Zero doesn't exist. Apparently.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008 3:36 AM
I have been really interested in learning Spanish for as long as I can remember. So you can imagine how my love and desire for the language got stronger (chey, are we talking about Spanish here? like some love affair only) when Rafa took over the club and brought on board bunch of Spanish speaking players. Lucky enough for me, I got to know tonnes of Spanish speakers, be it online or backpackers. Every time I told them my intention to learn Spanish or asked for translation for certain things, the reaction I get is always along the line of, "dios mio(my god)! I'm so impressed you want to learn my language!" and a string of reassurance. "don't worry, Spanish is easy. It's easier than English. It's muchh more easier than Chinese. You can master it if you know Chinese blah blah blah." Heck, Fernando even told Sara and I that we can invent our own words when we don't know a word in Spanish cause according to him Spanish words are similar to the English ones so we can get it right most of the time. Uhm, perdone me, how is "ingresa" and "enter" similar? and what about "rojo" and "red"? If I were to create a Spanish word that means "red", I would go for "redo", and for "enter" I would go for "entero". So, I can foresee a lot of "que?" and "perdone me" if I were to use those self-created words in a Spanish conversation.
And when I took the Spanish for beginners course offered by the uni, we all know we are doomed 2nd class into the semester. How is a lecturer who think the plural for "shoes" is "shoeses" and goes "I know my English!" when we corrected him be able to communicate with us, let alone teach us. For god's sake, his way of saying "why? you can't see the board?" is "Why? you no eyes?". Anyway, 4 months after the class, I put whatever I learn to test a few hours back. And....
I was in a Spanish music forum wanted to download this particular album but apparently registration is required. So, I started filling up the form. I took me less than 2 minutes to type all my details down and enter the verification code. You know the alphabets and numbers which they asked you to enter just to make sure that you are not a robot. And after I click enter, it keeps telling me that the information I sent is incorrecto. I tried quite a number of times and it's the same. So I checked everything. Refreshing the page and etc etc etc. And then I decided to translate the form word by word, at least whatever that I manage to guess the meaning. Minimum characters for passwords, correct. Characters not allowed for user name, didn't use. Everything also correct!! What the hell did I do wrong? If it's not 2 in the morning, I would have started screaming at that point of the time already.
Then I saw it. At the very last part of the form. Just a line after they told me "enter the code and it doesn't matter whether it is capital letters or otherwise".
Por favor nota que el cero no existe
(Please take note that zero does not exists)
And I pandai-pandai go and type every 'O' I see in the code as cero. It took me more than one freaking hour to register on a forum. This is ridiculous.
Who told me that Spanish is not tough? Gahhhhhh. Or maybe I'm just too dumb?
Labels: crazy episode, rant and vent
