12:51

I can’t believe that I’ve finally, FINALLY, sent all the feedback on the Immersion Program to all the participants — some people had been waiting since January for that — and we’ve managed to finish editing both Podcasts, they’ve turned out to be pretty good, actually, with the added music and the effects. However, I’m nowhere near catching up with all I’ve gotta do.

And speaking of work, assessment season has been officially opened. So, I’m looking at pretty busy couple of months, which made me wonder about something important: what about my vacation? We all went on forced vacation time last year in December for 10 days, which was a good break but everybody was broke — me maybe being the shattered glass on the floor — so there was no work but there was no play either, and no work and no play also makes Jack a dull boy, right? I’m guessing that I might be forced to take some time off between the assessment and the first immersion Season 2010-2011.

It took me a long time to fall asleep last night, not surprisingly. I hate when I turn in kind of early to try to have a few more hours of sleep and inevitably end up staring at the ceiling and rolling over every five minutes. But I guess what really bothers me is that, almost every time I roll over, I look at the clock and see what time it is, you know, so that I know how long I have unsuccessfully tried to go to sleep. And one thing that bothers me even  more is that almost every night I do it, one specific time is showing: 12:51.

“12:51” is the name of a Strokes song, which I’m not particularly fond of,  and these numbers seem to haunt me for some reason. As I’ve mentioned before, almost every night I look at the clock and there it is. This afternoon, after having finished my class (at 12:45pm), I kept on talking with the guys for a little while before heading for the school and, as I looked at my mobile to check the time, guess what it was? No kidding, 12:51. I really don’t know… I think when I heard the song for the first time I might have embedded the number in my head and now, involuntarily, I seek for a clock or watch whenever the time is approaching, and it makes me feel surprised, or annoyed, every time I see the number 12:51.

What freaks me out now is that I don’t wanna become the “12:51 crazy lady”, you know? Going so crazy for being haunted for four digits that ends up in an institution, repeatedly saying the time over and over and over again… 12:51… 12:51…

Speaking of crazy, as I scroll down to see the headlines, there’s this piece on Sky News about the Gloucestershire’s cheese rolling going on even though some people dub it dangerous because of safety issues. Well, it IS dangerous, people leave the place on stretchers. But what caught my attention was the comment right after the report. It reads: “good for them or yet another English tradition will die…” Interesting. A few days ago I read this article about one traditional game played in pubs being banned because it encourages binge drinking. It’s called dwile flonking and two teams basically need to hit each other with a beer-soaked cloth, having to drink up the beer fast if failing to do so. Well, I guess people just want to put an end to the funniest things and I’m not supporting it! Let them break their neck rolling down a hill chasing a piece of cheese; let them try to hit each other with a cloth as an excuse to drain their pints as fast as they can! That’s what makes the UK such a great place!

The TEDTalk of the day is this translation by Christine Veras, reviewed by me. It’s a talk by Paola Antonelli, design curator at MoMA, who explains the work she does at the museum and also tries to create awareness of what design is — not only represented by the over-elaborate pieces of furniture, but ranging from candy to gas masks.

We Feel Fine‘s randomly selected piece of story of the day: “I no longer feel sad about our lack of relationship as the negatives far outweighed the positives”

We Feel Fine

I’ve been participating in the TED Open Translation Project for a while now, about six months, and basically what happens is that there is a list of talks you can choose from to translate and to review, so you request to do either of those two things and wait for the link to be provided to start working on the talk. Obviously, the most recent talks are the most sought for and there is nothing more frustrating than getting a message in the inbox saying something like ‘we’re sorry, but the talk you’ve requested has been assigned to another translator’.

What I do is to first see what the most recent posts are. Then, I watch the talk and see how difficult it is to translate and, most importantly, if it is relevant to me and to other people, having always in mind the question “Is it worth watching?” I’ve gladly had the opportunity to translate amazing presentations, such as the alarming Jeremy Jackson’s talk about the damage being done to the ocean — this talk was actually linked to a number of other websites; the thought-provoking Robert Neuwirith’s talk showing an incredible forecast: by 2050, one third of the global population will live in slums and these will be the cities of the future; the uplifting Sophal Ear’s talk and his family quest to escape the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. But I guess my all-time favourite — I know, so far — has to be this one: about “We Feel Fine.”

This Jonathan Harris’ riveting presentation is about collecting stories, done via web or in person. He came up with a mechanism that collects tiny parts of stories on the web containing the words “feel” and “feeling”. You can visualise them in tiny dots floating on the screen, through statistics and many other ways. Here are some examples of bits of stories randomly selected from the site:

“I feel so good after crying and letting it out”

“I feel so stupid”

“I feel God isn’t working in my dad’s life because nothing has changed so far I know God works on his own time”

“I feel my life is a tragedy because my life is losing out there is no hope and I have no joy”

“I did a diet sort of but every time I go on these diets I end up eating more and feeling worse about myself”

“I feel the movie had a little something for every woman out there to relate to with at least one or all the characters and their dramas”

“I am feeling really positive about all the possibilities before me and keep thinking of new ideas and directions for the future I have the occasional waver and worry”

And it keeps on and on. Some of these entries have been available for just a few minutes, others have been around for a few days. As I read through those posts, all I can think about is that there are tones of people out there who might be sharing the same feelings I have, and most importantly, what has caused them to write about those feelings, what happened to make them feel like that and express it. Basically, what’s their story?

I feel so good that I had the opportunity to work on this talk.

Well, as for the other TED presentations, two more are available in Portuguese. First one is the translation I did on this Esther Duflo’s talk about social experiments that help fight poverty around the world, and she focuses on fighting Malaria in developing countries. This talk was reviewed by Volney Faustini. And finally, I was a reviewer for this really interesting talk by Torsten Reil about his work to design a more life-like animation for games and movies, showing some experiments made and funny images! Translation by Caio Sanjuan.

P.S.: Jon Stewart, please, come back soon!

UK dudes don’t put up with shit

Such an exhausting day… exhausting… and looks like all Mondays will be like that… “Tell me why I don’t like Mondays…” Not really! Monday is officially the most profitable day of the week and I hope it continues like that. Big news at work, but still an embryo project, if I may. If it becomes big, well, there will be a lot of work ahead of us, but I wonder if the paycheck will follow suit.

You know, everyday more I miss the UK. Like any other place in the world, it’s not perfect. It’s got many low points. But there are the little things that just make that piece of land so extraordinary. For instance, wouldn’t it be a great idea to make all the cabinet ministers take the tube or walk or carpool instead of riding the chauffer-driven government cars? That’s exactly what’s being proposed and I think it’s fantastic. I mean, when there was the whole scandal of MPs‘ expenses last year, they were later made to pay the money back, and I can totally picture those bald, 50-something construction workers with forearms covered in tattoos probably made in the 70s, drinking pints of bitter and NOT smoking hand-rolled cigarettes at the counter — well, but it’s spring now so they sit in the beer garden — complaining about the government and calling all ministers and MPs all sorts of words that I have no idea what they mean and dare not ask for their meaning either.

I should really have my throat checked out. Last Friday I started to lose my voice, had a sore throat and a miserable weekend, barely being able to speak on Saturday. Now, after having almost completely recovered my voice, I see myself having to deal with the most upsetting, annoying, irritating cough I’ve had in ages. I had to put up with that for two classes today, at some points being interrupted by the unstoppable coughing during the explanation, which made the students look at me with that ‘you’re not ok, right?’ kind of look. The down part is that I don’t see myself self-indulging in my regular binge drinking routine, even though alcohol can only help you not develop dementia — well, I know, only in small doses… but one can dream and distort a little, right? Just like some news organisations do…

And it’s TEDTalks time. I’ve reviewed this very interesting talk by Elizabeth Pisani about ways to prevent HIV from spreading, even though these ways might not be seen as the most appropriate by many. This talk was translated by Adelino de Santi Jr, whom I contacted for the final approval after having made some modifications to his translation. After more than 10 days (and reviewers are allowed up to 14 days to finish their work), I had not been contacted by him so I decided to hit the ‘publish’ button anyway. Well, this wasn’t my first review and isn’t certainly the last, meaning that I’ve got some experience doing it and adapting some of the sentences so that the viewer can better experience the talk. So, man, if you happen to read this, hope you’re ok with what I’ve done.

Xmas in May / Go!

Following my colleague’s suggestion, there couldn’t have been another title for this piece. Books, clothes, shoes, iGifts… a bag full of goodies can put a smile on anybody’s face. On the other hand, after the thrill of getting a large amount of new stuff, everything else you own seems so dull and boring and useless that you may try to keep up the thrill. That’s what happened to me: I’ve bought this amazing pair of — shocking — Converse shoes just to have something else new in the house. But it was worth it and I think it was the perfect pair: denim, all fucked up and dirty and irregular.

I watched this programme on CNN, CNN Go, a monthly series that focuses on stuff that’s been going on in Asian cities. The first spot was Shanghai and needless to say that it made me want to Go! Also, during the show they played the most amazing music, local indie bands and — needless to say — I went after it. I was able to find the webpage of this cool band, Bang Bang Tang, but it’s all in Chinese! So, BBT guys: make an English version of your website available!

I hope this coming week won’t be so busy because I need to sort out my to-do list and cross some T’s and dot some I’s. And I want my voice back!!!

Is Beck the new Jason Bourne?

Yesterday I finished tabulating the immersion results, turns out that they were pretty good and I had some good surprises when it comes to new teachers. They are totally immersion material and I just hope they stick around for the next season, because turnover can be very high, and not only at the end of terms. So, thinking that this would be the good piece of news of the week at work, I got a call from a big company today looking for something similar to what we do in immersion classes. The programme is really successful but we’ve been basically working with one company for many years now and we want to expand to other businesses. If we could get this contract — and make it something permanent –, man, it would be w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l!

So, I was listening to the radio this morning and the news was that newly elected PM David Cameron is having a 5% pay cut in his salary as well as his ministers’, which is a far cry from the reality in Brazil. Last year, the Supreme Court ministers (yes, they’re ministers), had their salaries raised in September by 5% and then from February this year, extra 3.88%. I guess if you divide the pay raise in two installments, it doesn’t look so obvious to the population, right? So, altogether, they got 8.8% raise, but the original number was 14.09%, which was rejected by the Congress. Oh, that helped a lot, indeed… I heard that Congress also rejected the complimentary drinks bill, which could really save some big cash for the country!!!

Well, I guess Glenn Beck is a subject that will constantly pop in the posts, unless he quits his job or, I don’t know, something happens to him. The latter is something that he himself talks about in his radio show, saying that his life is kind of “The Identity Bourne” movie. It’s kind of funny picturing him as Jason Bourne, you know, dodging bullets, fighting KGB guys, taking part in high speed chases… I don’t know, man, I don’t know what other talk radio shows are like, I don’t know what other kinds of non-sense stuff are said, but it couldn’t be something worse than saying that the population might be looking at mass murders, mass sterilization and forced abortions. I mean, seriously. When I think the line has been crossed, he manages to draw a new line and goes even further. He mentions something about the regulation of the population’s food intake in the health bill and I don’t know what the text is neither do I have the entire show. But, if the population was encouraged to add healthy food in their diet, so many people with serious health problems wouldn’t spend a lot of tax dollars on treating such problems. And, as he probably doesn’t care about the people’s health, I’m surprised that he doesn’t see it as a way to save money. Now I wonder: where will the next line be drawn???

Now, the good stuff. Two more TEDTalks available in Portuguese! The first, translated by Sueli Zardo and reviewed by me, shows Deborah Scranton talking about her documentary “The War Tapes”, where the viewer is immersed in the battle field by watching images filmed by the soldiers themselves, along with their personal accounts. The second, translated by Volney Faustini and reviewed by me… well… I don’t know what to think about. I’m sure it’s a fascinating talk for people that actually understood the content! Stephen Wolfram, a really smart guy and founder of Mathematica, wants to make a theory of everything… using computers and algorithms and, well, I guess images are involved in that… I need to confess that after doing the review I had a bit of a headache (not sure if I should’ve mentioned that…). Anyway, worth checking out!

What’s new, Arizona?

Another boring, bureaucratic day at the school. I’ve recently complained about being very busy and teaching for many hours during immersion and I wanna say that I like teaching, but I would also like to have some 15 minutes between classes to go to the bathroom or have some water as opposed to spending five consecutive hours with one student. I started tabulating the student’s responses to the programme and the results look pretty good. And this week I’ll have two more assessments to prepare, kind of a preparation for July, I guess. And, well, I gotta confess that putting the student’s feedback together is being stalled to the last possible day. I don’t know what’s worse: having to write some 20 texts about their performance or putting up with that duchebag, piece of shit neighbour of mine. Well, this is a subject for another post.

Well, Arizona just couldn’t stand being out of the news for some other wacko piece of legislation. This time, the bill that was signed into law put an end to ethnic studies, on the premises that these classes could segregate Latinos, teaching them that they are an oppressed ethnic group and as a result this could cause them to distance themselves from whites. The superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horne, was on AC360 and said that he believes in equality and he is a supporter of all races coming together and attending the same classes, but he went on to say that the schools shouldn’t be teaching “the downers” of history and I just went, “wait a minute, buddy.”

So, according to him, a person that believes the downers of history shouldn’t be taught, World Wars I and II should be out of the history books, right?, you know, all the death and persecution. Maybe they shouldn’t teach the Inquisition anymore as well, because that just makes the Catholic church look bad… Or, maybe,  they could scratch out all the soldiers that have been killed in the two ongoing wars and focus only on the “removal of a brutal dictator”, quoting Bill O’Reilly. This is insane. From what I gather, anyone could attend these classes, if the majority happens to be Latino, so be it. Is there anything wrong in learning about their heritage which would help them understand where they came from, what their ancestors have been through and how they have contributed to the building of the country they live in? And if I may take this a little further, myself, as a Brazilian, should only learn that Princess Isabel signed the end of slavery and not that the Portuguese started the whole slavery thing and also devastated millions of miles of our forests for wood, correct?

This whole thing reminded me of this Jon Stewart piece on a committee deciding, in Texas, what should be included and banned from textbooks. Unbelievable stuff, but I guess Arizona managed to crank it up a notch. And absurd things just have a massive chain reaction, such as cities boycotting the state.

Well, enough with the downers, right? One more TEDTalk translation available — we’re on fire!!! This time, I translated this fascinating talk by Jeremy Jackson, a coral reef ecologist that explains how we have destroyed our oceans within the past 100 to 150 years. Data is alarming and the future isn’t looking any good. The reviewer that helped this eye-opening talk be published fast was Giuliano Giordano. There are three more talks lined up but I’m still waiting for the final “OK” from the translators to have them published.

A pack of Cheerios on the pavement: evacuated block

Today was a day that really, REALLY dragged on. Now that immersion classes are in a hiatus, I finally have time to do the — extremely dull —  important job of compiling student’s feedback, write evaluations and also prepare the feedback on all the teachers. So, in order to get things done without any distractions, I left my laptop at home and worked with the school’s computer. What a piece of junk. But OK, I managed to prepare the first four evaluations, on the students that had classes in Santa Cruz. As for the other, I don’t know, 15 to 20 students that still need to receive some feedback, well, I need the help from the teachers, who have been anything but helpful when it comes to respecting deadlines. Anyway, I’ll give them one more day to hand the papers in, otherwise I’ll get the papers, go to the other branches and will sit in front of them and literally watch them fill in all the tables.

So, I was watching AC360 and there was this Nic Robertson’s report on a Catholic boy from Long Island that turned into a jihadist. When Anderson was announcing the report, he said something like: … one young man journey … and before he had the chance to finish the sentence “…from altar boy to jihadist”, instantly the phrase “…from Milan to Minsk, Rochelle Rochelle…” sprang to mind! hahahahaha! Well, if anybody out there is as much of a Seinfeld fan as I am, you will understand!

While in the terror subject, there was this tweet from CNN breaking news of a new evacuation in Times Square. Very short account and strangely enough, no other news organisation reported the incident, which makes me wonder if that’s true or not. So what’s happening now is that if any moron forgets some package on the street it all turns to chaos. This is something that obviously wouldn’t happen in Brazil. An unattended package wouldn’t last five minutes, you know, UNATTENDED, because somebody would definitely take care of it — you know, grab it before you could even say “IT’S MIN…E…” Sometime ago, when I didn’t have cable and was still watching Brazilian programmes, there was this report on “how honest Brazilians are”. It was actually a research carried out in a number of state capitals — my city included — in which some objects would be left unattended. The idea was to see how long they would remain in the same place. They left a bike in Rio, Sao Paulo, Brasilia and, obviously, Porto Alegre, among other places. They actually left the bicycle in MY neighbourhood, some 10 minutes from my flat, and the bike was “taken care of” in less than 10 minutes, the country’s number 1! So much for a great neighbourhood to live in, uh? What’s really amazing, though, is that property prices in the area have spiked in the last few years, mainly because it’s near the city centre , but it also borders some of the best-known trafficking points in town. So, once again, the main picture of inequality that exists in this country.

And Lula is helping bailout Greece…

One more TEDTalk translation available in Portuguese. This time, I reviewed the talk of executive director of the Lions Aravind Institute of Community Ophthalmology, Thulasiraj Ravilla, who explains how eye surgeries are being done in patients with curable diseases in India at a low cost, helping thousands of people see again. Translated by Sueli Zardo.

Almost forgot how mad Glenn Beck is…

Spending most afternoons at work, and most of them doing overtime, it has been ages since I last saw a Glenn Beck show. With the timezone difference down to only one hour between NY and Porto Alegre — wow, for a split second it even sounded as if Porto Alegre was a place worth mentioning… — his programme starts at 6pm, and I’m usually at the school or on my way home, so I don’t get to see it. My co-worker even says a “thank God” now and then when I say I can’t watch the show anymore. Well, I agree with my co-worker in many aspects, and not seeing his show kind of made me forget how insane he is. So, as I was at home preparing the meal for tomorrow, and it was 6:15pm, I went, “why not?”

He was of course blasting the “socialist” media, that you know, write about him and write about people that seem not to enjoy what he says and thinks — basically what Fox News does with everybody that’s not a Tea Partier (or a sympathizer), right-wingers and radio talk show hosts — something that, again, contradicts his ideas of “freedom” and “no government control whatsoever”. Shouldn’t he be OK with the fact that, by saying things that would cause a bit of a distress in some people, such as encouraging parents to take children out of school, he would probably be the target of a lot of criticism? But the topper was during his show today. He so passionately delivers his crazy, non-sense stuff, almost preaching, that he managed to link Obama with Satan! This is really, really sad, you know, what people are capable of doing for ratings. And as I said before, what’s even sadder is that people believe that kind of stuff.

Well, you might think that I’m one of the ones that gives the guy those ratings, and as Jon Stewart would say, “guilty as charged…” But you cannot ignore that this guy is big and it helps me understand what’s been going on there, you know, when crazy Arizona bills get passed or when commentators get surprised that Obama’s ratings go up five points or when Bill O’Reilly devotes huge amounts of time grilling the “liberal” media and says that Fox News is the “fair and balanced” news network — and he includes himself into the mix… — and the other networks just don’t show what people are interested in, what people want. And, as “the trusted name in news” that they now are, Fox News can simply say whatever they want and support whatever groups and parties and simply get away with “we’re number 1”. I think that’s happening a lot lately.

I guess, once again, I turn to Stewart…

Immersions: Season Finale

For three days I tried to write on my blog. I apparently forgot my password, tried all the possibilities and combinations but no success. So I checked the “Forgot your password?” box and waited for the new one in my inbox. There it was. So, I clicked on the link provided, typed my username, typed the new password and… nada. What the hell is wrong with this shit, I thought. Tried a second time. And a third time. No luck. I had to recheck the “Forgot your password?” box and wait for a new one. This time, success.

Well, with all these attempts I basically forgot what I wanted to write about… But I have updates on the immersion classes: They’re over!!! — For now. Last week we had what I called our Season Finale. After six long months of classes and dealing with students and teachers, and new teachers, and MORE new teachers, and training, and lesson planning, and presentations, and podcasts… wow… that’s fucking it. The guy that came over was a third timer, and even though his level of English isn’t so advanced, he is an intimidating person, maybe because he’s one of the top directors of the Brazilian headquarters. He’s a simple guy, other teachers said their classes were good, but for some reason I wasn’t confident at all about my classes, especially the last day, where I would spend 5 straight hours teaching him.

For starters I had the 8 o’clock class, which I really hate, and basically had nothing prepared for the whole morning. I confess that I didn’t sleep. So, in the morning, I had the “Office Culture” class prepared, but then I realised that it would be a totally lame class because the guy is an agronomist and spends most of his time in the field. Well, I just printed the sheet anyway and hoped for the best. I started the class by asking him a few questions about the company and what the important things were for a company to offer the employees. Somehow, I still don’t know how it happened, we ended up talking for two and a half hours! We started with that subject and finished the class talking about Brazilian elections, going through corn/soybean exports, how parents are bringing up kids these days and broken economies throughout Europe. I really don’t know how these subjects are connected, but apparently we managed to do so successfully.

Well, I don’t know what’s gonna be like these next couple of months. Assessments will start in July probably, so I could really use the time to work on material preparation and prepare standard classes, you know, if some teacher doesn’t show up to work anybody could get the material and teach the class. It’s something that takes time and will probably be seen by the others as if I’m slacking, you know? I also need to look into distance classes project… that might be happening…

So, I was thrilled when leaving work to go home. Friday and no classes to prepare for the following week? Sounds like a celebration to me. I went to the supermarket to buy some stuff and got in line to pay for it. As I was waiting for my turn, I notice the folks around me: two people in front of me, one behind. The one at the register had a bottle of vodka and a bottle of Coke; the woman in front of me had a bottle of wine and the guy behind some six or seven chilled cans of beer, ready to be drunk. Wow, apparently I was caught in the booze lane, alright… And yeah, I had some booze of my own as well…

And there’s one more of my TED Talks translation available. This time, Nandan Nilekani, Indian CEO of outsourcing company Infosys, talks about the potential — and advantages — that India has to keep growing by showing four different ideas. Interesting talk, reviewed by Volney Faustini. Another great TED Talk, reviewed by me and translated by Lia Ponton, shows Jennifer 8. Lee “in search for General Tso”. NYT reporter looks into the origins of many Chinese-American dishes that all Americans love, but have no idea these dishes are hardly Chinese!

As I’m in the subject, I wonder what drives people to start translating texts — or talks — and think they can do a sloppy job. This is volunteer work, I know, but doesn’t entitle you to write whatever you want the way you want it without reviewing it. When I applied to be part of the project, I certainly wanted the translation to be perfect. So I review my work, do research, spend valuable time on Google trying to come up with the best synonym and the best way to translate one expression. But of course, we’re all humans and we make mistakes and something might slip up, that’s why each talk needs to be revised by another person, who makes the proper alterations. Well, I’ve reviewed talks that didn’t have ANY stress marks — and we do speak Portuguese in this country — or that included so unnecessary words to be shown on the screen, such as “you know” or “I mean” or “it” (in some cases). Come on!!! Not to mention things that didn’t make any sense at all, as if they were literally translating word by word — something that a person who has SOME knowledge of how to translate would never do. All I’m saying is that, people, please, wise up! Do your homework, for crying out loud, and start presenting a good job just for a change!!! (I want to point out, though, that there are some great translations, too.)

And this is a pretty good article about reading different sources, right and left, and judging for yourself who’s more sensible.