A Word In Spanish

The pillar of Christmas

I once took a Spanish course in uni.

It only lasted a couple of months, (thanks to my 3D lecturer who decided to change her schedule and caused me to have to pay a RM 50 dropping-subject fine. Which still makes me sore because I hate 3D) and all I learned was that some things are male and some are female. Most stuff are female. And they have a couple more alphabets than the romans do. They also gave everyone a Spanish name. Like Alejandro and Rosalinda. Very 3-5pm latin soap opera.

Which I would have nothing of.
I took the name Pilar.

Yes.

It does mean pillar.

In defense, it's supposed to mean pillar of God. But I only chose it cause it sounded cool, and you wouldn't hear people going 'Pilar! Mataste a mi familia y mi premio burro! Now you will die!

Which alleviated me above the crass commercialism of Raquel and Juanita (or so I like to think, because in actuality I came late for that class and the only names left were Paulina, Rosalina and Pilar. I mean, come on).

Anyway, this semester, I am taking Mandarin. To make myself more marketable in the face of graduating into a global recession. Nothing like desperation to make you a more worldly person. Everyone told me to learn mandarin. And then my (Indian Extremist) uncle jumped in and said I should learn Hindi.

Eh?

Why in God's name would I want to be more hirable in INDIA? When I can earn way more and at the same time not suffer chronic digestive illnesses in SINGAPORE?

Or, of course, KL.

Anyway, I very kindly made no comment to that. But it got me thinking. About languages. And history. And (in the Christmas spirit) God.

Wouldn't it be cool if we were born already knowing the language of our forefathers? And the history of our people? Like, we'd have everything naturally downloaded into our brains while we float around in amniotic bliss.
Man, I would have hit paydirt. Half a dozen languages. Whoa. I would have had such a bright future as a UN translator.

We'd be pre-born. Like Alia in Dune. Except without a dominant psychopathic personality. We'd be like Ganima and Leto II. But not really. We'd just download all the history of our people instead of only our ancestors.
We'd have a complete understanding of history. So we wouldn't let it recur. See. That is such a brilliant concept for humanity.

But nooo. What do we get instead?
Original sin.
Which begets Catholic Guilt.
Which gets people like me to church on Christmas.

So Merry Christmas everyone.