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”