Lost in google translate
Hello from Tokyo!
These past few weeks in Japan and South Korea, we’ve noticed that very few people speak fluent English, and they really don’t care to.
When we first got to Busan, we tried grabbing a taxi because Uber wasn’t working. The driver didn’t speak a word of English, so we turned to Papago to save us. Twenty very funny minutes later, he finally understood where we needed to go.
On our first night in Japan, we went out to find some restaurants. The first one we tried rejected us. And the second restaurant asked if we had diarrhea. That’s when we realized Papago had been sabotaging (by giving incorrect translations) us this entire time. We laughed with the waitress and left because the restaurant was full. At the third restaurant, we switched to Google Translate instead and got a table.
These experiences of trying to communicate with people who don’t speak the same language as you are some of my favorite parts about traveling.
Technology has already made it easy to communicate and will continue to make it easier. Which is great because it prevents confusion, but sometimes the best part of travel is getting lost in translation (if you haven’t watched Lost in Translation, you should. It’s a great movie that takes place in Tokyo).
Google Maps and Google Translate have made travel way easier. I can't imagine what traveling was like 30 years ago. Unless you knew the language, it was as if you were literally on another planet. Yes, it may have been harder, but that was what probably made it special.
The best part about traveling is realizing that you live in a bubble. It makes you realize that the world doesn’t revolve around the U.S and that not everyone is dying to learn English.
Travel reveals to you what you like and don’t like. It forces you to try new things and foods. It teaches you how to be open to life’s surprises (and in my case, to not be afraid of trying new foods). It gives you experience and shows you what you like and don’t like. It helps you pick how you really want to live. Instead of just going with what your family or friends say you should like.
📺 New Instagram Reel
I didn’t upload any new YouTube videos. But I uploaded a couple of reels on Instagram.
I’m going to be uploading more Instagram reels.
📚 Books I read and recommendations
Stolen Focus was one of the books I read this week, and I think it’s a must-read. It approaches the topic of our decreasing attention spans differently compared to other books on this topic, like Indistractable. Indistractable says it’s an individual problem, that it’s our fault, our attention spans are like this, and we must be the ones who fix it. Stolen Focus says it’s not our fault. Jonathan Hari says, “Every time we turn off our phones, we have 1000 engineers working against us.” This book also discusses individual solutions, but it mostly talks about solutions we must make as a society, like changing the business models of social media platforms, nutrition and how our brain is like a car, how our brain isn’t adapated to absorb pollution and therefore doesn’t know how to react, and even how childhood trauma causes ADHD. It’s a great book that goes perfectly with The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. It has a whole chapter dedicated to the transition of play-based childhood to phone-based and its effects. Both of these books are must-reads in my opinion. This book will help you understand a lot of things about this subject, not only why we are losing attention, but also how and why they are doing it.
I initially bought The Picture of Dorian Gray with an Audible credit almost a year ago. I had started it right after and didn't get past the 2nd chapter because I didn't understand what was going on. I decided to leave it for a later date. I’m glad I did that, I wouldn’t have appreciated this book for what it was if I had read it then.
Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895. - SOURCE
I enjoyed the perspective it was narrated. It was this weird combination of third-person limited and omniscient, while following Dorian Gray most of the time. The first half of the book switches perspectives a couple of times, and then it locks into Dorian. I liked it a lot because it helps you understand the other characters better. The version I read gave a short introduction to Oscar Wilde and the book. It was great having that introduction since it gave context for the whole book. Most of those introductions in other books are boring, but this one was good. The book itself was great. I thought it was very interesting. It definitely deserves to be considered a classic.
💬 Thought-Provoking Quote
Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.” - Leonardo da Vinci
📚 The Antilibrary
“Taleb wrote: ‘Unread books are far more valuable than read ones; a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool.’ Indeed, the more you read, the more your curiosity grows. Hence you get more books. This means that the more you learn, the more you don’t know, as the number of unread books on your shelves keeps growing and growing. Even if you ‘read’ all of the books from your library, it doesn’t mean much. The beauty of reading is about rereading. The beauty of reading is about the actions you take and all of the reflections that get triggered thanks to the material in front of you. But there’s another subtle nuance: the more you learn, the more you know how much you don’t know. Your intellectual humility is getting stronger, as you are perfectly aware of how ignorant you are since there’s so much you’re yet to discover! Your antilibrary is a constant reminder about both your limits of knowledge and ongoing curiosity.”
Andrei, Vizi. The Sovereign Artist: Meditations on Lifestyle Design (p. 76). (Function). Kindle Edition.
I love the concept of an Antilibrary and have been doing it for a while (or maybe i’m just addicted to buying books lol).
Click here to read a great thread more about what an Antilibrary is.
The Soverign Artist by Vizi Andrei is a great book if you haven’t read it already. I’ve already written about it in the past.
see you next sunday?
Que traductor más raro, como nos reímos 🤗