Maria Blogs

Awwww … says their youtube followers.

I’m probably one of a handful who didn’t get the whole dancing thing. So they want to use dancing routines to “rehabilitate” prisoners. Gawd, planting crops is sooo boring, let’s dance! You did the crime, you dance your way to loads of money (or so I heard). What happened to plain old, you did the crime, you do your time. Apparently, in Cebu, when you commit a crime, you get the chance to join one of youtube’s sensational dancing prisoners – with gifts and money coming from all over the world. I’d pick some pockets for that. Not.

Well …  Cebu’s Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia says no more dancing until some things like where the heck did gazillion donations pouring in because of this spectacle went? Or rather whose pocket (apparently not the governor’s … yet?). She wants better accounting.

You can read more about it here and here.

I don’t know the governor, nor have I heard anything about her, but we know, that in the Philippines, one of ten, people will get corrupted once they are put in a position of power, no matter how small, no matter whether it’s in public or private office. So it is suspicious indeed why some people, like the governor’s brother (who she’s rumored to be having a rift with) would push for entertainment value over hard labor as a big part of prisoner rehabilitation program.

The governor says, it’s okay if money are directly deposited to prisoner’s bank accounts … whoa, exactly what privileges are we curtailing for these people? A lot of them are safer and better cared for in prison than outside … and they also get to earn a lot of money for having fun?! To give the governor credit, she did say, the prison bureau should concentrate on agricultural pursuits in their rehabilitation program pending further review of this dancing program.

My sister will say, shut up and stop bitching about, it’s only dancing. No wonder this country is in deep shit.

Tyler is in a “musical” mood these days. He loves to sing Old McDonald Has a Farm, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Baa Baa Black Sheep, All I really Need (rafi), Sugar Sugar and a host of other songs.

Unfortunately (for me), it’s a guessing game when he wants me to play a specific song. Last night, before he slept, he had a request,

howee howee water mommy

huh?

howee howee water! … pease mommy

we try to find it ok?

oh crap, what the hell is howee water and what does it sound like … so i asked him to sing it. It’s so funny how you think your son can sing great, but when you’re clueless as to what he’s singing, he might as well be talking martian.

So I tentatively played a few songs and asked, “this one?”, to which he would jump and scream, fayee tales! (veggie tales), or clap clap! (dragon tales) … and then he would asked, mommy howee howee water pease! mama pease …

My son can speak proper words most days but I guess, like other children his age, sometimes he regress or he just plain hasn’t mastered aLL proper words.Good thing he doesn’t get frustrated when we’re doing our music guessing game.

As I was scanning through his gazillion playlist, I kept thinking back to what made him laugh or jiggle or jump while listening to a song. Finally, I came upon “Hurry, Hurry, Drive the Firetruck” by Barney.

There’s nothing like an ecstatic two year old to make you feel like you just discovered fire. Lol.

It’s 7am and “howee howee water” is playing in the background since last night. Do you have a kid like mine who’d fixate on a song and play it over and over .. and over ?

Happy Wednesday!

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!