Velario's Cow

Velario is a friend of mine who is an artist. He painted that cow and many other such amazing pieces. We met through my friend John Paul and I ended up teaching him English while John drew a caricature of me. Velario is highly intelligent, but doesn't speak English very well. He rang me today to ask if I wanted to give him another lesson (the last time, we read from an Elvis songbook and criticised Elvis for his bad grammar). He is frustrated because he has many ideas but cannot express himself to his friends because of the language barrier - it's probably also not helping him find like-minded inviduals.

This has got me thinking. It's hard to find like-minded people even though I speak the language. I find it ironic how confusion gets even more confusing when two people having a conversation understand each other perfectly. It takes a lot of patience to have a conversation with someone who is struggling with the language, but if you are patient, you can really learn a lot from them. Maybe it would be better if we all didn't speak a common language well - that way we'd all have to pay a lot more attention to each other. More and more people are substituting listening attentively with waiting to speak - which is frustrating, but in fairness (depending on your station in life), not easily avoidable.

Yesterday was Iwan's 21st birthday. The theme was gods & goddesses. Would have been heaps of fun but several fights broke out, people got thrown out of the club, and then some more fights. It was surreal to see a fight between gods! This goddess stood silently by not knowing what was going on/to do though --->