Notes from the Pampas

Amongst recent news items from the BBC site that have arrested my attention is one of a "naked woman tied up near station" (in fact "naked woman" arrested my attention, as they usually do, and I was compelled to read the rest). It appears that a couple driving past a railway station in Hampshire saw a tied up naked woman and a man in camouflaged clothing beside her, of course their duty as law abiding citizens was to call the Bill. On Bill's arrival there was no sign of naked woman or camouflaged man. Police say it could be a prank or "some misdirected leisure activity" !!!

I get used bad translations in texts, shop advertizing and film sub-titles, obviously having been done by an incompetent speaker of the target language. I've never seen a NON-translation though, somebody should have checked this bi-lingual roadsign:




Due to the wonders of e-mail auto-response technology and some Swansea City Council Twp not bothering to check, in Welsh it says something like: "I am not in the office at the moment, please send work to be translated".

I got the photo from the BBC site, which I assume is pretty reliable, but to me the photo looks a little doctored in some way so I'm really not sure of the authenticity of it.


Another road sign in Cardiff:

Says, "Look Left" in Welsh, put down as another admin oversight, personally I think it's a deliberate ploy to confuse the English into looking the wrong way and getting smashed on the back of the cranium by a ten ton truck, hmm, actually that wouldn't make sense as Cardiff, I assume, still complies with the rest of Great Britain in that the vehicles are conducted on the left side of the road, well just to confuse the sais anyway.


Porto Alegre Book Fair is under full swing and also under lot of rain (traditional Book Fair Rain), annual orgy of intelect and beer. This year there has been a great improvement on the beer tent arrangement, the Opinião bar no longer has a monopoly on beer sales but there are fewer food stall choices, the decor is a tasteful deck and wooden bar tables, much better than the plastic stacking chairs and tables and ground level tarmac floor of previous years. However there is a smaller space and fewer tables which now means one waits for 3 hours for a place as opposed to the previous 1 or 2 hours. This didn't spoil a pleasant afternoon spent in the quaffing of Fine Brazilian Ale and perusing the literary delights of the second hand book stalls. The rest of the weekend I spent with lots of misdirected leisure activity.