Maria Blogs

Tyler was watching some cartoon with his newest pal when he suddenly screamed “sig-ger na mami!”

Huh?

Sig-ger jan! And then, sih-ge.

Oh.

He meant “sige” (pronounced as “see-geh”), a Filipino expression which can have a wide array of meaning. Sige can mean okay, or as an expression of frustration, like when he kept throwing his cars up in the air and laugh as it crashes hard on the tiled kitchen floor and I’d be exclaiming, “Sige! Throw it one more time and mommy’s not going to fix it when the wheel brakes (for the nth time)! Grrr“

Another time, Tyler came running to me and said what sounded like “lao zhu”.

“Mami, lao zhu! lao zhu!“

Erm?

There was some chinese thing on dvd and a voiceover while a mouse was running across the screen.

Whew.

So now, I’m like, wait till he starts becoming interested in German. Sigh.

Would that we can easily learn languages like toddler do with ease.

Have you ever thought about that? I mean, here we are, bloggers, the world is closing in on us, it’s getting smaller by the minute with the internet breaking down every kind of barrier there is at the rate of a sneeze, it would be pretty cool to have all kinds of business cards for all kinds of people at SWSX, one for Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Ukrainians and whoever else you can think of.

Language tutoring and translation services are becoming more popular even here in the Philippines, what with the amount of Koreans choosing to study here. The other day, my sister suggested I look for a freelance language tutoring position as Koreans are always on the lookout  for English tutoring.

Translia, a company said to have one of the largest professional translator networks have hit upon the idea of business card translation. Just goes to show there is a market for this industry, going as far as translating business cards. And why not, even though we learn and choose English as a standard for doing business with most everyone from other countries, sometimes, what we want to say will come across clearly and precise when translated with correct nuance in their native tongue. Companies like Translia provides collaborative work from its pool of professional translators to arrive at the best translation possible.

Meanwhile, I have to act as my son’s personal translator as he continue to master the English and Filipino languages and engage my family in conversation to which they turn to me from time to time with that “huh” expression. Thirty percent of the time, my mom and sisters don’t understand what he says but he’s so adorable when he launches in his long sentence monologues complete with animated gestures that they want to hear more of the same gibberish!

Zynga has a new game on Facebook – Fishville. Do you ever notice, fishes, farms and foods seem to be major trends in game apps on FB?

Zynga has Farmville, Cafe World and now Fishville. Playfish has Restaurant City and Country Story. I guess Playfish wanted to be a little bit unique and sprouted alienesque pets in Pet Society rather than building another tank. But it’s early goings yet, you never know who’s coming to your FB neighborhood tomorrow. Then there is Farmtown, Farm Pals, My Aquarium, Barn Buddy, Island Paradise, Happy Harvest. Trees are sprouting a mile a minute!

Fishville has pretty much the same idea as “MyAquarium” – you have a tank, you buy fishies, gotta feed them or they die, give ‘em some lovin’, decorate your tank, sell your fish to get more money and gather experience to level up. But so far, it’s a little ho-hum despite the nice graphics. Not a lot of options or bling to make it excitin Let’s say it’s a work in progress. Checked it out … so far, I don’t see myself visiting everyday.

The smoke has settled, somewhat uneasily on the crazy spin cycle Pirate Bay got itself in, including charges against the owners, their web host threatened with fines if they don’t pull down the site, and the not-so-straightforward dealings of the company that supposedly bought TPB.

In light of aggressive campaigns of big Hollywood companies like Disney in tryting to stop copyright materials from being shared and downloaded through torrents (a peer-to-peer file sharing method) – remember the woman who was fined $1.9M for downloading 24 songs (look up my previous entry “think before your share”) – I wonder if it’s wise for sites like QueenTorrents to launch a tv torrents site.

The site claims to have a powerful search engine and a smooth interface for people who are looking to download music, games, movies, tv shows, etc. Torrents in itself is not illegal as it only essentially tells you where the files are, but once you decide to get a torrent, it may start to download copyright materials contained in that torrent’s info.

The thing is to stay away from copyright material, but with media companies trying to sell season dvds for Gossip Girl or Top Chef or 24, even though these are shown on free tv, well, it still considered copyright material right?