19 January 2014

It's been a while since I said much in the way of what my life has been like since I left Haifa. I have my excuses. First, I didn't have nearly enough to do this summer, and second, I had way too much to do this fall. Now that I have finally begun to establish a rhythm of life in Barcelona, I observe that I have not so much as recorded my two most recent relocations in its "pages". Oops. I did promise others and myself a few posts ago that I would write about things of more general import (hopefully my posts about Nanowrimo fall into this category). Indeed, it's a bit boring to read someone's blathering on about their day/week/month/year, wherever that someone may be. But I believe I will do just a spot of catching up for posterity's sake, since my travels have not yet reached their end and I should like for myself and perhaps my little ones to be able to read and/or remember them somewhat accurately someday. I spent a good portion of the beginning of the summer looking for temporary work. I hate to say it, but I made the mistake of being honest about my availability. Spain wasn't a sure thing yet, as I hadn't gotten my visa, and I had the plan B of attending UW-Milwaukee that would have served me much better in my job hunt had I put it forth as my plan A. Honesty is the best policy. That's what they say. However, making an independent living is a pretty good policy too, and my honesty ended up costing me an entire summer's worth of income. Well, to be frank, I didn't strictly need the money, so I applied to places I wanted to work at and not fast-food joints and that ilk. It was a tough job market, and I was aiming for too high a position in it. I'm just too old and, I would like to think, wise to see the point in taking a job that involves zero intellectual stimulation anymore unless I am dying of hunger. Never mind. I had more time to do things I wanted, and once I finally accepted this incredible freedom, I started to do really cool things with it. I overspent somewhat on illustration supplies and set up a little artist's studio. I experimented with setting a huge expanse of unbroken illustration paper before me and attempting to fill it with illustration utensils equipped with almost microscopic tips and nibs. Perhaps needless to say, "masterpiece" number one is still in progress. It may not have been my most brilliant idea to conceive of a piece that entailed fish scales as my first go. It's also accurate enough to say I worked my butt off applying for grants to render McGill's library science graduate program more affordable. I plugged away on a Fulbright proposal all summer. In the end, I abandoned it, ironically because of all the work I'd done on it rather than in spite of it...because through the thorough and in-depth examination of the field that I conducted, I realized that the field I'm really interested in pursuing a career in isn't library science at all. It's computational linguistics. Fifty years ago, library science would have been the field to study to have a career in multilingual information retrieval, but by now computer scientists have penetrated quite deeply into the field (so much so that in some library science degree programs, there are more professors with a background in computer science than in library science). After almost an entire summer of vacillation I finally unburdened myself of the thought of going to McGill and all the debt and hardship it would entail. Thank God! The more I've been able to distance myself from that idea that I was so attached to, the more I see what a bad idea it would have been. That's life. Not long after reaching that conclusion, I packed my bags and headed to Barcelona to get my master's in translation studies. I'm about a third of the way in, and I have the good fortune of having no doubt in my mind that I'm doing just what I should be doing. Everything I'm doing is something I love to do, translating and learning languages above all. I love the Catalan culture and language and I love learning (about) them in more depth alongside refining my Spanish. I'm even finding a little time to ride the language-learning wave and work on my French (in preparation for the next step or two in my life since I may have given up on McGill but I shan't give up on Montreal just yet). The language that's getting the most refinement of all, however, is not Catalan, nor is it Spanish, nor French. It's English! I have to admit that while I thought I had some natural talent for translating, I've been forced to reevaluate that assumption. I can't turn out beautiful, polished translations with no effort, as it turns out. I have to work and struggle, and face a lot of criticism in the process. I'm sensitive, especially since I had some faulty preconceptions about my skills, I confess, and it's just not easy at all. Still, I will not give up (again? Did I give up on nursing school or reach the conclusion that I was going too far against the grain of my natural abilities?). I'm setting about a program of self-study that involves daily practice of converting one language into another and evaluating the results. It might be surprising that I'm not already doing that, but a good proportion of my classes are theoretical in nature, and as such involve a lot of thinking about, which is exceedingly valuable, but perhaps limited in the reach of their effects without the accompaniment of doing. Naturally, I'm doing my best to take advantage of the proximity of so many beautiful, old cultures and languages by traveling around Europe as much as my budget allows. Almost as soon as my last exam of my first trimester was over, I boarded a plane to Munich, Germany, and subsequently hopped from place to place visiting friends, continuing to Salzburg, Austria; Zurich, Switzerland; several cities in Sweden; Copenhagen, Denmark; and London, England. I'm lucky to have friends in so many places. Next on my list are Paris, France; Liege, Belgium; and The Hague, Netherlands; and God willing, I'll spend a week back in Israel helping out the old office with a little project at the perfect time of year, late April when the flowers are blooming and everyone is in a joyful mood because that's the time of year when the best Baha'i Holy Days fall. During that time, I'm hoping to meet with a professional translator in Tel Aviv who has tentatively agreed to take me on as a sort of apprentice to help me find my feet in the business and professional aspects of translation (depending on how her maternity leave ends up playing out). Exciting. Tentatively, after I graduate I'd just like to get a job as an in-house, full-time translator at an agency and rack up some experience. The question of where was taking on disproportionate importance in my mind until I realized that all of my top contenders at present (Los Angeles, Montreal or somewhere in Europe) are good ones in different ways and that I can't go wrong unless I don't do the proper research and make the proper effort and instead just go wherever the wind takes me. I'd also like to take some computer science classes on the side, as has been suggested to me by Those Who Would Know, and see if taking my career in the direction of computational linguistics is the right move for me. I must say that the older I get the less I think everything is a panic and urgent. If I am going to move in that direction, I'm not going to rush it. I may be nearly 30, but life goes on and we're learning our whole lives. Besides, I'm over the false assumption that just because we're doing X (be it going to school, working, having a family, etc.) we can't be doing Y (any one of the other options). Truly, the most important thing is to always be developing into someone you like better, and to be happy that others may be made happy by you. In keeping with this somewhat new and happily lower-stress outlook on life, I've made a commitment to myself to make a serious effort to explore one new corner of Barcelona per week. This week I explored the port area and entered the Barcelona Cathedral. There is something wonderful about the old cathedrals of Europe. A lot of people think they're grungy and gross, but I love that ancient feeling. Europe abounds with things that are great and lasting, two qualities I wish that the products of American craftsmanship had in greater abundance. Yet the things that people I meet who have visited America tend to speak most fondly of are its natural features and their sheer variety. Indeed, I suppose I'm willing to forgive America its relative uniformity in terms of architecture and language because of its spectacular natural beauty.