It's always interesting to see how the Asian languages translate specific names of people, places, or things in other languages, it usually moves from translating the literal definition to just bunching up a bunch of characters that together create the sound of that word and bunching them together, like piecing together a Frankenstein model of sound bytes for the translation. Especially in Chinese, the above characters taken together would have no meaning by themselves, except Chinese readers would know that these were just loan characters used to create a phonetic pronunciation. MJ often responds to Jeopardy questions with the Korean versions of the English word, so her answers vary in that they are sometimes close enough to be considered acceptable by Jeopardy judges, sometimes so far off as to be completely incomprehensible for an English speaker. Probably a good place to note that I recognize how hard is it for a non-English native speaker to learn English and speak it like a native English speaker who's had the advantage of forming the sounds from a young age; so I cringe when I see people scolding ESL people for "not speaking good English" or native English speakers deliberately messing up the English language to "sound cool," for example when someone says "I tried to a bunch a different ice cream flavors like rocky road and Neapolitan....and $H*T." Perversion of the English language.
Anyway, MJ and I visited a Patagonia store today, which got MJ very excited, and me less excited but just happy to be somewhere new. As it's already past midway through January (late January, even, like 36 might even be considered to be some as late-30's) there was a sale of winter jackets, and we took full advantage. I asked about this sale, and the employee who helped us spun it in a creative way: "It's because we're trying to clear out space for our spring collections." As a Patagonia executive I'd be proud of this answer because a.) it doesn't admit that winter's almost over and people will very soon not need these items anymore, and b.) promotes the next thing that they're trying to sell, their spring lines, and c.) he was wearing double layers of Patagonia clothing, with a jacket over a sweater and even wearing a Patagonia hat. A walking advertisement. Points for staying on message and loyal to the brand versus a quiet quitting employee who would just be like, "Yea of course we're trying to dump all of this merchandise." Patagonia apparently is one of the better brands in winter clothing with a bunch of comfortable fits. I remember a time when Canada Goose was the big hot name in the space, but much like the stock it just stayed stagnant from 5 years ago. (And also I was in Chicago when Goose felt big, winter's kind of a big deal in Chicago if you don't know).
Patagonia is actually based in Ventura, CA, near where my parents live! It's environmentally friendly with 1% of sales committed to helping environmental groups, and apparently a goal is to be carbon neutral by 2025....which is coming up! Wow, that crept up on me, there was a time in my life 2020 seemed far away, and 2025 seemed like another world, and my Visa card which expires in 2024 seemed like it'd never expire. Geez.
Patagonia's also a geographic region of South America, specifically of Argentina, so just by buying the jacket I'm kind of giving myself a reminder of a very common trivia question, right up there with "pampas," a grassland area, as need-to-know geographical regions in Argentina. Another way to incorporate trivia answers is to have them as my login password for a bunch of websites, so that I have to type in "ThomasMannMagicMountain1924" as my Etrade password (don't try it, that's not the actual password) so I'll remember that forever. (or until I forget it and/or password expires and I need a new password).
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