Photographers' plague reloaded

I'm just back from a meeting (somebody pompously termed it an assembly) of the Rosarigasinos photographer group (the ones I went to Granadero Baigorria with, and to the boat tour before that).

We've been planning to hold a modest joint exhibition (only 3 pictures per person), and today we wrapped up most of the issues. It'll be held on the 1st and 2nd floors of the Faculty of Biochemistry of the National University of Rosario, which lends the space at no cost to such things, starting on October 8. Matte paper, 15×21 cm, mounted on 3 mm high-impact plastic sheet. The topic is the city, and the name is Mirada Rosarigasina. Not that this advertising will get through to many, but I do what I can.

(I could do some more advertising in the relevant place in my new website, the one you don't know where it is yet, even after I told you specifically to join my three initials —which are the same as the name of a Popular Document Format— with hyphens and add .com.ar.)

After the meeting I had to run to Japanese school to write a composition for a contest. You get dictionaries, a couple of sheets of paper divided into 300 large squares (one per character), and 2 hours to write about some topic. They give you 2 topics to choose from, on the spot. I wrote about "current trends", mentioning the widespread use of mobile phones and computers, the poverty and rudeness of the young generations' language, and the fact that, fortunately, some customs, such as grabbing a quick cup of coffee with a friend, never get out of fashion.

I was relaxed given the occasion — last year I was terribly nervous and made a lot of mistakes, but this time I simply let it flow out without caring too much about using complicated expressions. Better being correct and sound just a bit simple than using a lot of learned words and get them wrong (and let me tell you, Japanese is an irresistible tempter in this regard — for every simple, common concept, the formal register has two or three obscure equivalents that you can misuse horribly without even noticing).

So I wrote, I gave it to my sensei, and now she's sending it to Kyoren in Buenos Aires to be graded. I don't think I'll win a prize, but I came out satisfied with I'd written, so I don't care.