So I donated 10,000 grains of rice by confirming that I’m truly a geographically-challenged North American cliche. (Hey, it’s just that North America is is so easy especially if you know the vacation spots…….)

The good news is that I’m starting to learn where all of the tiny countries with names that sound the same are on a map.

And I can bust out that information at fancy cocktail parties when presented with naming as many countries as possible on a globe as a party game (ok, seriously, I just feel a smidgen smarter).

The bad news (if you can call it that), is that since I donated 10,000 grains of rice, I bought myself a burger as promised, and it was nowhere as good as what BF can make.

Damn his delicious culinary skills!

A very good cholesterol-increasing, fat-building, artery-clogging Lesson Learned.

I’m now slowly sinking into a Burger Coma, induced by the following from the horribly serviced Burgers & Benedicts at Atwater for $13.53.

As an example of bad service, I was ignored for a good 5 minutes waiting like an idiot near the front of the near empty restaurant while 6 servers stood around in a group talking about their mundane lives.

They were seriously standing in front of me, about 9 feet away, ignoring me and chatting before one of them broke off from the herd to take my order.

So service really sucks at Benedicts, but the burgers are better than regular burger joints – lots of hamburger meat given and they aren’t skimpy on stuff like avocados.

Moving on..to EXHIBIT A

As shown in Exhibit A, I will be useless for the next little while.

Possibly the whole day as BF is now gone off to work (he got a contract, YAY!).

So amuse yourself with a mini photo blog instead:

As previously requested a year or so ago (See, I listen. It just takes me a year to get to it.), I surreptitiously (OMG, the FreeRice.com vocabulary builder really worked!) took pictures of fashion crimes in Montreal while driving.

Girls, tights are not pants. The second one isn’t bad, because it was a short skirt over tights. The first one on the left?

Cute red coat, but when she walked, the kind of starched striped shirt flapped up and down showing her butt.

Sure, it isn’t see through per se, but it’s totally inappropriate and like a car wreck — you just can’t look away no matter how hard you’re trying.

The worst is when you can SEE her naughty lady bits and/or if the tights are ridiculously shiny (made by the soft-porn American Apparel).

The warning label on these garments should be:

A daily example of brilliant Montreal drivers.

“Let’s block this super busy intersection because we saw the light turn orange and instead of waiting, we rushed through because we didn’t want to wait a minute for our real turn.”

(You can see the green light in the far right and left of the pics). We were blocked for about 2 minutes waiting for these cars to clear out.

What the hell is this guy selling? I don’t even know.

And some thoughtful stranger was nice enough to enscribe an appropriate description of what a a Terminal Illico Standard is — apparently, it’s a “HO“. (middle right of the page).

Like standard means “standard BJ”?

I be silly and going to hell.

And here’s last nights dinner.

I was going to bake a tasty Chili Curry Salmon last night with onions, but the salmon was not on special (BOO HISS!!!!) …so I bought Rainbow Trout instead (yea, it looks a bit overcooked. oops), and made it with onions and a tasty sauce.

Cost? $4 for the trout, had the onions, rice & sauces at home already. Maybe $5? And I ended up with 2 extra meals out of that $4 piece of trout (it was massive!).

Oh and randomly, I tried to wear a bit of makeup today (brown eyeliner only), and completely forgot I had it on.

I smeared it all across my eyes and face when I rubbed my eyes without thinking (what? I don’t normally wear makeup when I lounge around at home).

Luckily, I did this in the car as I was driving home with sunglasses on so I didn’t notice my mistake until I got in the elevator and was wondering why everyone was staring at me strangely.

I got back into my apartment and saw the brown streak marks all across my face like a wild, fashion-forward raccoon who did her makeup in the dark.

I’m such a sexy beast…

I’m going to have to switch buildings now.

Gee, thanks MEG.

Now I’m addicted to FreeRice.com because I am a really horrible country-namer. I KNOW their names, but I keep getting them mixed up on the map because some are really small countries in comparison to France or Spain for example (like Lichtenstein)..

For every answer you get right, you get 10 grains of rice, then it goes up to 100s then 1000s. This is what I’ve wracked up within the past hour or so.

Don’t be fooled by the high numbers of rice I’m donating, it’s a mix of English spelling and grammar as well as French vocabulary.

I am such a North American cliche, it’s not even funny.

At least I’m brushing up on my geography now, and at least it’s more productive than Cake Mania.

(Did I mention that I’m addicted to Cake Mania as well? 1, 2 AND 3).

Ohhhh yeah. I know how this day is going to turn out.

And as a reward, if I hit 10,000 grains of rice I am going to drive out and buy myself a juicy burger at Benedicts & Burgers @ Atwater near the Pepsi Forum.

Yummers.

Will post pics.

And as usual, you are all being too f*cking politically correct.

I totally disagree with all of you immediately got your hackles up and were offended by my post instead of seeing that what I’m ranting about could have a huge fat kernel of truth.

If I don’t think some of you multi-language speakers out there can speak the English language properly, then it’s true because you cannot vouch for every single multi-language speaker out there to be perfect the way you are.

Anyway, I am not targeting YOU specifically, I am saying IN GENERAL, it’s a good rule to stick to if you are multi-lingual.

I’m not saying that ALL speakers who can speak multiple languages suck at anything BUT their native language, but quite frankly if it’s a language you’ve just learned, or just aren’t comfortable with for whatever reason.. OR….. you just freaking know you have a very strong accent then you need to be aware that I can’t understand you.

(Hell, sometimes I don’t understand my own parents).

That and this was and is not about mocking them, so don’t get all up in my stuff about how admirable it is that they speak many languages, bla bla bla.

I know.

The rule applies to English people learning another language too, not just other cultures. Think about it in reverse, an Anglophone trying to speak Chinese.

It’s a hell of a job to understand what they’re saying because they just don’t have that language down pat- they have never had to learn the 4 tones in Chinese and they mix up the word “death” with the number 4 just by a slight tonal change.

Better yet, let’s use me as an example.

Case in point: I wish I could speak French fluently but I don’t (yet, and some really nice people have emailed letting me know they’d love to help me), and even if I tried, it would take me years before I could ever speak it like a native French speaker (and even then, prognosis = DOUBTFUL).

So when I try to pronounce words like “truc” or “concombre”, I have to go slower or just try to avoid using that word altogether because I just can’t say the “eu” in TRUC or the “bre” in CONCOMBRE

Or I just have to spend my life in front of a mirror practicing French words like that if I am picky about being perfect.

In addition, BF also speaks 4 languages. Even he has admitted that sometimes words in English get him confused because he can’t pronounce certain words with a proper “H” on them, so “hate” comes out like “ate”, and when he says:

“I (h)ate snakes!” … I’m hearing it as “I ate snakes!“. Capisce?

See how confusion can happen when you’re on the other line listening and then you hear that your love has eaten snake for dinner?

(A mortal FB enemy, as I am extremely scared and nervous about snakes since they’re on the ground slithering near my feet where I rarely pay attention. I suppose I should be thrilled that he ate member of the Animal Kingdom that I am scared of… but I totally wasn’t.)

So he goes slower on that word to try and pronounce it better, or he just uses another word entirely like “dislike” or “detest” which is close to the French word.

Some East Asians (Indians) and Asians in particular have this problem if they’ve just moved to a new country, and when they speak English, it’s like they forget that they have a strong accent, are speaking in another language that isn’t their native tongue that they’ve worked hard to learn, and they just rush through the words, biting off the end or slurring vowels and talking in the same style as their mother tongue (very fast).

I worked with Brazilians on my last project and they were pretty good as first-timers because even though they have never really used their English skills, they went slower, and used simple words, which really helped.

So, what prompted the rant, Eric, (good question by the way), was trying to get some computer service help (I needed an activation code for a program), and the Indian guy (as most IT is outsourced to India) on the other line was talking so fast in his faux English that I couldn’t even make out what he was saying.

I’m tellin’ ya, on the phone, it’s a lot harder to understand WTF anyone is saying because I cannot see their faces or their lips.

And they have no clue what I am saying in return, so I ended up repeating myself 5 times before he asked me to spell it.

If someone is asking you to repeat yourself, or constantly saying “PARDON ME?”, then you need to pick up the f*cking hint and slow down and enunciate more.

I also have a slight problem with strong Russian accents or strong Australian accents. But it just takes some adjusting before I get used to how they pronounce the actual vowels and consonants before I’m comfortable understanding them.

Even native English speakers have this problem of speaking too fast when they speak in front of audiences. But at least I can understand them most of the time, even if they slur words or go too quick.

And unless you practice ALL THE TIME with your 2-7 languages (like one day of the week dedicated to JUST speaking one language), you are never, EVER going to be 100% fluent in all of them, all the time speaking like a perfect native of that language — the brain forgets a lot of things because it can only hold so much.

There are going to be times where you get confused, lost or mix up the words between the languages as BF does all the time (which is the cause for lots of confusion followed by laughter).

So I’ll repeat myself:

GO SLOWER and ENUNCIATE MORE, and STOP trying to pretend like you haven’t thought the same thing, or something similarly un-PC about other people in your life.

I’m not a saint and you aren’t either.

If you’re a Blogger (using Blogspot) then here are a couple more tips that might help.

I mentioned before that you can use Blogger Backup Utility to save your blog and your posts, but Blogger has now built in their own backup utility.

So now, to save your blog you have to do two things:

1. If you have a custom template, you have to save your Template

Although if you have a custom template, you know that, and you aren’t going to miss this one, but I’m going to go over how to do it.

2. If you want to save your posts you can under Blogger now!

The only difference is that you save it all into one ATOM file (it’s what they call the backup), instead of having the option for each post having its individual ATOM file.

No biggie.