In My Quest to Remain Tri-Lingual...

One of my life goals is to be able to speak the Romance languages. As it is, to date, I speak three languages, two of which are Romance languages: English, Spanish and French. Even if I never meet the goal of learning Italian, Portuguese and Romanian, I'd like to retain my tri-lingual talent instead of having it bite the dust.

Thanks to living in a Latino-megalopolis like Miami, I am confident that my Spanish-speaking abilities remain fluent and the only things that I truly need to brush up on are where to place accent marks on syllables and how to conjugate verbs with "vosotros" instead of "nosotros" and remember that "vos" is equivalent to "usted." Perhaps, as a means to make my Spanish more authentic, I should consider changing my relatively standard American accent to sound more Cuban when I speak in English.

Hm. Maybe not.

As for my French language skills...well, much like my cartooning skills, they've diminished. More specifically, my ability to carry a conversation fluently has atrophied.

I came about this realization when I discovered my new cell phone's capacity to record. Like any curious individual faced with technology, I tried it out the recording function and spoke to my phone in French.

A few words in and I was at a loss of vocabulary. I found myself grasping in the back of my memory to remember basic words like enregistrer (to record) and avoir quitté (to have left). No one in my area speaks French so it shouldn't have come as a total surprise to me. And yet, my little francophile self was very, very alarmed by the egregious change.

I am certain that my reading and oral comprehension have remained on a similar level and that, thanks to the recording, my pronunciation hasn't worsened; that in itself is an achievement when I consider that fact that I live in an area that is predominantly non-French-speaking.

Still, I am not one to give up without a fight. If I needed to raise my level to my former francophone glory, then so be it. I began to re-watch some of my favorite, albeit depressive, French movies to refine my oral comprehension...

...which had the inevitable side-effect of tugging at my heartstrings and warping my general worldview. 

Getting a bit fed up with having my tear ducts drained every time I re-watched Au Revoir Les Enfants and Les Choristes and wondering why the best French films never had particularly happy endings, I decided to embark on another pedagogic strategy. With the help of French Trainer Barb (who is totally different from regular Trainer Barb), I delved into a different strategy of coaxing the hidden vocabulary by stating basic sentences that described the things I saw.

If I made a mistake, French Trainer Barb would waste no time in correcting me.

*Ah, ah, ah. The "douchebag" insult doesn't exist in French. One would say "a cretin" or "an idiot" instead.

*In fact, the French word for "douchebag" is (literally) "a vaginal pear." (I am so not making this up.)

French Trainer Barb also recommended that I listen to great French music, like Daft Punk.



Yes, listening to Daft Punk and watching movies in a foreign language are a couple of  methods of maintaining fluency; reading is also a good one. However, the best way of performing the upkeep would be to, of course, face a real world situation in which I face the throngs of needing to fend for myself in a foreign country, a.k.a., immersion. A good example of immersion would be to return to France and thrust myself once again into a French-speaking world.

Which is exactly what I am going to do.

Last month, I got an e-mail that had been filtered into my Spam box. It was from a French high school principal who had kept my résumé when I had sent it to his school in early 2011. He offered me a job to teach both English and Spanish full-time for the upcoming school year in the Loire Valley. He wanted to schedule an interview with me via Skype, if I was interested.

I said I was interested. I had the heart-stopping interview on Skype. And I got the job.

After more than a year of being unemployed, someone out there in Croissant-and-Baguette Land realized that I was a valuable two-for-one deal that shouldn't be passed up. It could not have come at a better time, too.

For all intents and purposes, I am, technically, employed. I have signed the job contract and the Direction Départementale du Travail, de l'Emploi et de la Formation Professionnelle  (DDTEFP) have given me their blessing and given my contract a literal seal of approval. The French consulate in Miami processed the visa application and I am now the proud owner of a shiny sticker (the third one in my current passport). All that's left for me to do is to pack a 50-pound suitcase and board a couple of planes on Wednesday, the first one connecting to Boston before heading over to CDG-Roissy.

Now that I am employed with a French job, that means that once I have integrated with French life, I will have to inevitably deal with being buried under a mountain of photocopies, applications, photocopies, signed pages, photocopies and passport-sized photographs. I'm also running out of passport-sized photos for my applications. I knew that the Famous French Paperwork and I would become BFFs soon enough.

And in case any of you are wondering: yes, I am a bit nervous about this prospect of teaching both English and Spanish full-time. In fact, I'm also stricken by the paralyzing thoughts of "what the Hell have you gotten yourself into/you have no idea what the eff you're doing."

Yet amid my worries and temporary feelings of insecurity, I am far more excited by the fact that I was the best (possibly only) candidate for the job and I gladly welcome a chance to have my life go in another direction. In France, no less! I can only imagine the eye candy that will be captured on my little Canon camera throughout the next year. So, dear readers, expect future posts featuring croissants, baguettes, cheeses, châteaux, wines and horses.

Yes, that's right. I said horses. Lots and lots of horses.

Here's a cartoon of a horse.

I clearly need more practice at drawing them on Microsoft Paint.

Barb the French Bean

P.S.

To anyone who is currently down in the dumps in life, I beg of you to hold out a little longer. As cheesy at it sounds, things will turn around for the better when you least expect them to do so. In the meantime, keep your chin up and remain hopeful at seeing a brighter moment in your future.

P.P.S.

I'M GOING BACK TO FRANCE! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

I Am Alive

Isolated in an ivory tower...

Captured by pirates...

Fighting the oppression in Narnia...

Alright, I have no amazing excuse as to why I have not posted in a while, except the usual excuse of life getting in the way. I have been busy to the point of exhaustion, but I am alive and that's exactly the point of this post (obviously).

With that said, I shall now end this post with a few odd photos.





This is a candle for a beer bottle






 I thought this was funny because it does have some truth to it





 Kronenbourg in the bathroom of a restaurant. I could have gotten drunk in the bathroom...

-Hanny the coffee bean

An *Actual* Chicken Cartoon

I love it when I get into the cartooning mood and this morning, I woke up with a couple of crazy ideas for cartoons. Cartoons involving chickens.

But before I get to that, I'd like to present a little Two Beans Or Not Two Beans trivia factoid for you lovely readers: did you know that if Hanny the Coffee Bean hadn't had the brilliant idea of using Microsoft Paint, my blog posts wouldn't have had cartoons at all?

I'm not joking about that.

At the very dawn of founding our corner of the Internet, I expressed to Hanny that I wanted to have cartoons to explain my blog posts. Actual pen-and-ink drawings that I crafted with my own hand.

However, I fretted about it due to one minor technicality: I didn't own a scanner.

"How am I supposed to make cartoons if I can't scan them?!" I asked my partner-in-crime. "Do I draw them and then take pictures with my camera? Do you know how dumb that will look? I mean, who wants to see a picture of a drawing?"

"Just use Paint," Hanny coolly reasoned.

It's hard to believe, but until that painfully obvious suggestion came, I had not even considered making my cartoons using a computer. It was a foreign concept to me and a daunting one at that. Ditch paper and pencils for pixels and a keypad? Will I even be good at it?


Turns out that I don't do such a terrible job at it and I have since embraced being able to make full color cartoons in a few clicks without developing a severe, crippling cramp in my right hand.

Lately, though, I was at a loss for doing that. Even if I had an idea, no matter how insignificant it was, I couldn't be bothered to open Paint to make the cartoon. It wasn't until I woke up this morning when it hit me. Just for once, I'd actually like to make a cartoon by hand, not on Paint, as if I wanted to get back to my cartooning roots. It's just what felt right and realizing there are no paradigms to creativity is something that I have to constantly remind myself.

So, for the time-being, here is one of the dumb cartoons that popped into my mind. 

(Oh, by the way, even after so many years of living in a world filled with technological advances, I still don't own a scanner. In the end, I've taken a photo of a drawing, the very thing I avoided doing right from the origin of this little blog. Ha. Ha. HA.)

Sorry, son. You've been cock-blocked.

I'll admit that I wasn't trying hard to make an excellent cartoon. But I came to the realization that my artistic skills are a bit rusty, meaning they have totally deteriorated to a level which embarrasses me. Here are some drawings from my past so you can compare them to the simplistic chicken and rooster:

Sea turtle

Multi-tasking octopus. I remember that the word "multi-tasking" was very in vogue back in the day.

A lobster and a shrimp (prawn)

Even Atlanteans need a few arrows of love.

A Florida Marlin. Gotta root for the home team.

Clown fish with an anemone, circa post-"Finding Nemo"

Sea slugs that are clearly snails *head desk*

A Flamenco dancer to represent Spanish class...

...and a frog to represent French class. This was WAY before I realized I would one day live in France and come to utterly despise the whole frogs = France stereotype. 

This Killer Whale/Orca was my favorite of the cartoons. Probably because it was a bitch to color in all the dark areas and it gave me a sense of accomplishment after it ate up two ballpoint pens in the process. 

I did these drawings for my high school's nautical-themed yearbook when I was a Senior. I was seventeen. Turning into a responsible adult who can't even draw a below sub-standard chicken makes me want to tear my hair out.

Anyway, I did say I had ideas for chicken cartoons (plural). Whether or not I will express myself by sitting down and drawing them, or chicken out and rely on Paint once more, will be determined in the future. Rest assured, though, I will continue to make all the lovely, wonky pixelated illustrations you've grown to love.

Translation: that means that I'm too broke to buy coloring and art supplies, let alone a scanner.

Barb the French Bean

While I've Been Away...

Warning: the following post may or may not come across as being particularly bust-a-gut hilarious.

If you are new to this blog, I ask that you please read either this, this, or this post. They're comedic gold and provide a better representation of my zany humor than the post that will follow.

And if you want to read some more funny stuff, go here, here, here, here, here and here. Seriously. Go everywhere. You won't regret it.

Still there? Good.

My dear blogging friends: I realize that I have been quite absent from the blogging world for the past couple of months, mostly in the sense that I have not kept up with reading the majority of your own blogs that I know you have worked so hard at. For that, I can only offer my sincerest apologies. That wasn't very kind of me and believe me when I say that the guilt of not reading them has been weighing down on me.

As for my own lack of contributing to the internet, I'll admit that I have not been in the most creative mood as of late. I don't know what's wrong with me. I know for sure that I'm not depressed. However, it is starkly apparent to me that whatever creative fuel that was in my warped mind has stalled indefinitely. I haven't even felt like making cartoons. And I love drawing cartoons. As you long-time readers may agree, that, for me, is quite abnormal.

I'm not at a complete loss of creativity, though. My attention diverted to writing my first novel with fervor, and I've even begun to jot down aspects for the second and third novels. It's a conflicting stage for me. While there is no doubt that writing brings me joy, the more I progress with my work to finalize the rough draft, the more I am struck by the overwhelming sensation that what I'm doing is utter crap and a waste of time. (Did you catch the point that I am still on the rough draft?) I've begun to wonder if this feeling of self-dejection is normal (it is, to an extent), and I am trying to make it disappear so I can just get on with it.

And now that I think about it, I actually had some rather good blogging material. Here is a synopsis of what has been happening "behind the scenes" with my life.

1) I was nearly run-over by a car. The guy who nearly killed me didn't even bother to ask if I was all right nor did he apologize. He merely drove away to leave me standing in stunned disbelief in the middle of the crosswalk/zebra crossing. From that moment came the sobering realization that life is indeed quite fleeting and it set me into a passive-aggressive frenzy of wanting to finish writing my novels.

I hope that, someday, I can personally thank that guy for his rudeness to me. Whoever you were, thanks, you heartless, uncaring bastard. That frightening jolt with reality was exactly what I needed.

2) I helped my dear friend May over at Sand from a Distant Shore move out from Miami and drove her upstate. It was after said trip that I eventually discovered that a serving of Cadbury's Original Drinking Chocolate allegedly has 602 calories.

I then sent an e-mail to Cadbury UK and got a response a week later from Kraft Foods Consumer Relations stating that they will forward the information to the appropriate staff. Let's say that it was...slightly disappointing that I didn't get an e-mail from Britain.

3) I did, however, receive three postcards from a lovely Scottish friend of mine who also had the foresight to send me some buttery shortbread fingers...

Glasgow and Westies FTW

 ...and some *GASP* BRITISH CADBURY DAIRY MILK!

Hallelujah! It's the REAL stuff!

Also, my bedroom now has a wee stealth Nessie lurking about a shelf. I suspect that it likes its new home in Miami.

4) I went to visit my friend May a second time and officially became a hoarder of British food.

Seriously, folks, I need help.

5) On a completely unrelated note, I am considering doing my Master's program in the U.K.

Like, for realsies. I'll even spell "program" as "programme" and refer to quotation marks as inverted commas if needed.

I certainly haven't given up on my long-term dream of moving to France, but in regards to my education, I've been toying with this idea for a few weeks now and the biggest question I keep asking myself is "why not?" At least the university coursework will be in my native language...

U.K. pals, do any of you know of good universities you can recommend to me for a Master's program, preferably in literature? I figured that, at the very least, I should stick to what I know and enrich that knowledge.

Barb the French Bean

P.S.

Two Beans Or Not Two Beans turned two years old this month and I forgot to celebrate it. Oops.

A Little Moment of Empty "Eureka!"

Over the weekend during a short trip to Tampa (technically, it was in Springhill, FL), I stepped into a local Publix grocery store and gasped with glee when I encountered a small shelf containing British goods. Among the selection of goodies I plucked to fill my basket were a couple of tins of Cadbury Original Drinking Chocolate.

As my brain reasoned, I love British Cadbury chocolate and I love hot chocolate. Finding Cadbury hot chocolate mix is a classic win-win scenario. I honestly heard in my head the "dah-nuh-nuh-nuh" music that plays whenever Link from The Legend of Zelda finds a treasure in a chest.


(I stress that I love British Cadbury chocolates because here in the States, we can buy a pseudo-Cadbury that is manufactured under the more prolific Hershey's; the taste is not the same. Just not cricket, what-what.) 


Shopping wasn't the only thing I did in Tampa. I also went out for a nice walk and saw Cypress trees and a gator swimming in the marshy water. That was pretty cool. 

Cypress tree

Anyway, as it is with most imported products, the Cadbury Original Drinking Chocolate packaging underwent the ritual of having an American-style nutrition label plastered directly unto the original European nutrition grid. I didn't think too much of this for it is what commonly happens to foreign foods over here. 

The Ye Olde American Nutrition Facts Label

However, it wasn't until I returned to Miami when I decided to pay closer attention to said label.


According to the new American label, one serving of the drinking chocolate, a tablespoon, contains 602 calories. 


"That is not possible," I thought to myself. "That cannot be nutritionally possible!"


Then, as if I had to prove my point as to why this could not be nutritionally possible, my inner schizophrenic began to reason and form an argument based on facts. 


"Of the chocolate I would eat in France, just 20 grams out of a 100 gram bar of chocolate would be roughly 125-130 calories. That means that the entire bar of chocolate, all 3.5 ounces of it, would just surpass 600 calories! How is one 15 gram tablespoon of powder more than that?"


"I mean, even a tablespoon of butter is just a little over 100 calories. And it's butter."


Curiosity got the better of me. I peeled off the American nutrition "facts" label, examined the British nutrition information grid, and nearly peed from laughter over the grievous mistake that had been committed. 

Grids are cool.

I do not know what poor soul at Cadbury USA had the responsibility of having to type up the American nutrition label, but I am fairly certain that it was an American who clearly did NOT know the difference between kj and kcal. Either that or they had misread the grid with one flippant glance. 


"I knew there was something wrong!" the voice in my head cheered. "It clearly says on the grid that 100 grams of dry powder are 370 kcal, or 1575 kj. As for the actual 18 gram serving of dry powder, prepared with 200mL of semi-skimmed milk, the concoction is only 165 kcal! Whoever did this label confused the 695 kj with the 165 kcal!"


My inner schizophrenic rejoiced with much rejoicing.


"I uncovered a mistake! I literally uncovered an error by removing the label! My detail-oriented skills have not completely gone to waste! I have faith that I am still a fully-functioning human being! YIPPEE! My life is complete! Ha ha ha!"


...Then I realized that this discovery of someone else's mistake on a food label amounted to being a big whoop by human standards. Yippee. 

Barb the French Bean

People Watching is Similar to Watching The Discovery Channel: Part One

If you have ever sat down observing the people around you, then you know you can learn a lot from them. Especially, since the actions of some people are quite humorous. In advance, let me just say that I am not trying to make fun or ridicule those who actually act like this, but you have to admit from the observers view, it is quite funny.

For those who are unaware, The Discovery Channel shows a range of informative shows. Back when I was younger (the old school Discovery Channel) they used to show animal documentaries, which you can now see in one of the Discovery Channels network called Animal Planet.

____________________________________________________

Scene #1

Deep in the wilderness of the Orange grasslands (Mall in Florida), creatures of the wild (people) assemble around their prey (shopping stores) in hopes to fill their stomachs (car trunk) full of pabulum (clothes, accessories, etc..). These creatures are not to be startled as they might attack you, thinking you are prey. I cautiously sit in a corner camouflaged in my best gear to not attract attention and quietly I observe the creatures of the wild.

1) The Ferocious Panthera Onca (Jaguar)
A.K.A. the bitches that will rip your eyes out if you don't hand over the $40 Gucci bag they have been eyeing since they got there.

I observe the Ferocious Panthera as she moves graciously towards her prey, her eyes full of hunger. She gets closer to her prey, trying not to draw attention to herself. She's closing in on her target, but WAIT! What is THIS?!  Another creature is closing in on her target and...

The Ferocious Panthera strikes again and takes control. Leaving her enemy wounded and taking her prey in hand.


Scene #2

Making way into Savannah, Africa (the Florida park two minutes away from my apartment) I immediately hear braying. As I approach my destination, the braying becomes louder to my fragile ears. Slowly without making any harsh moves, I take my place at a nearby tree (bench) where I see the braying creatures.

2) Striped Equidae (Zebra)
A.K.A The male that will fuck you up if you touch his woman or even glace at her.

I examine the individuals that are screaming at the top of their lungs, both of the male species. A female stands amongst them, horror stamped on her face. As the males begin to fight, the female screeches, but the males continue their battle. It is not clear as to what they are fighting about, but noting the females stance and the tears running down her face, something tells me she had something to do with it.

As you can see, the wild (the world) is full of vicious creatures (people) that will tear each other apart (literally) to get what they want (a woman, a Gucci bag etc...). This has been quite an eventful and educational experience (laughing my head off at all the bastards), but for now I must end the journey here (unless you want to hear about the doughnut guy).

Thank you for watching The Discovery Channel (Now Animal Planet) / (Hanny TV).

-Hanny the coffee bean