Foreign Accents
So I’m back in Ohio for the holidays. In a coffee shop.
There is a table to my right, with two older women and an Amish man seated. They are speaking. I cannot understand them.
Dutch?
The women are not dressed as Amish, and it would be odd for them to be speaking Amish Dutch.
Iba fume ieeheh. Shon shanganiz if albenen on ten. Thurrsde if lar eh iz bizzeh. Auff en war mar der car crashen.
What the hell is this? I try to focus.
It is – surprisingly – English. Is this the accent I grew up with? It sounds like these women are from Minnesota. Are they rolling their r’s? Where are these z’s coming from? Where are the “th” sounds? Why do all vowels sound like a soft “i”?
This has happened before, where English sounds foreign to me. I can zone out and unfocus to a point where it just sounds like phonetic noise. As if I were watching TV in Chechloslovakia. Meaningless combinations of consonants and vowels with an occasional understood proper noun… “Bleh nartio ard funfo par kun Wal Mart der hur friewenhsha bata da hunse bata subitastar.”
What it boils down to, is that we sound pretty funny speaking English.
Mexico [Sinking] City
I realized during what was my fourth trip to Mexico since moving to Texas that I had not written even a word regarding my visits and adventures. That is a shame, really, as there is really quite a bit that I should have shared about my travels to Monterrey, Playa del Carmen, and Akumal. This post, however, is about my most recent trip to Mexico City, DF.
Ciudad De Mexico [Distrito Federal]
After being forced to take vacation for the entire week of Thanksgiving, I made a somewhat quick and spontaneous decision to travel to Mexico City to see what it was about. The enticing airfare from Austin to DF made the decision even easier, as AeroMexico was offering a promotional rate for their new direct flight. It actually cost less for me to fly internationally to Mexico for the week that to fly back home to Ohio. And, to seal the deal, my friend, Gaby, who I had met in Barcelona last year, is a native-born Chilango from Mexico City, and had invited me to visit.
The People
Next step was to get some friends involved. Of course I would be visiting Gaby, but it took a bit of convincing to get my Mexico travel buddy, Alex, to come along. Eventually, he, as well as his friend, Chris, agreed to come. All of us had studied in Spain and at least have some basic levels of Spanish, with (according to them) mine being the best.
Day 1 [The Arrival]
My eyes open. I am on a plane. I look out of the window for a sense of orientation, and there lies the vast expanse of seemingly infinite housing that is Mexico City. My jaw dropped- partially out of awe, and partially to equalize the pressure in my ears. We certainly didn’t have to descend as much as I am accustomed to, as Mexico City’s altitude is nearly 7350ft. After landing a bit late, the passengers were forced to sit on the plane for what felt like twenty five minutes as we waited for a bus to pick us up. Really, it felt quite unorganized and unprofessional. There is no reason they shouldn’t have expected us and had a bus there ready to go. I’m going to give them slack, though, solely because the airport was under heavy construction and the clearly new terminal was vacant of any docked airplanes. Certainly they were running low on resources until the new terminal was ready.
After going through immigration and grabbing my backpack, I waited in line to pass through customs. Over the crowd I saw a smiling face accompanied by a waving hand. Gaby. It was so good to see her smile again, and after customs was sure that I was not trafficking any illegal materials, I ran out and gave her a hug. The smell of the airport reminded me of Venezuela, the site of Gaby reminded me of Spain, and yet I was in a new place all together.
Gaby was kind enough to offer to pick me up at the airport and take her to her family’s home in northern Mexico City. I had been in cars in Mexico before. Nothing, though, had prepared me for the chaos that is driving in Mexico City. Luckily, I was not the one doing it, or I certainly would have crashed Gaby’s brand-new Renault Clio within minutes of starting it. I was amazed at how simply unorganized the driving was, yet how, beneath the surface, it all worked out and people got to their destinations anyways. It is simply a different mindset than what I am accustomed to, and even what I had seen in Venezuela, Europe, and the rest of Mexico.
We arrived at her home, where I was greeted by her mother and shown to their guest room which was in a separate building in the back of their house.
It reminded me of the house that Emily had lived in in Venezuela, which had a completely separate house containing the guest bedroom, bathroom, etc. I left my bags and talked for a bit with my hosts, after which we left to grab dinner at a vegetarian-friendly restaurant back towards downtown, called Buena Tierra [good land]. It just so happens that this was exactly the same restaurant chain that Natalie, my cousin, had taken me to when I first arrived to Playa del Carmen. Apparently this is the best place to take vegetarians on their first day in Mexico.
We then went out to a bar/club called SkyBar, which was quite fun. They played some of the good old dance songs that she and I had danced to in Barcelona, and it brought back some fun memories. My Spanish, by this point, was nearly back up to full speed as if I had never stopped speaking it for over a year.
A ride home, a jump in the cold shower water to get the smoke smell off, and a bit of arranging of my luggage, I was asleep.
Day 2 [Exploration and Reunion]
Home to home through home
Perhaps I was a bit hard on Rochester in my last post. Overall, it really wasn’t too bad of a place to re-visit. It is amazing how much not being able to find something at a late hour can affect my judgment of a place.
On Wednesday, after a long day of recruiting at the job fair and running somewhat randomly into Favi and Nate, neither of whom I knew were still in Rochester (and were actually just there for the fair), I finally got to go do a few anticipated things.
First, Ben, one of the guys I was recruiting with from AMD, and I went over to the CE department to hand over a bunch of leftover t-shirts to the office for them to hand out to students. On our way into the new building, we actually bumped into Dr. Savakis, the CS department head. He quickly noticed our AMD shirts that we were wearing, and invited us in so that he could give us o tour us the new extension.
I must say, I wish that I had graduated High School in 2006 rather than college. I could have certainly enjoyed many of the new facilities that they have put in for new students. The CE department has moved from the Building 17 extension in all of its depressing darkness and into a much more friendly environment with plenty of natural light, space, collaboration areas, and fresh new laboratories. There is no way that Ben and I could not be jealous. RIT is certainly moving in the right direction, at least with the buildings.
As we were saying farewell to Dr. Savakis, one of the Intel recruiters walked up to the CE office. No, there was not bloodshed, and we actually had an interesting discussion. Dr. Savakis listened intently (or out of complete boredom, who knows) to our subtle digs at each other while maintaining professionalism. I thought the guy from Intel looked really familiar, and finally I realized that he was one of the guys who had interviewed me at Intel in Hudson, MA. He didn’t seem to remember me, though.
Ben and I headed out, and we stopped for a much-needed sub at Dibella’s. I had been longing for that gigantic NY-style brick-of-cheese on a bagel-crusted roll with delicious peppers and mustards for well over a year. Who would have thought that a simple sandwich could be so incredibly satisfying?
Later, I met up with Bill, a friend I had co-op’d with at Harris. It was good to see him again, and, apparently he had just proposed to his girlfriend the day prior. Luckily, I was there to celebrate with him a bit at Cibon, another much-missed restaurant of Rochester. We later headed over to Spot Coffee to meet up with some of my friends from La Hora de Español- Favi, Joe, and Jerry.
It was good to see them all again, though apparently the three of them had fallen out of touch pretty much since Favi and I went to Spain. We had a great time just chatting at the coffee shop (again, another place in Rochester which I dearly miss, and is in fact open late) and decided to go head over to Java’s down the street a bit later. I do really miss that group, and it was good to get all of us back together again. They even mentioned starting La Hora back up again, which would be great to have happen.
Six hours later, I was on a plane heading from home to home. With a connection through home. With a small amount of sleep and having just gotten accustomed to driving around Rochester again, it began to feel familiar and present. If I hadn’t met my friends, though, Rochester would have certainly felt void and foreign, and I like a ghost drifting along through a lost dream. But it was just enough exposure and intensity to remind me of how my life was there not too long ago.
Drifting in and out of sleep on the plane, I arrived in Cleveland. Home. Again. Where am I? Home? But I was just home? But neither of those are home now, right? I wander around the airport and grab a bagel, and remember many of the trips that I have taken from that Continental terminal. But my family was not there at the airport to receive me. I would never pass through the security gates and into the industrial Cleveland air, but would instead groggily board another plane to head home. To Austin, this time.
On the flight back, I woke up several times almost sick with confusion and disorientation of where I was and where I was going, and what parts were dream and what was real. Finally, after a clear bird’s-eye view of the downtown skyline and AMD, I was grounded. The plane landed. I was home. Really this time. I think.
Return to Rochester
I only get the urge to write in this when I travel. I wonder why that is.
Today, I am back in Rochester, NY. Home of my alma-mater. This time, instead of being a resident, I am a visitor. Instead of being a student, I am a full-time employed adult. Instead of seeking employment at the career fair, I am recruiting for AMD.
Of course I wanted to come back. There are many things I have greatly, dearly missed about this city. Mostly, it is my friends. As it turns out, though, nearly all but four of them have left this little city to move on with their lives. In another year, two more friends, I expect, will have deserted this place. My connections with Rochester have become lesser and lesser, and it has merely been a year since I have graduated. What will it be like in five years?
It will feel even smaller. Not only did I graduate from RIT, but I feel like I have graduated from Rochester as well. Returning here is like walking back into your elementary school as a high school senior. It looks and feels almost comically small. Suffocatingly small. It is quiet, and quaint, and there is so little to do here at 11pm on a Tuesday that it is actually confusing for me. Barcelona and Austin have shown me what a real city can offer (I’m not even sure Austin is a real city yet) and Rochester just isn’t matching up.
Here, I can’t even find a place to eat past 10pm on a weeknight. I went to Pita Pit, near downtown. My other options: Taco Bell, Denny’s, Jay’s (dysentery) Diner, and Tim Horton’s. Exquisite. You would think, maybe, that a town with two pretty large universities in it would just pack these locations with hungry students. Wrong. Pita Pit had a whopping four patrons in it. So much for late-night cravings. Come on, students, you shouldn’t even be having to study for midterms yet! Get off campus!
The roads of Rochester were just empty. I had them to myself, and driving around felt eerie, and as Derek once said about Burton, “It feels like by just being awake past 10 you are committing a tragic sin”. Yet, during my drive I did see about 6 cop cars. I’m not sure why, especially in the nicer neighborhoods I was driving in. Perhaps they should be back in the ghetto where I used to live, and my roommate’s car stereo was stolen.
Tomorrow is another day, and I hope to meet up with some of the people that are still here. I’ve also been craving a Dibella’s sub for a long time, and to go for a stroll down Park Ave once again. With luck, I’ll be bringing back some nice bottles of NY wines in my somewhat empty suitcase.
It’s a lot of small things that I miss about this place. But even compounded together, I’m beginning to question if those small things really amount to much. This, perhaps, is the most surprising thing I will encounter during this trip.
International Dvorak Layout
Before my study abroad in Spain, I realized that I was going to be doing quite a bit of writing en español, and that this was going to require some new keyboard adjusting, since I didn’t feel like doing the alt-01249 key combinations to get characters like ñ € ó ç º ü ¡ ¿, etc, since they would be quite frequent.
This is great and simple, if you use a QWERTY-style keyboard. The problem for me is that I use the Dvorak simplified keyboard layout, and I have been since my Junior year of High School. Though I can type in QWERTY, I find it uncomfortable and slow. There exist several Spanish-Dvorak keyboard layout setup files for Windows, however they are all designed for the Spanish keyboard layout, not the US layout. This moves around some keys from where I am used to having them on my US-Dvorak layout, which again is uncomfortable. I already know two layouts, why should I force myself to learn a third? All I wanted was my US-Dvorak layout with the special accented characters and symbols. This shouldn’t be too hard.
Doing some long and tedious searching, I stumbled upon Colin at carfreeuniverse.org’s US-Dvorak with Spanish Chars implementation. This was a great starting point, but it still lacked some of the symbols that I wanted. I can’t remember what at this point, as it was a year ago when I first looked at his layout. I believe I needed most the €, º, and ç symbols, especially if I wanted to write some Català. So I modified his layout for my own purposes, and added characters as I found necessary.
Now, I’m trying to teach myself Português, and along comes a whole new set of letters that weren’t needed in Spanish – ã, õ, à, ô, â, ê, etc. So, nearly a year later, I open up the old Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator and start doing some edits, and add the characters I need. Finally, this is installed on my desktop, so I can send e-mails in Spanish and Portuguese to my friends without looking like a fool and causing vowel confusion.
The result is a keyboard layout that can be used as the default keyboard dvorak layout when typing in English. When special characters are needed, the ‘, ~, `, and ^ characters are all “dead keys” which are used to modify the following character. The layout thus will not get in my way for any of my everyday typing, and allows me to hold IM conversations and write Spanglish/Esportuguês with zero transition between languages. This may even cover French, but its probably not quite there yet. Maybe in version 3.0. The only thing I modified was swapping the shift state of the ~ and `, since ~ characters are used much more frequently. This may be confusing, because its opposite of the key printing on the keyboard itself. I may change it back if it gets confusing.
Here are some screen shots of the layout:
Default
Shift
Alt-CtrlI figured I would post all my hard work for undoubtedly enormous population of US-dvorak-native tri+linguists out there. I can think of at least 2 other people who may find this useful that I actually know, that is, if they even use Windows. More importantly, I’ll be able to access this website and install the layouts from anywhere.
Feel free to comment on the layout. Perhaps I missed some characters or made a goof somewhere. I’d be happy to fix it, so long as I’m in agreement 
Marfa, TX [The Other Oasis in the Desert]
Last weekend, I went on a trip to Marfa, Texas with a friend from work, Josh.
Where is Marfa? Well, it’s nowhere, really. By nowhere, I mean out in the dry brush land of western Texas. By nowhere, I mean it is a place that shouldn’t exist, yet does, somehow. Kind of like Neverland. Why shouldn’t it exist? Well, it shouldn’t exist for all of the same reasons that Austin shouldn’t exist, combined with the fact that it’s in western Texas, and the population is a slim 2000 people. One would think from the roadsigns and the newspapers that the only thing the city has to offer the world is its apparently amazing and highly praised water system. I guess if you live in a desert, that becomes notable.
This raises the question – why did we go? Simple. It was far away. It was an adventure. It was Marfa’s “city”-wide open-house. This includes, but is not limited to:
- A temporary doubling of the city’s population size
- Free entrance to Marfa’s contemporary art museum.
- Which is actually an old military base that was bought by some dude & converted into an art museum.
- It has lots of boxes
-
- and neon lights.
- Speakers talking about art & design
- Free dinner and breakfast funded by the Chinati foundation. Hosted on the street.
- Hundreds of people wearing shirts that look like they say “Chianti”
- An inexplicable urge to drink a glass of Chianti
- A free Dandy Warhol concert.
- Coffee shop/bookstore/LP store called The Brown Recluse.
- Lots of deadly plants and insects
- A Hungarian dictionary, bought at The Book Shed.
Overall, it was a pretty fun and amazingly random trip. We met up with Josh’s friends from Phoenix very late on Friday night, or better, Sunday morning at a rather sketchy convenient store. At this point, we were told that the land we were going to camp on was not so much a person’s yard, but rather a junk yard. We were instructed to look for cardboard so that we weren’t sleeping directly on glass shards. Josh and I quickly decided that pitching a tent in glass shards in a desert junkyard at 2:00am wasn’t going to happen, and opted for the comfort of my car.
Mickey and Mark, however, opted for the Junkyard. This is the junkyard.
The next day was spent wandering Marfa, looking at boxes and neon lights, and albums containing drawings of naked men chasing a goose and clusters of dogs. The one with the dogs was titled “Hungarian Dog Wrestler”. We decided it would be fun to look up how to say “Dog Wrestler” in our newly purchased Hungarian Dictionary.
Wrestler was not in the dictionary. Neither was Fighter. However, right before the F’s, they did have the translation for “Enema Bag”. We decided that this, of course, is one of the most important phrases in the Hungarian language, and is probably one of the first things you will need to know upon entering the country. We quickly memorized it and Mickey even began spreading the knowledge to groups of strangers who were also checking out boxes and neon lights.
The night was spent at the open-house dinner. It was pretty good. Lights strung between the old-west-facade buildings, a Mariachi band, the works. I even bumped into a woman who went to RIT. I did, after all, wear my RIT shirt that day for precisely the purpose of advertising to other alumni or students. We ended up talking to her friend the next morning at breakfast for nearly a half hour.
Riding back was interesting if not just for the amazing landscapes. We also got to stop in a small town called Ozona for a picnic. The most surreal part of the trip kind of reminded me of fall back home. Bright orange leafs were blowing across the road and fluttering in abundance as car’s would rush down the 75mph two-lane highway. However, there were no trees anywhere in sight to produce these leaves, and they were often flying on their own. They were, in fact, butterflies. Lots & lots of butterflies, flying around the highway. My grill, by the end of the ride back, was covered in poor butterflies.
Austin may be my Oasis in the Desert. Marfa, however, is my second oasis – 7 hours away.
Check out [My Gallery] for more photos
