I was just a minute away from having a perfect 3/15 3:15. Beware the Ides of March! Thought I'd throw that in as well.
In any case, I've gone through another muscle-aching round of translations for this week. A lot of my upper-body muscles are feeling properly sore including the one between my ears. I can't really divulge the contents of the source, only to say that it involves tourism, and tourism projects always involve very flowery language. Rather obvious thing to say, even to those not in the translation business, but it's never a straight one-to-one bilingual transliteration; there's always some detective work about what the client really wants to be said. But I can do it and I can make money out of it.
Anyways, last time I wrote an entry here, it was just before the white smoke billowed out of the world's most famous chimney, Habeas Papum and the emergence of Pope Francis I. There are probably a lot of very happy bettors in Las Vegas who went for the Argentinian....the payoffs must've been huge. There was absolutely no mention of the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in any media site or paper; he just literally popped up from behind that curtain from nowhere. Mind you, Chris Cuomo of CNN is probably being even more obnoxious about the fact that he was the only one to have even mentioned his possibility in becoming Pope. Well, in any case, Francis is getting his honeymoon period right now and the world media is talking about how humble and pious he had been in his native Argentina. We shall see what happens after his Inauguration Mass this weekend.
Yesterday, while Pope Francis I was probably lining up to get his Big Mac Meal at the Vatican Golden Arches (again, humility), I was having lunch with Shard at Kinton Ramen downtown. I was back at the counter again which I actually do prefer instead of the Kyushu table at the front. I went for the regular Shio Ramen while Shard went for Miso. It's been interesting going out with different folks in my last three visits to Kinton. Back on Boxing Day, it was with one member of the Anime Court and Automan in which the conversation was pretty regular, while with The Wild Guy and The Banker and Egg a few weeks ago, it was more business-oriented. Yesterday, Shard, who has a deep interest in design, got into the nitty-gritty of the decor inside and outside of the restaurant. I think I have a deeper appreciation of all of the wood that was sacrificed for the place. I'm happy that Shard enjoyed his ramen and the surroundings. My bowl just had a bit of a rancid whiff of pork which was not that great but the karaage chicken was crunchy and juicy at the same time. And the two of us ended up getting recruited into the restaurant's Kinton Bowler program in which if we drain our bowls over the next 10 visits, Kinton will throw in a free plate of gyoza on our 11th visit....that is, if we don't keel over from cholesterol toxicity at the end of the year.
Of course, after such a rich lunch, we fairly waddled our way over to a Starbucks inside Sick Kids Hospital. Shard informed me of this deal with a coupon for a free Caramel or Hazelnut Macchiatto. As it turned out, it was a bit of a hoax by an uploader, but the staff there had been apprised of the ruse and yet were still smilingly willing to give out the free coffee. The other lesson I learned that is if you decide to get a coffee at a Timmies or a Starbucks during the noon hour, getting one at a hospital atrium or being near a huge atrium in an office building will usually guarantee empty seats for you.
It will be a quiet weekend. No Skype lessons and no outing with The Anime King since he is off to Chicago on a business trip. We did have our biweekly telephone conversation a couple of days ago. However, The Egg contacted me to see about dinner plans for tomorrow. Gotta follow up on that.
