Fijense en eso!

Ever since the day we arrived, I keep hearing people say different forms of the word fijarse. Fijate, fijense, etc. The dictionary says it means "to fix," but I'm convinced that it's just a phrase that porteños use to mean just about anything. Carolina says it every time she wants us to think about something. My coworkers say it when I'm supposed to actively do something. And today it was on our Spanish test so I finally asked (Ale-)Alejandro, our spanish teacher, what it means. And it's something to the extent of understand/realize/think in this, but also a perfect example of how some words in various languages don't have a direct translation. Fijense en eso!

Some of the funny things that happened at work today:

• I think Martín, one of the newest people hired by Entercomm, gets excited out of the idea that he can give me work to do. So I started off with data entry (every intern must do it at some point, right?) of email subscribers to IGT (Inter Gaming Technology for casinos and more). Some key observations included that hotmail is the most popular email base for Argentines to use, and like in any country, I found some funny addresses. Names like "el pobre gringo- the poor white person trying to speak Spanish" and "besame en la disco-kiss me in the disco club." Guess it's not just an American trend to have incredibly odd and embarrassing names as your screen names and email addresses!
• ¿Vos miras Glee? was how it started. Brenda asked me this, to which I responded of course! No one else in the office knew what Glee was, but Brenda had seen a commercial for it an was curious. I showed her pictures from the concert last year and even played some Glee music, especially Queen because my coworkers love 80s music. This gave me the privilege of being DJ for the day, and I can't explain what an honor that is at the office. I played their category of music of course, 80s & 90s rock, which was not an issue since plenty of those songs are in my iTunes library anyways. They were shocked that I had Enrique Iglesias's "Cuando me enamoro" and enjoyed the World Cup music I had from Project Mexico last summer. Fun way to get to know the office through the background music we put on!
• One of our software clients requires all web designers to take a training course in the visual identity of their brand in email, but does not offer the course in English. (I'm being confidential about the client so I don't get Google-Alerted and arrested, mu-ha-ha.) The training discussed HTML code, templates, and the proper style guide the company uses to define themselves in terms of pantone color tiles, fonts (typefaces), sizes and more. Connie, one of the designers, and I watched 45 minutes worth of video and then passed the exam! Although she only speaks English, the visuals allowed her to understand some of what the video was saying, but my main job was to explain what the video was saying in Spanish to her. It's a pretty cool experience to watch translating go from paper to verbal, real-life situations. We're doing the same thing tomorrow!