I can manage to have some work done in front of the TV, I watch the news while preparing material for classes. Sometimes I even have some ideas from the stories. But today I’ve made the mistake of tuning in to the local news at lunchtime, something that every time I do I promise never to do again. I never learn.

As the country is heading for the inevitable Carnaval season, the local news programme is now showing every single one of the samba schools we have in the city, one every day. Man, it’s so sad… the musicians and dancers cramped in that really tacky studio, and the presenter with her fake-excitement face. I thought, ‘I can’t believe there isn’t anything worth reporting in this city, which makes these guys waste valuable TV time on something so ridiculous.’ The samba schools (from here and Rio) appearing on every commercial break throughout the day isn’t enough?

It’s not only the Carnaval thing, it’s the whole show. It sucks. It always has. I can’t believe these people do that on TV. It’s like Fox News, you know it’s really bad, but you can’t look away waiting for the next absurdity to come up, like what happened a few weeks ago. They were doing a piece on people who work doing some of the lowest-paid but most physically demanding kinds of jobs, like construction workers and garbagemen. The crew brought a personal trainer to see the type of work they were doing and calculate the number of calories they would lose during their 6-to-8-hour shifts under the January sun in Porto Alegre and temperatures nearing 40ºC.

‘Wow, you guys lose like 4,000 calories a day! I know a lot of women sitting at home green with envy right now!’ Wow, indeed… The guys make shitty money and probably have to work another job to get by and they have to put up with that??? And as a slap in the face, the crew picked out a couple of guys and took them to a gym to see if they could do the workout people with money do to lose calories. It was deplorable.

You know, I remember that this programme used to be about news. There were some lighter stories throughout, but essentially news. I don’t know what happened along the way that’s made it so awful. Now it’s all about football, really bad musical guests and some other dumb thing. Why?

It’s disappointing.

I think I spent most of last month being pissed off at the company I used to slave work for for canceling my resignation without letting me know! I had given them a month’s notice, plenty of time for them to deal with all the bureaucratic aspects of the situation, but they simply forgot to ask for my “carteira de trabalho” (I don’t know how I could say that in English, maybe “work registration card”?) And not only that, once canceled, they didn’t tell me not to show up at the union to sign the documents. Unbelievable. Really.

I can’t help but think it was deliberate, and that led me to cause a minor commotion at the place. I couldn’t believe that after all I’d done, all the hard work and the good results and the profits, they wouldn’t let me go properly. But looking back, they always treated my department with disregard, as if it was an inconvenience for them, even though the client I worked with generated the most profit for the school. Again, unbelievable.

Well, now it’s projects time. We’re still adapting to the freedom of making our own decisions. Sounds silly, but after so many years listening to bosses and school directors and being afraid of making the wrong move that could cause us to lose our jobs, it’s at times overwhelming. We do dread the idea of reporting to people, but at the same time there was still a kind of a “safety net” because the decisions weren’t ours, so if something went wrong, you know, “I just work here”.

I guess the most difficult part is dealing with accountants and lawyers. It was frustrating to realise how clueless we all are when it comes to documentation, registration, taxes, contracts and everything involved in the process. The firm we’ve hired has been very helpful, but I’m sure that after we’ve left the office or spoken with them on the phone, they will have a good laugh at our expense!!!

The decision of leaving the school was made much earlier this year, but “the fear” always prevented me from doing so. The questions about how I would make it through the month and pay my bills inevitably kept me sitting in that office for a longer time. Also, we teachers tend to think in terms of, well, terms, meaning that we wouldn’t leave a place in the middle of the semester, so we always make plans like: ‘I’ll quit after July’ or ‘I’ll wait until the end of the semester’. The end of the semester has come and I saw no more excuses to postpone it.

It’s been sad seeing the organisation that once was respected end up the way it has. You know when you can see the rock bottom from afar? That’s what happened and I honestly don’t want to be part of it when they hit the ground. I guess the whole decision process started after seeing the following TED Talk over and over again (I’d been showing this presentation in one of my classes I teach) and sharing my frustration with two of my (then) co-workers, now my two partners in our enterprise.

So, we basically got tired of giving the owners of the school all of our time, knowledge, life and money and decided to eliminate the middle man and do everything on our own. From now on, no more reporting to anybody, just making collaborative decisions, enjoying what we do and, hopefully, making a difference.

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After many weeks of being Fox News-free, I had a relapse this morning and watched  Fox & Friends as I was preparing to go to work. I watched this piece on shortage of prescription drugs and people who need the medication being affected by it, some people have even died. At some point, Steve Doocy makes the case of why the government isn’t stepping in as the companies claim they might have problems with production or whatever. I was SHOCKED! Government stepping in? On Fox & Friends? Doocy??? Of course government should step in, but doesn’t this argument go completely against everything these guys have worked for every morning since Obama took office?

So, government stepping in and regulating what goes in what people eat and what is thrown into the air they breathe is outrageous. But if the same people need medication for diseases that may well be caused by what they eat and breathe, that’s ok???

Steve Jobs 1955-2011.

So, needless to say that now I really look forward to my upcoming vacation. V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N!!!

So, while I get it all together, here’s an inspirational TED Talk, where Matt Cutts talks about trying something new for 30 days.

That made me think about two things: what we listen to in Brazil and the cable programming we are offered.

About the music. Well, nowadays we can’t get away with “it doesn’t play on the radio” any longer. But I confess that I don’t listen to online radio, I’m not such a big fan. Depending on the bandwidth, it takes a while to load, than a few extra seconds for the “buffering” thing, and one thing that really annoys me is that there are some many options that I just go ‘eh’ and give up. And I think the good thing about the traditional radio is the “surprise factor”, you know? You’re going about your day in the car, or doing the washing up and then: ‘wow! I looove this song!’, so unexpected, so great, it feels like the DJ chose that song specially for you.

There isn’t a huge variety of radio stations in Porto Alegre — there isn’t variety on so many levels here…– and this contributes to the fact that the chances I have to listen to a band like Voxtrot on any of the pop/rock stations are really low. First, the more commercial stations will choose to play Katy Perry. The “alternative” ones will go on and on and on with the Brazilian bands, which is fine by me, but sometimes it’s just too much. Some of the bands aren’t that good. But as the musicians are friends with the DJs, we HAVE to listen to their boring songs. Finally, when there is a programme or two on different music, usually they air on Sunday at 10pm, or Saturday at 7am. Honestly, unless I have to work, I’m not waking up before 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning.

So, now I rely on Multishow HD for some “new” music.

Now, about cable programming. Everybody knows that, in order to fill the time slots, there has to be reruns. Okay, I can live with that. But what pisses me off is when some of the “new” programmes date from the mid 2000′s. There is a show on VH1 called “Exposed”, which is a bio on celebrities, and the episodes were produced when I was still living in London! They aired a few months ago, but according to them, bald-headed Britney Spears was still struggling to put herself together, Madonna was still married to Guy Ritchie and George Clooney was on girlfriend #2 or #3.

The Discovery pack shows programmes from the 90′s. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the guys exploring Egyptian pyramids wearing semi-baggy pants.

And don’t get me started on the movie front. I don’t pay for Telecines and HBO-Cinemax packs, but when the signal happens to be open for everybody, to attract new subscribers, I honestly think, ‘Do I want to pay a substantial amount of money to watch THIS?’ And this is supposed to attract new subscribers! Is that the best they can do? Seriously, instead of offering 200 Telecine channels or 500 HBOs, why not comprise them in a couple of different channels and present quality movies? Have you ever watched Telecine Action? Well, I haven’t! Because it’s unwatchable! ‘Brave Heart’? ‘Arn, The Knight Templar’? Give me a break…

As for the movie channels for the poor people who can’t afford the “premium” package, it’s even worse. Once the movie ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ was showing on both Megapix and MGM, and then the next day, I tuned in on Fox and there was Meryl Streep saying ‘That’s all’!!!

Well, if the cable channels are so low quality, it shouldn’t be a problem to be without television for a few days, right? …WRONG!!! I’m really, really upset that the TV broke three days ago — three days — and I can’t watch the news. I seriously experienced withdrawal symptoms, I had to have some main source of sound in my living room, so I put my stereo where the TV was. At least it fills in the space…

During the interview, Wallace tried to compare Stewart’s work with their work at Fox and tried to find a common ground, which is something that anybody with half a brain cell would never do. Jon said that programmes like his were a counterweight to Hannity and Beck to give the channel some credibility, and later on Wallace asked about Comedy Central, to make the point that in any place, “there is good and bad stuff.” To prove that, he showed a clip from the roasting of Pamela Anderson on Comedy Central, and also mentioned South Park as being some of the bad stuff on the air. He ended up telling Stewart that next time he mocks Fox News, he should think about the place he works at. Right. So, according to Wallace, it’s fair to liken Hannity to Pamela Anderson’s roasting, correct? Good and bad stuff on the air. Wallace also said Jon was biased because he “only tells part of the story.” Is Jon Stewart supposed to tell the full story? Does Chris Wallace or anybody on his network realise that the name of the channel is COMEDY Central? They’re basically trying to legitimise what they do by saying that everybody else has a liberal bias and that Jon Stewart doesn’t tell the full story. It’s just beyond my comprehension.

What Stewart was trying to say throughout the interview was that he mocks the absurdities that are put on air, mostly by cable news. He mentioned the Nancy Pelosi press conference after Weiner had resigned, calling all the three networks’ (Fox, CNN, MSNBC) bullshit when they stopped airing the press conference after she made it clear she wouldn’t comment on Weiner. All three. So there is definitely a lot of bad stuff on TV in general, but when it comes to not reporting facts and pushing agendas, Fox News happens to be champion.

Here’s the full interview, parts one and two. (UPDATE: The videos have been removed from YouTube, but the interview can still be watched through the link at the top of the post.)

So, my colleague and I rehearsed the lines in a table-read style — we had hoped to do it with a teleprompter but unfortunately we weren’t able to — and afterwards off we went to meet the third party of our future enterprise. We like to meet at Vida & Saúde, a restaurant near Mauá which is kind of vegetarian, but it actually isn’t. Great variety of vegetables but there’s still the grilled chicken and fish. We really like the place, food is great, it’s always packed. But yesterday something unfortunate happened.

It was pouring with rain and we got to the restaurant soaking wet, carrying half-functioning umbrellas, when the restaurant’s doorman, who was in charge of assisting people by providing them with plastic bags to be wrapped around the umbrellas so the floor wouldn’t get wet — very environmentally unfriendly, but that’s not the point — ferociously yelled at my colleague because she couldn’t put the umbrella in the bag, even though the guy was there to supposedly help customers. We couldn’t believe it, and we acknowledged the attitude, which made him be even more rude. There were maybe some ten people around us watching everything, but obviously not stepping up, since nobody ever gets involved in situations like that, part of the culture. So it was really embarrassing.

We talked to a woman at the cash register, not sure if she was the manager, and we only got a “I’ll speak with him later” from her, not the answer we wanted to hear. At that point, even though the food is great, there was no way we would eat there.

You see, in any other civilised place this would call for  a law suit, we wouldn’t even think about not taking action. But here… totally different thing. We’ve been conditioned to accept every single piece of bullshit passively, we need to put up with all types of outrageous situations because, in the end, “that’s the way it is.” This is what we’ve heard all our lives, “nothing works,” “that’s the way it is,” “just leave it at that,” and those sons of bitches get away with anything. It’s frustrating and sad.

We all discussed the incident afterwards and she might do something about it, out of principal, unfortunately expecting nothing out of this.

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We feel fine: “I feel this really happened and all these places really existed” — from somebody in Imlay City, 4 hour ago