Saturday, December 16, 2006

Spanish Saying I Pappi?




A Tea in the City

I was expecting a Peruvian friend in a Starbucks, the place was crowded and the traffic outside was impossible. While I was eating a muffin and took an English tea "with a touch of milk" a lady approached me and asked me permission to sit at my table. I accepted only by education. She was tall and blond, the wrinkles on his face showed a woman who had laughed a lot and your stomach advertised their good food.

That usually happens a lot in London, that two strangers meet for the circunstancia, la casualidad, el destino o como quieran llamarlo. Después cada uno hace lo que debe de hacer y en este caso cada uno toma su té y come su muffin, y desaparece. Eso es normal por lo impersonal de la ciudad, pero esta vez ella rompió el hielo.

Me preguntó si era de Argentina, yo moví la cabeza negativamente, ella siguió:
- ¿México? ¿Pakistán? ¿España?
- Si sigues disparando nombres de países así, seguro que darás con el mío- respondí. Y empezó la conversación. Le conté mi procedencia y una que otra vaga referencia. Ella tomaba su café sin azúcar mientras que los lentes se le caían a la mitad de la nariz. La hacían be hilarious, appeared grooves marked the edge of your eyes. He spoke perfect English grammar but not only phonetically, much like the narrator of the BBC news. Worked as a professor at the University of Oxford, and I knew it began to tell his story.
- If you teach at Oxford ... And he kept telling backstage of college life. Since 2000 she had been interviewing prominent leader - told me - it was very easy to pass the knowledge test that many people had spent the last five years of his life preparing to perform and had memorized almost everything: dates, battles, painters, mathematical formulas and physical, etc.. So the interviews are a program of "Unfair questions" (questions unfair) just to make sure that the candidate fails and the candidate for a post at Oxford to answer the question in a more independent, in other words to reason and not repeat. They do this well because there are more applicants than vacancies and not everyone can be successful, obviously. When I told him to give me some examples of questions she had created, he said: - What percentage of water in the world contains a cow? (Veterinary) Why can not light a lighter in a spaceship? (In physics) "Are you cool?" Are you bacan? (In philosophy).

As we talked, a girl about twenty-five years passed by our window. She was thin, tall, wearing brown boots almost knee-pants "lycra" white. One would have sworn that Newmarket had been imported from or had just stepped off a thoroughbred race. In addition, around the neck had a black colored dog, a breed that I've never seen, but with many features of "Doberman." When the girl came in and approached our table, the professor introduced me as his daughter. - Nice to meet you, Clare - responded.

She made a joke to his mother, with reference to but the lady left me with a very intelligent and gracious response. Clare gave him a manila envelope and kissed her forehead and then said goodbye with a smile both clean. As he was leaving, I looked sideways and this time it seemed more like a model than a horse rider.

Clare's mother, softly, I said - just out of rehab because of drugs "
- Ojala not fall - was all he managed to say. After ten questions he proposed me as if I were a candidate for the university.
- Go ahead, "he said.
Of the ten questions answered nine adopted, according to the lady.
The one that I could not answer it is: What Romans wore under their togas?

Peruvians do not change, even in London, my friend called my cell to tell me an excuse for not coming, I left thinking Clare's mother who cares why they used their skirts below the Romans, were the most powerful empire on earth, that's what really matters but if anyone of the readers who can give us the name of the equivalent of a Calvin Klein boxer in the Roman empire, their response will be welcome.
paid my tea and I went into the city.

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