Lost in Translation: Rants

18 Fellow Ramblers

Ladies and gentlemen: I've got a serious announcement to make: I am annoyed. Not just a little, no, I am very annoyed. You see, I have a serious problem with some people who call themselves writers these days. These people's writing has been published in papers and magazines. Now don't go saying that my name suits me perfectly, because it's not envy that's causing my annoyance. I am frustrated with the fact that these people call themselves 'columnists', the say they write 'columns', while they clearly have no idea what the a real Dutch column is!

My frustration started back in 10th grade, when I had to write an essay on whatever had my interest. I couldn't care less about writing this essay, but I did want to know more about another type of text: the column, which is slightly different in the Netherlands than in other places in the world. I did a lot of research and wrote an explanatory text with the great title 'What the f*** is a column?!'. I bet that was the first and last time my teacher saw a sophomore frop an F-bomb in the title of an essay. As much as I hated writing this essay, I learned a lot about the Dutch type of column because of all the research I did. So since the age of 15 I've known that a Dutch columnist writes short pieces of text (about 400 words long), mostly about current affairs. They're sometimes written as a kind of satire and most important: their main goal is to make people both think and laugh. Pretty clear, right?
Two weeks later I got an A on my essay, which was a small miracle considering that I had used the big scary F-word in the title. It wasn't the end of my interest in columns though: after writing about it, I wanted to write one myself. I just didn't know what to write about (quite frankly I still don't know), so I started reading lots and lots of columns. That's where it went wrong.

Every morning I read the paper. Every day this paper publishes a column written by a reader. And those people who write those columns are all aspiring writers, just like me. But not a single one seems to know what a column is supposed to be like.
Over the last week this is what I saw in the paper, with the label 'column' slapped onto it:

A girl telling how proud she is of her sister who's failed her high school finals twice
A girl telling that she'll regret not doing certain things when she's old
A guy telling what life was like when he just arrived in the Netherlands
A woman giving a lecture on the symptoms of a burnout

None of these articles ticked any of the boxes that would've made it a column (except for the word count, but even a five-year-old can look at a word count). You don't have to be a good writer to tell the world that your proud of your sister. There's nothing funny about any of the articles. And if I want to know what a burnout is, I'll look it up on wikipedia.
I know that these people have achieved a little more than I have. After all, there article has been published, even though it was a boring story on a tree or an explanation on burnouts. So I'll try to forgive these people for not knowing what they were doing. I mean, being published in this paper is more of an award with €100 in prize money than anything else. What really grinds my gears is that some people who know even less about decent column writing get paid on a weekly basis to write a story about... about what?
You see, the Dutch are obsessed with famous people, so papers and magazines employ these people as columnists. The result: stories about cats, kids and how the first barbeque of the year went. Not a column, just a story no one cared about if it were me who'd written it. Half of the time they aren't even well written. It's like a word vomit was put in a blender, then smeared on a piece of paper and the outlines became a new story for their precious 'column'.

Okay, okay, I might be exaggerating a little. But the thing is that I read a lot of blogs and I see a lot of talent. I see bloggers write funny and thought-provoking posts every single day and they don't get appreciation they deserve. Sometimes I like to think I'm one of those bloggers (not today though, because this is just a mediocre rant) and I feel the need to prove that we, aspiring writers of the internet, can do so much better than the woman who explained what a burnout is! That's why I'm picking up a pen and entering the newspaper's column competition. Wish me luck, I'm going to need it.

Stay Awesome!

16 Fellow Ramblers

It's the most wonderful time of the year, they say. The holidays are just around the corner, there's no school to worry about and life really is a bit more wonderful than on a usual Monday. The city is full of light, music, Christmas trees... and tourists. You can't move an inch around town without bumping headfirst into a group of tourists. They are everywhere, here in Rotterdam, but also in deserted places like Death Valley and the Peruvian Andes. They are driving me crazy with their completely illogical behaviour... They make my blood boil, my fingers twitch...
'But, Envy,' you might say, 'that's just because they are impeding you while you're shopping for Christmas.'
True, they are impeding me. But I hate tourists all year round. Not all of them; some are awesome. Most, however, are downright terrible. Let me illustrate my point by telling about my visit to Colca Canyon, Peru. Fasten your seatbelts, I'm taking you on an imaginary trip with me to Cruz del Condor!

A Normal Day At Cruz Del Condor

If you want to see the great condors fly at Colca Canyon, you have to wake up early. Only until noon do the condors fly at Cruz del Condor, only until noon are the winds in the canyon exactly perfect for condors to fly. So we wake up - at 5am. We get into the bus that will bring us from rural town Chivay to Cruz del Condor. Quite frankly, this will only take one hour or so. But when we arrive at the entrance of Colca Canyon, we find ourselves in a gigantic traffic jam. Bus after bus after bus full of tourists... Everyone is trying to get in first. This is the real reason we got up this early: the time-devouring tourist-traffic jam.

After inching our way to Cruz del Condor, the tour guide tells us something about condors. This is actually super interesting if you have the slightest bit of interest in condors. Sadly, most people on the bus don't. They're just here to brag about the fact that they'll have seen condors by the end of the day.

So we learn about condors and are abou to get off the bus. This is what we see.

Tourists are standing so close to the edge of the Canyon that it's a miracle nobody's falling down as we speak. But if we want to see condors, we'll have to get up there with all the others. We dive into the masses. Other tourists are touching us in places we really don't want them to touch us - intentional or not, we'll never know. Body odor is constantly attacking our nostrils and our toes have been crushed a thousand times by the time we get more or less close to the edge of the Canyon. By now you'll probably understand why I hate the creature called 'tourist'.

The tallest people from every busload are standing up front, as always, and I can't see a thing with my meagre 1.67m. I hope you do better, but by now I fear neither one of us will see a condor.

Meanwhile people complain that the condors might fly to fast to take a good picture. As if complaining will slow these animals down. Others, who've brought a camera with a lense the size of the Hubble telescope, laugh at me for having 'just 10 megapixels', while the best picture of a condor they'll take today will look a lot like this.

So we stand there, not even close to the edge of the Canyon, behind a crowd of bored tourists - they've been waiting for a full five minutes and haven't seen a condor yet. How dare those animals not show up within five minutes! Alas, nothing is happening, except for some fat Germans stepping on our toes once again.

Then, all of a sudden, I see a condor. I nudge you and point at it. We admire it in stunned silence - until the rest of the tourists discovers it. The crowd lets out a deafening roar: OMG LOOK IT'S A CONDOR IT'S FLYING OMG A CONDOR I HAVE TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THE FLYING CONDOR OMG IT'S STILL FLYING WOW IT FLIES IT'S A CONDOR AMAZING.'

The OMG's keep piercing our eardrums; it's almost as if no one ever expected to see a condor at Cruz del Condor. A thousand miniature Hubble telescopes are pointed toward the sky. We hear a thousand pictures being taken and feel the people behind us pushing us as to get closer to the condor. By now the poor animal has probably had a tiny heart attack. It flees behind a rock on the other side of the Canyon and disappears from view.

We have now seen our condor and I don't know about you, but I want to get out of the crowd before we're crushed to death. We slowly make our way bakc to the bus, which is blocked by a group of teenage girls. They won't step aside, because they have spotted a baby condor! Or so they think.

Remember the tour guide telling us all about condors? Well, she also told us you'll never see a baby condor fly by. They are too heavy, their wings can't support them. If they try to fly, they'll die. The average tourist will hear this information and forget it the second they get off the bus. And that's why we see these girls pointing at hummingbirds and calling them 'baby condors'.

Somehow we get back to our seats in the bus and leave the idiocy of the average tourist behind us. We'll go back to Chivay in half an hour. Slowly the other people from our group get back to the bus. Ten seconds before we leave, our tour guide notices one of the women is missing. You take a quick look out of the window and you've found her: she's standing in line for the toilet - along with about 50 other women. And she's not anywhere near the toilet yet.

Since this womam refuses to go back to the bus before she's been to the toilet, we wait. You fall asleep quickly and I also decide to take a nap. When we wake up we're back in Chivay, far away from all the touristy madness at Cruz del Condor. Just the way I like it.

Have I convinced you that tourists aren't awesome at all?

No? Believe me, one day you'll find out for yourself when you get stuck in a crowd of tourists ;)

Yes? Great! Then you'll probably also know what not to do the next time you're being a tourist.

Stay Awesome!