Tampico is like New York City #1

I've always thought that Tampico it's like New York City, well in very different sizes, but the same, we have our own Central Park (which is getting better thanks to the promotion and the investment of the actual governorship on it) called "Laguna del Carpintero" [Carpenter's Lagoon] we also have our own Saint Patrick's Church, The Cathedral of Tampico, I love its interior, it's bigger and it's amazing every detail on the ceiling I mean it's like watching the space and see all the stars clearly, all the images of saints, sculptures on the faҫade and the mural at the top of the entrance, those two columns and the english clock in one of them is very stylish that totally amazing. Both cities are surrounded by a river, in the case of New York City there is the Hudson River, and here in Tampico City we have de Panuco River.

I've never been in Manhattan (not yet) but I can think of lots more similarities between NYC and Tampico, the Barrio Chino here in Tampico it's like China Town in NYC.

We don't have a Liberty Lady to receive our visitors, but at least we have "Pepito el Terrestre" to keep oneself amused, actually I've noticed that there are lots of new statues in Downtown, unfortunately I don't have pictures to prove this but I remember all of them, there are two in the main street, the one which is in front of Sears, we have "Pepito el Terrestre" on The Plaza de Armas and at the Plaza de la Libertad (Liberty Square) we have a Soldier as in a position ready to attack, there is also the statue of Humphrey Bogart in front of

this famous square in some kind of tribute to the movie "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" filmed in Tampico (at least a few scenes), more recently the statue of Porfirio Díaz (former president of México) in the balcony of a café in front of the same square. All this statues all over the city reminds me to the ones placed in Manhattan, at Central Park.

Translator's Tools

  Salut! I want to talk about what makes my life as a translator easier. As you may know I'm a Freelance Translator, I'm in my early days as a translator so I'm still learning a lot of translation stuff and tips that makes me do my work faster and accurately, since I gain more experience on how-to do translations  I decided that I needed a better PC in which I could have the latest programs for helping me to translate and do it on time for the deadline.

I had a few months waiting for buy me a Lap but a trip to Guanajuato came up, so I had to save that money for the trip, the tickets, the hotel, but ... something happened and I couldn't  make it to Guanajuato so I stayed in Tampico, since I got frustrated because all my plans about visiting and staying in Guanajuato fell down, then I thought about something to forget about that and I went to the stores and look for a LapTop to buy me, so I did it, I went to a few department stores and I chose a Laptop as a gift to recover me from that fail.

   It actually works very good and it has been the best thing I could ever bought me, I already have a Desktop PC  in my house and I used to surf the net every time I wanted, but having a Laptop makes all the difference, it has some awesome tools and works like magic, it has a webcam, a 160 HDD, DVD Drive, it's faster, and I can take it everywhere (which I do every time I need to continue  with my work) this is the be-all-and-end-all, every time I need something I discover that my PC can help me with it, sounds like I have a Laptop crush (LOL!), but it's true... well stop talking about my computer and let's continue with my other tools that make my life as a freelance translator easier...

    There in the picture you can see my All-in-One HP Photosmart which is the latest purchase I did and it's totally helpful, sometimes I scan a whole document and that way I don't have to carry the papers with me anymore, because I can check the digital document instead.

By now I'm trying to get a BlackBerry Pearl by Iusacell and that way I could have access to the internet everywhere, which is a good way to stay in touch with people that may ask for a translation via e-mail

...I want to thank my old PC because of its help, it has seen better days but now with my Laptop, I don't use it anymore...

Too much spare time...

   Oh God... This days has been very productive, since I'm used to wake up very early in the morning and I don't have classes at my college, rehearsals of the play and my french course my days are longer than usual, I even came up with a new schedule just-for-spring-break-time which consists in trying to make good use of the whole day.

   In the "morning" from 6:30 am to 2:30 PM I try to use this time to do some advance in my Thesis about translation, writing on my records to move on this project and get a good advance for the time when I come back to school and then it could be a little bit hard to put more time on it, more than just an hour, some reading of french to revise my weakness on the grammar, and all those kinds of thing that keep me in front of my desk.

    In the "afternoon" from 2:30PM to 11:00PM... when I get a bit tired of being in front of my Lap or my books, then I go outside to my backyard and walk the dog or I just take a shower if I don't have any appointment then I watch TV, I like Warner Channel Primetimes, I even have a schedule of the broadcasting  of different TV channels from 9:00 to 11:00, my favorite shows are "Without a Trace","Big Bang Theory", "Gossip Girl", "Moonlight"  and from Universal Channel I like "Heroes", "Brothers and Sisters","Dr. House" and this new show called "Greek", each one has its pros and cons, but all are good enough for those nights when I stay at home.

  For my weekends I don't plan nothing, so I have the chance to go for a last minute plan.

  I plan it this way because according to what I've read it's better to study during the morning, because you're mind is more like a sponge which absorbs everything better after have a good night of sleeping, and there's no way I can go out of my house early in the morning, there's nothing open in the city, and TV's programing it's only about old episodes.

Are You Ready For Spring Break??

Well, here in Tampico we have our personal way to celebrate the beginning of Spring Break, you guys from Tampico should have heard about the "Playazo", I'm pretty sure that if you're from Tampico, or you've been living here for a while, you have went to the beach on the last day of classes previous to the Spring Break (here in México called Semana Santa), and this year starts since March (according to the Wednesday's Ashes and something else that I really don't understand why it starts on a different date each year... I'll Google it later)

Everybody who's planning to go to the beach tomorrow, should take into account how is going to skip their classes and hide it from their parents, actually is a well-known secret by all the parents that their sons & daughters no matter if they're from high school, or college, they are going to try to skip their classes to go to the beach, this is like a celebration which has a few years (well, maybe it's older), I don't even remember how it made so famous than almost any school has students on this day (and there are some schools that don't work on this day), because the "Playazo" consists in skipping only the last day of classes for going just to the beach, so you might imagine how is the beach full of guys and girls, some of them even ask for a permission to their parents LOL, since it gain more and more famous or, to speak more accurately, promotion, more students come to the beach that day every year, and that's why the Madero City Police Department has increased the security of the Boulevard, because you know what happens when you gather beer and young people.

Well not all in the "Playazo" is bad, there are also people having fun without needing alcohol, some of them just play, dance, eat like in a picnic, or walk around.

On the previous day (today) everyone calls you to know whom you're going with, where you're going to stay at the beach, or where are you going after. Who knows... maybe there'll be a day when you'll be able to buy postcards with the legend "Have a nice Playazo" or something like that, because it seems like this event becomes more and more famous, and a lot of people from Monterrey and another cities come to the Miramar beach on this day just to celebrate with loud music, beer and sometimes food. So I invite you to come to Madero City this March 14th to start the Spring Break, if you want to have fun and meet thousands of people. 

Passé composé

My first eBook reading.

Since in a class as a project our teacher gave us some chapters of the Scarlet Letter to us for giving a little explanation about it and present it to the class, I got a lot of interest in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, I became amazed of the story, and it was hard to understand the whole story with reading only a few chapters, so I went to the Internet looking for the whole story, I knew what I was looking for, actually I've downloaded from the Internet a few scripts of plays and musicals, so I was trying to find the whole book of the story of Hester, then I found an amazing thing called "Adobe Digital Editions" and being part of Adobe, uses the same kind of system for files and it seems like you have a sheet of a book in the screen and if you want you can make it bigger so you can clearly see the letters, then after finding this program I went to download the eBook of The Scarlet Letter, and since page number one until the end, through its 24 chapters, I couldn't stop reading , it took me almost the whole weekend until Monday morning when I finished the eBook and I was totally amazed for the story, and then I noticed that, for the first time in my life, I've read an eBook, well I'm impressed.

This program is supposed to be used in Palms or some kind of device like that for reading eBooks, but I think I'll keep it in my Lap, by now I've downloaded some other eBooks.

My experience on stages.

   Since I like to be involved in the stage, two weeks ago I was asking for a chance to start a new project on theatre, and by this day I have three proposals, I didn’t even noticed the moment when I had accepted the 3 projects and now I'm thinking of reject at least one.

   It’s going to be hard for me to decide which one I will reject, my first proposal is in a play starred by a very good friend of mine who asked me for help in technical assistance, my second option is to work with one of the most prominent directors in theatre for kids here in Tampico, and because of I know the way she works and her passion for this art, I have wanted to work with her since I met her last year and at last but not at least my third proposal is a huge production, I’ve never been in a musical and it seems to be a new challenge for me and a way of learning a lot of new things from a director with the one I’ve never worked before, it’s hard for me to reject this proposal because it’s a kind of theatre that I’ve never experimented.

    The first thing I have to do is to consider the pros and cons of each project and then reject one, there’s no way I can work on the three stages, it’ll be hard to attend all of them, I will not have the enough time for each one while I’m attending to school, last year on school time, the rehearsals took many time from my days and it was only one play!, in order to make it well on at least two I have to reject one.

    But I really don’t want to give away with any option, actually on one option I'll be working backstage and without need of memorizing any dialogues, moves or characters and if I really want to be on the other two plays I’ll have to accept minor character roles, by doing that I will not have too many responsibilities. I’m good at managing my time, I think I can handle it, that way I could learn many things from each project at the same time.