just wish I lived a life where it would be practical and affordable for me to get the cardigan 7, which is a sweater I loved when I first saw it in one of Stromae’s interviews (actually, the one I linked here the other night!).  The sweater was cool in and of itself, but it was made even cooler by the fact that Stromae himself actually wore it.  Alas, I do not live such a life (and am instead barely getting by financially as a crazy person doing full-time grad school and part-time-ish work), so the cardigans will go to those who do live such lives. 😛

Post-a-day 2018

 

Stromae (and my solo gelato dance party)

Last night, waiting for my dinner to finish baking, I was dancing in the kitchen while snacking on some pre-dinner gelato (because when else is gelato so satisfying?), jamming out to a Stromae (pronounced like “maestro” split in half, the second half said first) song, when I suddenly recalled how spectacular his music really is.  I haven’t listened to almost any music lately, and so haven’t listened to any of his either.  When I taught high school French, I listened to and discussed his music all the time with students.  They had to find a new francophone song every month that they liked, and each student and each class went in all different directions.  But, without fail, a single Stromae song would come up once in a class, and then his entire repertoire would show up the following months from different students in that class.  They regularly requested his music, whenever we played music during work time in class.

We listened to a lot of French language music, and the kids knew I loved lots of it.  But they also knew that I liked Stromae for more than just his voice, and, at some point, they decided that I really loved him and his music.  I remember one specific incident of Stromae coming up in casual chat during class, and a student said, “Oh, we know, Miss —: you would totally date Stromae if you had the chance.”  I’m almost certain that I verbally agreed immediately, and we all laughed.    It was great.  (So many things those kids never knew about me and my life, but they always remembered anything they ever heard about dating or marriage.)  😛

If you don’t know Stromae’s music, check it out.  You can start with this English interview he did, which is great.  He still sings in French, and even dances a bit (he’s a spectacular dancer, by the way, as can be seen in his music videos), but the discussion is all in English.  I find the themes of his music to be powerful, though regularly dangerous and tough, even scary – but, to me, they are real and honest.  What’s more, they make for a great dance party any day, because the musicality is tops (especially so if you don’t understand the lyrics).  When I first heard of him, it was from a German kid when I’d first arrived in France for school.  He mentioned that the only French song Germans knew was this “Alors, on danse” song that I wasn’t too sure I’d ever even heard, but definitely had heard of.  That was the only line I understood when I first listened to Stromae’s music (“And so, we dance”), but it didn’t matter – I still loved it all.  Now, I just love it even more, because I understand the words.

(“Dodo” is one that gets stuck in my head most often these days.  It’s a prime example of what I mean by a tough song – a difficult theme combined with beautiful music.  I recommend you watch the video first, and then look up the lyrics.)

Post-a-day 2018

Call me Ishmael

If another adult – recalling that I am, in fact, an adult myself – insists that I call him/her “Dr.”, because he/she ‘worked so hard for that degree,’ or because he/she is ‘so proud of having earned it,’ is that not quite comparable to my saying that people must converse with me in French, because I worked so hard to learn it and I’m so proud of being able to speak it?

(I’m not saying that it’s the same, but just comparable oddities with the same reasoning.)

It’s just a thought that came to mind today, and it has me a bit flummoxed.

I grew up in a world where we are all people, not classes or ranks, so I’ve never really been able to understand people’s required uses of name ranks (beyond someone’s voluntarily being respectful in addressing another, I mean [though even that gets me sometimes]).

Post-a-day 2018

French lawyers

Ever eaten an avocado like an apple?

(Actually, I eat apples in a very unique way, but I’m referring to the traditional way of eating an apple.)

I did today, and it felt wonderfully ridiculous… and a little messy…, but it was no messier than usual, actually, and it’s good for my skin, anyway. 😛

(It was also delicious.)

Give it a try sometime, but – and possibly more importantly – try out something old today, but in a new way… and feel free to get creative and extra ridiculous.

P.S. If you don’t get the title, look it up in French. 😉

Post-a-day 2018

We are geniuses

Delirious talkings late at night between cousins make for ingenious ideas.

Mark tonight as the night we developed and discussed the special foreign language idea, and pondered at how we could end up discussing it in a year, after its having become incredibly successful, and yet so meager and delirious had been its beginnings.

Let us see what happens…

Post-a-day 2018

Where are you?

Today, I met with my mom, aunt, and cousins in Galveston.  I was driving there from my aunt’s house, which is east of Houston (toward Louisiana), and so was scheduled to ride the Bolivar Ferry across to the island (not normally the case, because there’s a bridge to Galveston Island from Houston).  My mom and I usually ride the ferry whenever we go to Galveston, so she scheduled herself to ride the ferry over to meet me as I was first arriving to it.  That way, we could ride it together, if only the one direction.

And so, we kept in touch via phone, so that my mom knew about when to get over to the ferry.  When I was not too close yet, we spoke.  When I was getting somewhat close, we spoke, and my mom headed to the ferry.  But, there was no parking, so we spoke again, so that she could tell me that she was not on foot but in a vehicle.  Okay.

And then I sent her a message (via the handy dandy Siri) to let her know that I was two miles from the ferry landing.  She then called me to tell me that she was about to disembark from the ferry.  Okay.

She calls me a minute later, asking, “Are you about to pass me right now?”

I look up, and see no cars parked to the side of the road.  I glance left, and see her driving in the opposite direction and I am driving, in the line of cars that has clearly just disembarked from the ferry.  Just as I say, “Yes,” I see her face in her vehicle and she seems to look right at me, too.  She gives something like an Okay, and hangs up.

I continue on the road toward the ferry.  Within a minute, I’m stopped in line behind a car, waiting for the ferry.  I see my mom’s vehicle driving up, and am somewhat surprised at how quickly she managed to turn around and get back to the ferry.  She pulls up right behind me and stops in the line of vehicles.

At this point, it it clear that we will not make it onto this ferry, and so will have to wait about twenty minutes for the next.  Since it is cold out, I grab my scarf and put it on.  As I am reaching for my sweater in the passenger seat, I answer my phone with a not-actually-annoyed-but-playing-at-it, “What?”  I look up at my mom in the rearview mirror as I answer the phone, and I see her calling me.

She responds, “Where are you?”

…

For a moment, I am stunned and cannot speak.  Then, I begin to laugh and I tell her, “Right in Front.  Of.  You.”

I see her looking more carefully at the truck (I’m in the truck), and then we both are laughing, barely able to speak.

I don’t even know what we said after that, but the call ended somewhat quickly, and I went and joined her in her vehicle to listen to Canadian French country western music together.

We joked about it throughout the day as a family, because that was just too good to let alone.

Moms.  Gotta love them.

 

Also, she bought me this stellar ring today.  It has diamonds and everything, and looks totally old fashioned (but clean!) and also totally like an engagement ring (but that wasn’t why I got it).  And it probably would have been an engagement ring if it hadn’t ended up in this particular shop (and I hadn’t gotten it).  I got it, because I just loved the ring, and it made my heart go doki-doki when I put it on after it was cleaned.  I was planning to buy it myself, but then my mom just bought it for me.  So we marveled at it in the sunlight together afterward, and laughed at how people were going to think me engaged now, because I just had to show it off to the world, it was that pretty.  Anyway… that’s all for now.  😛

IMG_3298

Post-a-day 2018

Nerd-ing

I am years into having a smartphone, and my most visited webpages remain almost exactly the same as when I started using one.  They are translation websites and dictionary websites.  Originally, it was wordreference.com and dictionary.com.  Wordreference.com was an easy one, because I had already done the research for my preferred translator for French, Spanish, and German.  But, after some research into different dictionary websites, I found that I preferred merriam-webster.com over dictionary.com.  So, today, my most visited webpages are wordreference.com and merriam-webster.com. (I would add in Google Translate, because of my constant use with Japanese on it for kanji translations and photo translations, but I had to download the app almost immediately, when I moved to Japan, so that I could use it almost constantly to understand things around me.  Therefore, it isn’t a website I’m visiting, but an application I am using.)

I’m just a word and language nerd.  It’s like that day at work, earlier this year, when I spent an hour looking up information on certain punctuation marks – I am a word nerd, and there is ample evidence to support the claim.

Screen Shot 2017-12-31 at 12.07.54 AM

Post-a-day 2017

Tying up dirty boys with grammar

Changing laundry from the washing machine to the dryer (It’s a machine, I know!!!!!!!*), I saw a towel on the floor between the two machines.  It was originally intended for the load of red shades earlier today, but the load was too large for comfort, so I pulled out the towel.  I left it on the floor, because a towel load needed to be done today or tomorrow anyway, so why bother bringing it back upstairs just to bring it back down only hours later?  But that isn’t the point.

The point is (sort of) that I saw the towel sitting there, and I had an almost-urge to pick it up and put it in the dryer with the laundry I was transferring.  Not that I wanted to put it in with the clean laundry, but that, usually, whenever something is on the floor there, it is because it has fallen in the transfer between the two machines.  So, I simultaneously wanted not to touch the towel, to put it in the dryer, and to move it to the dirty towels upstairs (since I wasn’t doing the final two loads tonight, but doing them tomorrow).  And, for a good moment, I was worried that I would pursue the final of the three, and accidentally fulfill the second in my tiredness and in the middle of routine muscle movements, and then wish for the first.

I managed to let go of having to deal with the towel now, and I left it on the floor, for fear of the second result.

As I thought about that possible second result, I was practically distraught at how it would ruin the fact that I had already put the load of clothes on to wash.  By putting one single towel in the dryer, I thought, an entire load of laundry would be considered dirty.  Now, why doesn’t that work the other way around?  Why does one piece of clean laundry not make a load of dirty laundry clean, when mixed together?  The dirty still win out.  And how come a whole load of clean laundry can’t overpower the one dirty article?  The clean just can’t overcome.

And then – now, this is the point of this all – I wondered about what is life is like this, if anything.  Almost immediately, I thought about gender pronouns (and particularly in Spanish and French, because I learned those first).  It’s just like guys and girls.  A group full of guys, the dirty clothes, is (let’s use French) ils.  Add one girl, the clean clothing, and it stays ils.  A group full of girls is elles.  Add one boy, and it becomes ils.

So, no matter what, if there are any boys, it is ils, dirty.  The only way to keep it elles is to have only girls – no boys allowed.

And how odd that the boys are the dirty laundry and the girls are the clean… so like life, and I hadn’t even intended it to be so.**

Anyway, isn’t all of that fun?!  Towels to grammar to life comparisons – I do lead an extraordinarily interesting life, huh?  😛

 

 

*Japan doesn’t exactly do dryers.  People are expected to hang clothes outside, because every has a stay-at-home wife, you see… not.  Everyone used to have a stay-at-home wife, but the lifestyle hasn’t changed.  It just takes days and days to do laundry as a solo-liver, because weather can decide to soak your clean clothes while you’re off at work, or hide the sun from them, or be too humid for them to dry at all until they start to smell of mildew…  I just hung mine all indoors, because I’d heard too many stories from my brother’s issues.  Plus, supposedly people steal women’s underwear from the drying clothes in Japan.  I didn’t need to deal with any of that nonsense.  So, I set my air conditioner to a daytime setting to keep the apartment mildew-free, which also helped dry my clothes!

** I once wrote a poem about how boys are dirty.  I didn’t exactly believe any of it, but I knew that people thought boys were dirty and smelly, and I rolled with the idea.

Post-a-day 2017

Time for Multilingual Christmas Stuff

My task for today (from my tea advent calendar) was to listen to a Christmas song in every language I speak.  Seeing as how it was likely to be difficult to find a song other than “Jingle Bells” (which is definitely not one of my favorites on repeat) in a bunch of different languages, and taking into account that it could get quite boring, listening to the same song over and over again, I chose to interpret the assignment as being any Christmas song for any of the languages (i.e. different songs for each language, as opposed to the same one in each language).  These are the songs I picked.

 

German:  Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht
(It was originally written in German.  I love the version by John Denver and the Muppets on their joint Christmas album.)

French: Minuit Chrétiens
(One of my favorite Christmas songs, and it was originally in French.  This isn’t my favorite version, but it’s still nice.)

Japanese: All I Want for Christmas is You Japanese cover 
(Clearly not originally Japanese, but I like it anyway, so I listened to it.  I loved the ridiculous Christmas music I would hear in the shops while living in Japan, but I can’t remember any of it.  This one does justice to some of the better covers I heard, though.)  😀

English: Mary, did you know? 
I first remember hearing this song at Mass at my aunt’s Church in a small town in Texas. A boy around my age sang the song during Mass, I believe during the meditation time following Communion (when everyone goes up to the front and takes some bread and wine).  I thought it was magical, hearing this twangy-accented high schooler sing his heart out with these words and notes.  This version reminds me of a grown-up version of that first one I remember hearing.

Italian: Tu Scendi Dalle Stele
(Originally written in Italian.  I love this guy.)

Spanish: Los Peces en el Rio
(I’d never heard this one, but I love it.  It is originally in Spanish, and also quite popular as a Christmas song in Spanish-speaking cultures.)*

 

Seeing as I don’t speak any others fluently or conversationally, I didn’t do them – this took some time and consideration as it was!  But it was totally good.  Just made me want to listen to loads more in each of the languages, really.  Also, I totally forgot about English and Spanish songs until after I thought I was already finished with this task.  Whoops.  😛

 

*If you want some awesome, quality, unoffensive music in Spanish, check out this song.  Be prepared to be a little shocked when you see the artists performing, and how strongly it contrasts to the sound of the music.  It rocks.  Try listening to it without seeing the video for a minute or two.  Enjoy!

Post-a-day 2017