Linguistic Phenomenon

So last night, before Paraguay's defeat by England, I caught a little Japanese programming. Let me just preface this by saying that the programming that I get here tends to be far from interesting to me, so I look for the informative programs.

The first segment was on movies made for the hearing impaired - with sign language as the medium for communication! Very cool! As I don't understand sign language, at one point I found myself waiting for the interpreter to begin so I could understand. And since I'm so used to listening to Japanese and not understanding, after he started talking I listened thinking that I was understanding. Which I wasn't. However, one of the guys signed with such exaggeration and expression, that not only was he fun to watch, but he went slow enough that I could actually understand some of what the interpreter was saying. Awesome! Go me!

The second segment was about this guy who is 100 years old this year. This guy was great - the first shots were of him out weed-whacking and riding on his exercise bike. And he's into fashion, so he had these cool glasses on, and came out later in a sweet suit. He was cooking his own dinner, picking up what must have been his great-great-granddaughter onto his lap, working out his arms on a stepper for your legs, etc. Truly amazing. If you're going to live to be 100, that's the way it should be.

And earlier this week, well, Friday night, while I was waiting for Costa Rica-Germany, I caught Panic Room (which I had never seen before) dubbed in Japanese. Here's the thing, even though I couldn't understand the great majority of what they were saying, it wasn't difficult to follow the movie and feel the suspense. In fact, I'm not sure the dialogue could have helped it that much.

In an unrelated story, Paraguay lost to England 1-0, even though they picked it up in the second half (go han - yay, I learned something last night!) I also met my new boyfriend, Roque Santa Cruz, although someone else had the same idea about him because apparently he's married. And it looks like the two of us are not alone.

I also decided that I don't like Beckham. He's great as a player, talented, sportsmanlike as far as I could see, but something about him rubs me the wrong way.