TGIF? Not so fast…

So, there I was, brushing my teeth at 4:40am and getting ready to the leave the flat. CNN was on and I was watching the very early edition of World Business Today, live from London. Got a cab, went to the bus station and at precisely 5:35am the bus left to Santa Cruz. Only three people on the bus. I turned my iPod on, Tokyo Lounge, and slept comfortably all the way through.

I got there and had a meeting about the video project. Must say that I was pretty nervous about it, but we agreed on some key issues and that was the important thing. Hadn’t it been for the meeting, I could have interviewed everybody in the morning and gone back home on the midday bus. Even though there were way fewer people than the first group, it felt more tiring, maybe because I didn’t know most of them so they were pretty nervous and shy and didn’t want to speak much, so I needed to get as much information as I possibly could in order to evaluate their speaking.

I left the company and went to buy cucas, the delicious pies they produce in the region. They recommended this store and to my surprise, as I enter I see one of the company’s employees buying some cucas himself! Nice coincidence… I bought four of them for grandmother’s birthday and had about 10 minutes to get to the bus station, buy the ticket and go back home.

I got to the ticket booth and lucky me there was one seat left on the 2 o’clock bus. Unlucky me the bus was full and was a grotesque version of the morning bus. Cucas on the overhead compartment, laptop on the floor. I struggled to get comfortable but I knew that the minute I did I would have to hold still until Porto Alegre. 3 hours, 3 huge traffic jams and 5 CD’s later I arrived home safe and sound and sore and sour. I knew just the medicine for that: good old pints of whatever booze available. I was happy, I was anticipating it. But then… Damn! Shitty workshop will happen tomorrow and I must be able to function in front of my student. Frustration took place.

But I gotta be honest, four pieces of cuca helped to lift my spirits a little bit…

I missed Stewart

Federal judge blocked some parts in the Arizona immigration law. The sad thing is that this case will go on and on and on and divide people even more. AC360 showed that policemen go through training on how to do the job which includes a video basically saying the do’s and don’t’s. The thing is that some three weeks ago Jon Stewart showed the same thing. Three weeks ago! The video is “old” but it’s a must see. The judge Napolitano part is fantastic. Agenda breach! Agenda breach! Latino 911.

I’m just glad Stewart’s back… And I really like the new look!

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What a crappy day. Every single thing to be done took me hours. Expected responses not e-mailed, exercises not finished, meetings not carried out, projects not finished. Loud, annoying people around me. Endless telephone and Skype interviews. Irritatingly slow Internet. The longest bus ride home ever. Crowded bus. People bumping into each other. Traffic jam, stopping at every traffic light.

I have been so tired and seen things piling up and no perspective of working on them. College deadlines approaching. Trip to Santa Cruz on Friday very early in the morning, so early that people should be in the middle of counting sheep at the scheduled time. And if you think that after the trip I’ll get to binge drink to forget this awful week, well, think again. My stupid attempt to be a good person and help out at the school on a fucking Saturday morning turned out to be even worse than I thought. The teenagers didn’t show up, instead only a girl who had learned about the workshop the day before, has huge pronunciation problems, isn’t loud and is expected to record a podcast.

I need to get some sleep but I’m at the stage of tiredness that can’t close my eyes. I wish I could pass out and wake up 10 hours later…

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We Feel Fine: “I also learned that my weaknesses include: I get discouraged if I feel I am not being appreciated I lose interest if I no longer control my projects and I become exhausted from competition” (4 days ago)

Check your facts

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the name Shirley Sherrod in the last 48 hours. I think what happened to her just shows it’s all become a free-for-all, people spitting out whatever bullshit they want because they have internet connection. Myself included, the only difference is that nobody reads what I write and the things I write about cannot cause anybody to get fired. Perhaps only myself.

Look, I’m not in news and don’t intend to be, but  isn’t checking your facts the first thing you should be doing before getting something on the air? What this guy Breitbart did to support his talking points was deceiving, but what the other guys did was stupid because they reported the video as “news” and even more stupid was rushing into conclusions and firing the woman. If I read War of the Worlds again on the radio, will people believe the Earth is being invaded?

At the same time many people still believe that the so-called news organisations do their job and report evidence and not talking points, that they check their facts before making allegations against somebody or doing something media isn’t supposed to do which is accusing/judging/condemning. But unfortunately reporting facts is the last thing people do in the media nowadays, and being hammered every day, every hour with political agenda, some doing it more subtly, some doing it blatantly, can really mess up with your mind and we should “refudiate” that. What’s the most effective way to get people to hum tunes of annoying songs? Play them 50 times throughout the course of the day… I know my limit when Fox News starts sounding plausible…

I guess nowadays it is just hard to find trustworthy news sources, at least sources that are widely available to the public.

—

It’s been a long week of hard work and different from the other weeks this one won’t finish tomorrow. I stupidly volunteered to teach this workshop on Podcasts, meant to be worked with adults, but now I have two teenagers attending the class. I guess the person who came up with the idea of Saturday workshops during vacation knows as much about adult students of English as Beck knows about journalism.

Well, I can live with that, especially because another teacher is supposed to help me out, so the pressure won’t be on me entirely. What pissed me off, though, is that I only found out about the teenagers because I decided to ask how many people would turn up. “Oh, by the way, they’re teenagers…” Excellent, not only did I have to throw away everything I had prepared, I also had to research possible subjects for the programme and reorganise everything.

And, oh, the distance classes project! I honestly haven’t slept well in the last few days thinking about it and as the time approaches I get more nervous and certain that this one I’ll screw up big time!

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TEDTalks with one more Portuguese translation available. This talk shows investment banker Euvin Naidoo on forgetting about we constantly hear about Africa and investing in the continent. Translation by Leandro Cianconi and reviewed by me! Available here.

Stop the leak!

I really don’t know what’s happening in this building of mine. A few weeks ago, I woke up to find my house without a drop of water. The problem was fixed and I moved on. Well, apparently it wasn’t that easy. After that day, the building ran out of water on three other occasions, twice this week, being the last one last night.

On Wednesday, the plumbers were investigating where the problem was and they think there’s a leak in one of the flats that’s causing the inconvenience. I have noticed that there is a big stain on the garage’s ceiling right below the next door flat’s bathroom, so maybe that’s the source of the leak. However, the owner or tenant doesn’t live there, you know, it seems as if it’s a place to crash whenever the person is in the city. That actually happens a lot in this building. There is what I call “the Veranopolis Mob” living or hanging out here, every week you can see different cars in the garage and basically they come and go, lend the flat to friends and relatives and at the end of the day you’re not really sure who’s who, but they sure are all obnoxious people.

Anyway, I had no water overnight. I texted the person in charge of the building but she didn’t reply — I guess she is away — so I would have to contact the company that is supposed to help with the maintenance in the morning. I woke up this morning and there it was, water, running from the tap. I don’t know if somebody fixed it, if there’s some water in the water tank or some higher power just stated “let there be water…” What’s bothering me is that now every time I go to the kitchen or bathroom is gonna be a surprise: will I be able to flush, brush my teeth? Is today gonna be a shower or no-shower day? Clean or dirty dishes? Come on…

And the funny thing is that we ran out of water around 11pm, and some half hour later I started hearing cars getting out of the building, you know, as if people were just fleeing the scene, “no water? I’m getting the hell outta here!” So now I have to leave my own flat, for which I monthly pay a substantial amount of money, because they can’t fix the problem? If there’s a leak find the fucking thing and fix it!!! (I just hope they’re not as efficient as BP…)

Just one thing about Veranopolis. I’m not saying that everybody that lives in that city is obnoxious, I’m sure it’s a lovely city and there are hundreds of fantastic people over there, but it seems that these guys from this city were handpicked to make everybody else’s lives just miserable.

—

I have FINALLY finished writing the assessments… of the first group… Curiously, I read this fascinating article in the NYT about plagiarism. I know it focuses on college and university papers, but the timing couldn’t have been more perfect because of the cases I had while correcting their writing tasks. The second group is now in process of taking tests and I’ll interview them in a couple of weeks. A lot of those interviews will be over the phone and I wish I could record them, you know, to have something to refer to while writing the evaluations. A couple of years ago I did it through the speaker phone, the quality of the recording wasn’t great but it was excellent to get to listen to the conversation again. Now, do you think I have this at my disposal? I better start sharpening the pencil…

Not to mention that the distance classes thing isn’t going very well. I haven’t progressed one bit since I presented the first draft last month and I’m supposed to present the final project in a couple of weeks during my second visit in Santa Cruz. What really disappointed me was the unhelpful reaction I got from people that were suppose to contribute to the making of the project. The last thing I need is somebody telling me that this is something very difficult to pull off given our current situation and coming up with a list of cons. I know it’s fucking difficult, but it’s been okayed by the school and now it has to happen.

—

I have one more translation available on TEDTalks, reviewed by Rafael Eufrasio. Filmmaker Newton Aduaka shows bits of his movies, focusing on “Ezra,” which tells the story of a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Available here.

No longer unique (namewise, at least)

I’ve been trying to finish up all the work I have to do with the first group assessed but some things are just beyond my control, such as students handing in texts which were copied from the web. I’ve been doing this job for three years now but never before have I seen so many people blatantly copying entire paragraphs and including in the text. Some of the guys didn’t even bother making an intelligible connection between sentences and many parts don’t make any sense at all. So, what to do? My boss thinks I should have contacted the company about it and disclosed the names of the employees who did it, on the other hand I didn’t want to get them in trouble, so I decided to contact them individually and gave them a new task to do over the weekend. If they don’t send the new text, I’ll leave the writing task box blank and send the results to the company, which would probably contact me about the missing grade and then I would inevitably have to tell them what happened.

What really pisses me off here is that they thought I wouldn’t notice that, proving that they have no respect for what I do. Are they so stupid to think that I won’t notice that a person that struggles to make themselves understood cannot simply write a spotless, almost native-like text? Well, apparently some of them are and now my work has been delayed because of that.

—

You look around these days and you see that everybody is out there and doing stuff, so much information, so many copies that you think it would be nice if there were something unique about you: a physical trait, personality or whatever that would make you stand out. I thought I had something unique but now it’s all gone. It all started when my sister googled my name. She sent me an e-mail saying she had come across this page on Gazeta do Sul website. Gazeta do Sul is a newspaper from Santa Cruz, the very city the company I work with is based in. It’s the 17 February edition (my birthday) and if you scroll down to the “Bom Dia” heading you’ll find that my name is there. Now, how do they know when my birthday is?

Well, after passing the stage of wonderment, I decided to google myself. It wasn’t the first time, though, and let’s admit that everybody has googled themselves already, at least once. And if you tell me that you’ve never done it, well, you’re either my mother who’s afraid of turning on the laptop or you’re lying. So, I googled myself and I see the newspaper page, but there are also these webpages with some “Fernanda Gruendling” other than me. Huh… I looked into it and I have a namesake. She’s a student and lives in my city! I once saw my look alike and it was pretty weird, I tell you… And now this…

MY NAME!  Now look, you expect to see thousands of Joao da Silva, Ana Martins or Maria Souza, but Fernanda Gruendling? Come on! The only thing I thought nobody else had, this non-territorial Brazilian-German name, has instantly gone down the drain. Frustrating…

—

World Cup final today. Spain and the Netherlands. I guess it’ll be a good match but not really sure which team should win. The Netherlands beat Brazil, so maybe Spain should kick their asses. On the other hand, if the Netherlands beat Spain and win the Cup, at least we can say we lost to the world champion…

Spain or the Netherlands?

1, 2, 3, 4,…

You know when you’re so busy and have so many things to do that you don’t really know where, when and how to start? That’s pretty a bummer by itself, but if you think you are up to your neck with problems to solve and there’s no more room for more bullshit, well, think again. I was forced, sorry, asked to move to another office, the office of the corporate department — my department, in fact. I still have a desk with drawers, I still have a computer, but now have something else on that list: the unbearable “head” of the department.

Needless to say we don’t see eye to eye on many issues. She didn’t know we would have to share the room because her boss forgot to tell her, so her face when she saw me there was priceless. I mean, I know I’m no supermodel but she could have spared me from the disgusted face. I was just as unhappy as she was but did what I had to do. She picked up the phone and talked to my boss and told her that at certain moments I would have to leave the room because she would have to have private meetings (?) with some people. My boss then told her that if she had to have private meetings, she would have to go to another room.

A few hours later, after speaking at the top of her lungs on the phone, banging doors and drawers, in comes the council who has classes at the school. The guy sat down and she said, “Fernanda, would you excuse us?”

OK…

Well, I’m in the middle of writing the assessments, I have a deadline and must send them all asap otherwise there will be very upset people at the company, which by the way has been a partner for a number of years and the program we develop has been much more profitable than her handful of clients. I wasn’t happy at all about it, especially after my boss told her she would have to go some place else in these situations, but I didn’t want to make a scene in front of the guy so I went to the teachers room and waited. After 20 minutes, I went back to the office and saw through the window that they were still there, so I knocked on the door, entered the room, turned off the computer, got my things and went home. Why would I stay there if I couldn’t work? I had to do a previously scheduled phone class from home, and I hadn’t done that in ages.

Something tells me there’s more to come…

As I haven’t been in my best mood lately — and the office situation isn’t helping at all — it only takes a tiny thing to drive you nuts. Whatever happened to people saying “Excuse me?” This is supposed to be a polite expression to tell people to get out of the way or to call their attention, right? But in Brazil, that’s not the case. If you’re in the supermarket, for instance, and there’s a person with their trolley in the way and you say “excuse me,” they look at you as if you had called their entire family the nastiest, most disgusting things in the world. People prefer being bumped into, hit or injured to listening to the expression “excuse me” and I fail to comprehend why that is.

On my way home today, there was this guy on the bus that was sitting behind me. When he stood up to get off the bus, he hit me with his jacket in a way that if I hadn’t been wearing sunglasses, I would have a black eye right now. Did he say anything? Well, maybe only to himself. I was really upset about it, the level of disregard for other people is so high that it boggles the mind. And there is a chain reaction here because you end up becoming irritated, you mistreat others who will get pissed off and probably yell to someone on the street, and so on.

I think we’re at a point that counting to 10 doesn’t work anymore…

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TEDTalks website has changed the way you can apply to translate and review talks. We used to select a particular talk and wait for a few days until the link was available. Now, you can have the link to work on the talk right away and I don’t know if it’s because of this new feature but now there aren’t any talks available at all! Gone! For some reason people started translating and there’s nothing to work on! This situation might continue for some time so every talk that I can translate or review will be very cherished! I’m particularly interested now in talks related to the nature and got the chance to translate this interesting presentation about the Redwoods in the Pacific Northwest by science writer Richard Preston. I don’t know who did the review because this person used a nickname to identify him/herself and didn’t allow any form of contact. Well, thanks anyway for helping! You can check the talk here. (Update: turns out the person has now disclosed her information and her name is Erica Junghans. Thanks for reviewing!)

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Today one amazing person has passed away. Different from what I’ve written about, the guy was always in a good mood. He was a great teacher and taught many generations of students at the school. The “walking dictionary” as he was called is now helping guys out upstairs. Rest in peace, Frantz.

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P.S.: There’s some sort of hinge, or lever or I don’t know what the hell that’s been making this incredibly annoying, irritating noise every three seconds for hours. HOURS! I don’t know what the fuck that is but I’m on the verge of smashing something — seriously, I might do it — if that thing doesn’t stop.