Raise your glass... dirty little freaks

Driving three hours a day has its perks… not many, but at least I get to be on top of the big hits that the radio has to offer when new songs are launched.

The last release from female singer Pink it’s a tribute to all the people (like me) that are proud to be “wrong in all the right ways”, the loud talkers (Italian inheritance that you can’t possibly get rid off), the geeks that prefer to read a book rather than see a TV show, the weak drinkers who get wasted with one glass of dessert wine, the 'picky' eaters who prefer a sorbet ice cream rather than a chocolate fudge sundae…

Its 7 am, autumn is here so at that time, the sun is still to make its appearance, I’m driving to the office, bored out of my mind and with still 45 miles left to go, when my favorite radio station (92.3 NOW… Rolling with Nick Cannon!) starts playing this amazing song and before I notice I’m dancing while driving (probably the police will stop me in any minute because you can’t possibly dance while you drive, or because my dancing skills are so lame that I’m an embarrassment to the professionals).

Anyhow, it’s amazing how a simple song on a simple moment, can modify the rest of your day… I spent the rest of my trip to work, going over every radio station to see if I could hear that song again (in two opportunities I almost hit a the rear bumper of a fellow driver... don't seek and drive neither) needless to say that I love it!

I’m sure that my sister is taking notes to download it, because I try to keep her up to date with the newest music hits, since in Argentina you can maybe hope to hear it 6 months after.

I thought that I was alone in the world of the geeks with spastics dancing skills and weak stomachs; however, after I heard it several times, I came up with a list of all the people that could be placed into this song… all of us who’re proud to be utterly and completely different.

Word of advice: don’t try to change us, can you imagine how boring the world would become if we all talked in low tones, or laugh in queue of the same things, or eat the same boring stuffs, or agree on everything… and I mean: EVERYTHING!

Puh-leeze!

I prefer a challenge, so bring in the weird stuff… bring me in!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpziHpmC4lM&feature=related

http://923now.radio.com/shows/nick-cannon/

All foreigners get together in NYC

Being a foreigner puts you in the situation were you’re introduced to people from your own country or people that speak Spanish (as this was the rarest thing to happen in a country where the majority of immigrants are from Latin America) and most importantly, people that shares your line of business or have the same interests as you.


It’s a chain of events that starts with new friends and continues as new individuals come to live in the New York… it’s a circle that never stops nor ends, where you’re being introduce to a bunch of new persons that might, or might not, be appealing as possible acquaintances to you.

All of us have one thing in common though: we’re not from the US.

Since I’ve traveled and lived abroad the majority of my life, I started to become picky (even demanding) when meeting new connections. I prefer to have a small group of friends, rather than a vast gathering of “I just know you a bit” type of people; so I’m popular for my lacking in warmth and my over critical personality when I’m first meeting someone.

For me, they have to pass a test… they don’t have to do anything other than be themselves, and if I don’t find that “click”, then I move on to the next poor bastard that’s in line to meet a Latino girl, whit a great character but a bad temper (when provoked), who defends her friends and always has time for a meet-and-coffee type of gathering.

Life as gone easy on me when introducing me to these new friends… so far, no freaky individual as come in my path, nor have I had the need to relegate anyone. I can remember only one time when I met a girl and we talked for one hour ; enough time for me to do a “one-day-long list” of all the things I hated about her; from her nails, to the way she expressed herself - with a potato stuck into her mouth - down into the way she looked down at you from the point of her noose, as if her superiority was visible for everybody (except me, it seems).

Needless to say that I never (ever) got together with her again… thank god for that!

I hate stuck-ups.

I still have friends… all of them pretty worthy in their own way:

I have RB, who loves astrology and can know “who you are?” just by learning the day you were born; or CT who’s always trying to soothe everybody around her to avoid conflicts, or LM who interrupts while you’re talking but it’s always to say something more interesting than what you were saying in the first place (I want to kill her every time she does it, but she’s such a good person, I can’t manage the strength), or PC who’s recently pregnant and continues her habit not to say bad words (now with the excuse that the baby might be hearing), or LC who even though she lives far away, manages to keep track of my life and have time to hear me bitch about my day, or WS, my ex-boss who transitioned with me when we both moved from Dominican Republic and ended up in the States… becoming better friends in the process, or my recently acquired friendship… JS, who I don’t know yet that well, but her tidiness and compulsion for order, tells me that we’re going to have so much in common!

I’m picky but I know when I’m surrounded with worthy “friend” material…

Ask the stuck-up B*%#@%: who’s your “superior” mama now?

Step one: apply, step two: get an interview, step three: get a job... or not!

I’ve been looking to hire people in my job, to help us develop the European market for the past 2 months.


I receive resumes from all over the world, with people with all kinds of backgrounds:

Old people, young people… females, males…. Experienced, non-experienced… educated, non-educated… with brain tumours, without brain tumours.

Wait… WHAT?

Oh, I forgot to tell you about this story!

It’s a true story!

So last week I received my usual amount of applications via email.

Most people are in the situation that I was six months ago… lots of experience, but no viable offer coming to them.

However, one of those applications caught my eye because of the bizarre, unusual, out-of-nowhere statements.

Let me tell you, I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or laugh when I read this guy’s profile.

Or if I should hire him because he spent 6 years backpacking the “earth” when he was 20 (his words), or discard him because he sent me a 3 long page resume (what is that?) with dates starting from 1974????

Or maybe hire him because he had a clarity regarding the reasons he hated every other job he had had (hierarchy wasn’t for him, or his boss was too demanding, or he wanted to move to a more easy job), or not hire him because he quitted 27 jobs in the past 40 years (no wondering the three page curriculum).

Or give him the opportunity because he had two children (“dependents” as he express them to be) and his mother had died of cancer when he was 30 years old… or maybe not, because he said he didn’t take authority very well, and he preferred to be his own boss (don’t ask).

But most importantly, I didn’t know what to do because his life had been so wonderful (full of change and novelty), but at the same time, so sad and conflicted.

He even admitted to have a brain tumour, so I didn’t know if I should write and ask him how he was coping with this news or tell him, how on earth was he planning on achieving the tasks that I needed for the position with all that baggage?

Jeez! I would be signing on an ashram should I be him… committed to dedicate all my life to love and peace, because, what else is to life when you have a brain tumour?

I laugh… I admitted.

I laugh till my eyes watered, but I also was sad, because I had to decline him as a possible candidate, and I couldn’t possibly tell him that he was too straight forward and provided with too much information for someone to even consider him… because truth is, we need more people that are like that:

In your face, no turning back, pushy, resilient, brutally honest and full speed straight forward…

LIKE ME… and my twin sister (one of the little things that we have in common… aside from looks, of course).

Nail Polish or Nail Punching?

I have this awful habit of wanting to paint my nails in the most inconvenient and inopportune times, when I’m doing laundry or fixing dinner… or both.


Even though I have a very intelligent dog, who knocks the door if he wants to go out, asks for his treat when he’s done playing and follows you around when he wants to take a walk, it doesn’t matter how much I’ve tried, Buono hasn’t achieved the ability to use nail polish remover on my nails… I think the matter gets too complicated for him when the cotton needs to be soaked instead of eaten, as he always prefers to do.

Other thing that plays against me (besides my lack of patience for a proper dry) is the fact that I rebel in my color choice. My husband always wants me to use the light pink, white, creamy color… and my picking is always into the reds, purples, blues, and browns... the more exciting colors.

So my last (and only) resource ends being my husband, who with his huge patience, sits me on the toilet seat, grabs the cotton, soaks it into the remover and tries to fix my nails.

Since men don’t understand the science involved into the process of polish removing, and the acute potency of the liquid, force is their only explanation, so they think that by pushing and sliding the cotton hard onto your nails, the polish would be removed sooner… rather than later, and all this for the sake of me don’t forgetting that it’s my husband who’s doing this girly task.

I imagine while he’s crushing my finger and trying to remove the dark purple polish, he’s thinking: “why did I agree to do this?”… At the same time, the polish tarnishes his fingers, so he has to resource to compulsively wash his hands to remove the purplish color.

So there I was, sitting on the toilet, wringing under his strength, trying not to show him that my poor little nail only wanted a nice finished polish, not a badly beaten one.

I’m probably ending with a purple spot on my fingernail; I might even decide to wear it “nude”, because the bruise would match my dark purple polish any way.

I’m definitely training my dog harder for this task, at least he seems to enjoy the process of eating the cotton and jumping around me, without any harm coming to my poor little nails.