Brazilian politicians…(what’s the sound for puking?)

As usual, busy week and not even half way through. To my surprise, classes have been pretty good, students are interested, participating and they seem to be having fun. I haven’t started working on next week’s schedule yet, the guy who’s coming is a 3rd-timer and he’s coming by himself — I really wished somebody else would be coming with him because classes would be waaaay easier to prepare. Actually, the activities we’re working with this week were prepared for the immersion in Santa Cruz, so a total no-brainer.

I kind of complain about not having time to finish everything that I need to do, but I must admit that I work better I get things done when working under pressure, even though I don’t like it. The thing is, I was contacted a couple of week ago by the company in Santa Cruz about translating the corporate assessment into English because folks in the headquarters in Iowa wanted to know how the employees are being assessed. They said that I could write the next evaluation that I’m doing within the next few days in both English and Portuguese, changing the name of the employee, and this one would be sent to Iowa. However, after teaching my two-hour class in the morning — brief comment: I hadn’t taught a Monday early morning class in ages, I wasn’t happy about the idea, but had nobody else for the slot — I go check my e-mails and there it is, a message entitled “****URGENT***” asking to send the translated copy until Wednesday. Just fabulous! I had started translating it last week but since there was no rush and there was a lot to be done with the immersion, I inevitably put it aside. So, I went to the school earlier to work on the translation. Even though I like translating, I can’t help but feel nervous about that, because the guys in the US will actually read what I’ve been doing here, and I’m talking about the headquarters of a big company! Well, my boss will have to take a look tomorrow before I send it, because if I go down, I’m taking everybody with me!!! LOL

Well, since I’ve mentioned translations, two more are available in Portuguese on TED website. As UK Prime Minister elections are just around the corner, I chose to review PM Gordon Brown’s and David Cameron’s talk. Gordon Brown, interviewed by TED curator Chris Anderson, talks about global ethic vs. national interest — is it possible for the leader of a country give equal consideration to people around the world as they give to their countrymen? Translation by Francisco Dubiela. Conservative Party leader David Cameron talks about giving the people, rather than the government, more power to make decisions with a little help from technology. Translation by Rodrigo Ferraz.

And even though I haven’t watched Brazilian news in a while, I couldn’t help but think of my country when I read about the House and the Senate voting down automatic pay raise and realise what a huge gap there is when it comes to politics in both countries. The two institutions in the US have shown significantly low approval ratings over the past months (I do think people over-estimate polls, but this is a topic for another post), so voting against the automatic pay raise is only natural, with some members even proposing cuts in their salaries. But in Brazil, we would never, EVER, see that happening. The Congress could be under bomb threats, riots on the streets could break out, civil war could erupt and still our congressmen and senators would give themselves a big, fat pay raise. And the most stupid, we-don’t-give-a-shit-about-you reason is that, according to constitution, their salary can go up because other politicians have seen a hike in their salaries. So, if congressmen deliberately give themselves a raise, state representatives are entitled to earn up to 75% of that amount, then city representatives are entitled to earn up to 75% of the state representative’s salary and so on. And they’re not embarrassed at all, even though millions of people don’t have sanitation and die of preventable diseases. But, honestly, who gives a shit? To make things easier to these crooks, maybe they should copy the automatic move from their American counterparts, right? Less media coverage (doesn’t really work with a lot of coverage anyway…), people would be completely unaware of how much politicians would be making, the perfect scenario to become a politician in Brazil.

I just think the population should do exactly what happened in Ukrainian parliament earlier today. Give me the eggs!

P.S.: Sanjay Gupta is filling in for AC360 during this week, and last night he actually managed to have higher ratings than last week’s shows…

P.S.2: Tomorrow is another reeeally early morning day! But be patient, only one more week to go…

Earth Day 40th anniversary

Today is Earth Day. It started 40 years ago to raise awareness about environment-related issues. Doesn’t seem that much has been done throughout the years. Quite frankly I think it’s got worse. It’s very difficult to change lifestyle overnight, we all have our ways and many times we waste a lot water or paper and don’t even think about it. But I think it’s even more frustrating when you want to do something, even a small contribution to reverse this tendency, and have absolutely no support from the folks you have to share the same space with: neighbours. I guess I’ve written about my frustration before, that the word “recycling” doesn’t ring the smallest bell inside their stupid heads, and they are not uneducated, poor people looking for jobs or strap for cash. They’ve got cash, and I guess half of the building is actually financially supported by rich parents living in the country, so these douchebags don’t even need to work — some of them don’t. But if you consider the big picture, you know, the rest of the country, folks don’t have what to eat, they work three or four jobs and you still expect them to recycle? They don’t even have bins to separate the trash and everything goes straight to the open sewers leading straight to our city’s river, no treatment at all.

And what’s really sad to me is that instead of more people helping out, reporting, raising awareness and promoting new resources that can only be beneficial to the planet, we can find mental cases that happen to reach large numbers of people — and I honestly don’t understand how/why that happens — and say the stupidest things. Well said, Glenn Beck! I guess the only thing is to hope that more people engage in trying to reverse the trend. Here’s the Make an Impact website for some ideas.

Arizona bills shameful

Next week we’ll have the last immersion with two people, then just one more week with one student and that’s it, so much for Immersion Program 2009-2010. I’m guessing I’ll have a relatively ok couple of months ahead of me until it’s time for another Corporate Assessment, meaning basically two trips to Santa Cruz, correcting writing tasks, doing interviews over the phone and writing down the results. Last year I assessed 52 people between July and August and maybe 15 more until December. At some point, you don’t know what else to write. Usually the first 10 assessments are the ones that serve as models and as people have more or less the same needs depending on their command of the language, I adapt it to each employee. Otherwise I guess I’d be prepared to write the book “101 ways to write a corporate assessment”… Anyway, what surprised me earlier this week is that I was able to organise the schedule in ONE DAY! I don’t know how I could pull that one off… Well, I guess it’s because of the help of all other teachers, a couple of exceptions, but most of them helping out big time.

And the battle Stewart/O’Reilly-Fox News seems to continue. Last night, Bernie Goldberg was back on the O’Reilly Factor for a rebuttal to Stewart’s response to Bernie’s comments on Stewart’s “F*ck yourselves!” and… what? Who’s telling who off here? It reminds me of that Friends episode where Phoebe and Rachel discover that Monica and Chandler are together and Joey is in the middle, trying to keep secrets other than Hugsy, his bedtime penguin pal… “They know that we know? Oh, but they don’t know that we know they know we know…”

In politics, the bill that was passed by the Arizona Legislature about illegal immigrants is just absurd. It allows police to stop people on the street and ask for proof of identification, otherwise they can go to jail immediately. However, the question is who will be stopped on the street other than Latinos — it’s Arizona, for crying out loud –? Representatives say that only people that the police “suspect” are illegal will be asked for ID but this is vague. Plus, who’s to say that folks won’t start saying things and pointing fingers passing on information about immigrants? This is major retrocession, as big as the other bill passed by the same state of Arizona — what’s the problem with those guys? — that now the candidate that wants to be in the state ballot for presidential election or re-election must produce their birth certificate. The Republican representative Cecil Ash was on AC360º last night and said this was just another way to show a candidate’s qualification for the job, but nobody has ever asked the 43 former presidents to do such a thing, why right now? As AC360 said “the birthers are back” and it’s fucking ridiculous, and it even promotes some crazy bastards and their delusional thoughts. It was an interesting interview last night, by the way.

Yesterday was a holiday and got to stay at home and do some stuff. However, I woke up not feeling so well. Major sore throat and feverish. That reminded me of the talk I’d had with my co-worker on Tuesday. I was at home, getting ready to go to work when I received this text from my colleague, saying he’d had a dream about me the night before and that I wasn’t well healthwise. Needless to say I started looking for lumps and feeling tumors growing in my brain. A little later we bumped into each other at work and I told him I was fine as far as I knew but had now grown suspicious of it. He said it wasn’t his intention to raise any alarms but the damage had been done. Well, 24 hours later there I was, waking up not feeling my best. I DO hope that’s the connection with the dream…

Anyway, not feeling 100%, what I did was to stay at home and catch up with the news. Watched some CNN but then decided to turn to Jornal do Almoço, a couple of months after having convinced myself it wasn’t a show worth watching at all, maybe the weather forecast only, but still pretty lamely delivered. I watched the programme for some 20 minutes and it had NO news value whatsoever the entire time. First, they spent a few minutes talking about football and giving the same information that would be given half hour later, during the SPORTS show that follows! Then, there was this interview with Marcelo Dourado, Big Brother Brasil winner and, frankly, a douchebag. After, there was another interview with a psychic that is in the state touring cities and probably giving some psychic advice to the psychos out there. I must tell you that watching that programme was as painful as watching Fox & Friends in the morning.

What’s going on, AC?

As I expected, this week’s been brutal. Yesterday I worked for 9 hours (as opposed to the 6 I’m expected to work…), half of them in classroom not because I’m understaffed, but because I’ve no staff at all. And also as I expected, the guys that are here for the third time couldn’t be more bored — since their English is so fucking perfect… — and for literally one hour, the time they were supposed to finalize one project to be presented right after and be discussing options with one another, they were mute, no sound at all. I only knew they were alive because of the keystrokes on the laptop, but I gotta be honest that at one point I thought I’d have to poke one of them to wake him up.

Anyway… I got so sick and tired that I literally got sick. I don’t know if it’s the sandwiches I’ve been having — they taste pretty good, though… — that made me feel like that. I cancelled my phone classes in lunchtime and called in sick. The school’s coordinator will fill in for me. I also have these recurring headaches, maybe because I’m not eating properly. I don’t remember the last time I had a “real meal”, you know, rice and beans, some meat and vegetables. Well, but I know when I’ll have it again, next Friday, since I’m taking the students to lunch.

So, having this forced day off made it possible to watch/read the news. For me Twitter is the best way to get updated since everything is there. As I was scrolling down, there was this AC360’s tweet announcing his guest for the night: Demi Moore will be interviewed tonight about Haiti’s situation — she’s just got back from there — and I went: what?!? Ok, I watch the show every night and will keep watching it until the day it ceases to exist — not a far-off possibility, let’s face it… — but it seems lately that AC360’s main reporters are celebrities. First, Sean Penn, who’s been in Haiti and constantly appears on the show, then Dr. Phil is on talking about bullying and child abuse, and now Demi Moore? Couldn’t he get Michelle Obama on the show? Yesterday the Big 360 Interview was with Chelsea Handler, who’s very funny, I watch her show on E! every weekend, but… come on! No wonder the other channels beat him big time… I’m sure that their interviews do not involve Sinead O’Connor talking about the catholic church… for two segments… via Skype or whatever… But I guess the topper was when he brought Cheech Marin to talk about his loss on Jeopardy and talked to the guy for 5 minutes…

Another thing is the repetition. Last week’s story about the adopted Russian boy who was sent back to Russia by himself by his American family was incredible, for sure. It was all over the news and certainly would be on AC360, since he had shown a few months ago a Gary Tuchman’s report on this ranch in Montana that helps violent adopted children, many of them from Russia. So, instead of doing a follow-up on the story, showing how the boy is doing right now, he showed the same fucking story!!! For the third time in the last, I don’t know, five or six months!!!

I’m not sure what’s going on there, I don’t know if the show will be changed, if the guy will continue to report the news, if it will be more of an interview show, but I can tell you I’m not enjoying it…

Well, but one thing that I REALLY enjoyed was Jon Stewart mocking Glenn Beck on The Daily Show aired March 18. This was perhaps the funniest moment on television ever…

P.S.: Fair and balanced? How can O’Reilly say that nobody at Fox News has ever mentioned jail time for those who don’t get health insurance? unbelievable…

Immersion classes more than language learning for some

I’ve been pretty busy in the last couple of weeks, shockingly… The last person we had for immersion classes, in March, turned out to be a very good experience, different from what I had previously thought. It was a very busy but good week, one that I hadn’t had for a long time. I confess that I wasn’t saying the nicest things about the student based on the experience she had in the first two years of the programme. She had a been a very, well, high-maintenance student, actually crying twice during my class — which kind of got me thinking: is my class so bad that actually drives students to tears?

That wasn’t the case, obviously… The thing is that she was constantly nervous and always talking about her daughter at home, that she missed her daughter sooooo much and that she hated to study English and she hated the language, and… *snif*, you know… *snif, snif*… — and the tears would pour down insanely. And for me it was so hard to understand why she acted like that, because she would come to the city and stay here for five days, only FIVE days and it didn’t make any sense to me why she was so overprotective of her child since the kid was with her father and the rest of the family back in Santa Cruz. I just found she was totally overreacting, a drama queen, much ado about nothing…

And that was the image painted to the rest of the team. I wanted the other teachers to be prepared in case she had a panic attack in the classroom, just like it’d happened to me in the past. But I need to say that I had a very good surprise this time. I had many classes with the student because of other teacher’s unavailability, so we got to spend a lot of time together and I got to know a little about her background and what she has been through in life. I realised that I was full of preconceptions, something that I thought I had left in the past. She is an extremely shy person, who finds it very difficult to perform some daily business activities, say, give presentations (in Portuguese). She basically fights daily battles to try to make it to the end of the day at the company. She’s clearly extremely uncomfortable doing what she’s doing right now, in her department. We had a long conversation on the last day of classes during lunchtime, which was a little strange to me. You see, I’m no psychologist and boy, do I have to deal with my own shit day after day… But I couldn’t help but think that she trusted me enough to tell me about the hard time she’s been having.

She had to give a presentation as part of the week’s wrap-up activities and I don’t know how it went, I left the school before her talk. What really made glad was that, before I went home, she thanked us for the week she’d had, not only in terms of language learning, but also in terms of becoming more confident, facing her fears and challenges and being able to overcome setbacks. You know, money is short — very short! — but sometimes having this kind of feedback, as opposed to cash, is exactly what you need.

One more TED talk translation available. This time, I translated Robert Neuwirth’s talk on “shadow cities”. Every minute, 130 people move to the cities and urban areas around the globe, making shantytowns such as the ones in Brazil or in African countries become the cities of the future. Fascinating talk translated into Portuguese by me and reviewed by Volney Faustini.

And shocking news from Poland, Polish president Lech Kacynski was killed in a plane clash earlier today. I remember when living in Krakow that he and his twin brother, Jaroslaw — who happened to be Poland’s PM — cause a lot of controversy with their outdated, far-right ideas in a country that had been going through huge cultural transformations after entering the EU, one of the most talked about was the attempt to pass a law that would sack homosexual teachers.