Another great video from TEDTalks

Since last year it’s getting harder and harder for Brazilians to translate TED Talks. There’s simply none available and I need to keep checking for new talks to either translate or review every couple of days. There used to be a big list of videos to choose from, but now I translate whatever is available. In a way this is good because I get to see a variety of topics, such as this one: inspired by “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, Thomas Thwaites decided to build up a toaster starting from scratch. No, not by buying parts in the store and putting it together, but actually making the parts. The question is: was he able to pull it off?

My translation into Portuguese, reviewed by Jeff Caponero.

Immersion Season 4 Finale

I can’t believe it! It’s over!

Usually Fridays are “fresh days”, as Blind Melon would put it. Even if the week is long and dull or busy and without enough hours, Friday is the day that I feel like working more. More hours. Harder. Because I know that, regardless of the time I leave the school, the moment I step out of the building I switch to beverage mode.

And for the last five months, with a brief hiatus during the holidays, every Friday I had the same ritual: prepare the material for the following week’s Immersion. I’d print a bunch of things (schedule, tasks, assessments, reading material) and would go on to organise everything in binders. Oh, the binders… I don’t know how many times I had to rush to the stationery store to buy 10, 15 of them, with all the partitions. I’d inevitably pay much more because it was a last minute thing. Speaking of money, it’s great that I don’t need to ask for the lunch and coffee break cash anymore; I always worried about running out of cash. And worried about overspending or teachers not getting the receipts in the restaurants. As there are no plans for a new season until August, I hope I can use the next six months to “tidy up the house”. I had great news from on of the teachers. She’s come to me to talk about working exclusively with Immersion. That’s fantastic! It’s really hard to find people willing to teach those classes and she seems interested in a long-term thing. The hardest part here will be convincing my boss that this person is the way to go. She’s reliable and had great feedback from students, and that’s the reason why I don’t think my boss will give her up so easily.

I decided to call it a day earlier today. I let the guys with the teachers to organise their presentations and went home. Needless to say that it was definitely 45ºC outside, and the extremely hot air felt like a punch in the face. I really wanted to start walking home again, but I don’t see myself doing that for the next three months. I remember that in Krakow I’d do that every day during the summer, and the Polish summer can be pretty cruel… But the humidity factor here is almost bizarre.

I got home and didn’t feel any better. I had the impression that it was hotter inside than outside, and the fan that I’ve got here doesn’t do shit other than revolve hot air around the house.

With everything being beyond my control, I decided to do the one thing that was still able to control: breaking my own rule of having the 1-day buffer between drinking days. This weather just calls for, or better, demands beer. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the supermarket to buy some.

Anyone feeling motivated?

Well, I’m not.

We had this motivational speaker over for a “training” which I had been summoned to attend back in December. During last year I got away with bailing his talks because I had the Immersion classes excuse: ‘There are no teachers available’, I would say, and these were the only occasions that I was happy about the school being understaffed.

But this time I had no excuse. I had to be at Moinhos at 8am and there are no buses that connect my neighbourhood. I’d say that it’d take me nearly 1h30min if I went by bus, maybe if I went on foot I’d get there faster! But it’s just a 15-minute car ride, so I decided to have a lie-in and got a cab.

It was a 5-hour training that could have totally been cut in half. I don’t want to hear about his idiotic life experiences. One of his pieces of advice was to listen to some cheerful music in the morning. ‘It makes you want to keep going the whole day,’ he said. Really? Look my friend, I’ve tried listening to everything, from samba to Pet Shop Boys, CSS to Gorillaz, venturing into some Electro and Lady Gaga now and at the end of the day I see no difference between that and miserable Coldplay. You know what would make me keep going? A raise. He said that each department should get together in the morning and come up with a strategy or plan for the day and follow it through. I say how about a dental plan?

I missed practically one day of work listening to stupid things. No matter how many “trainings” we have throughout the year, if they don’t pay people better the high turnover will continue. The employees don’t even need to give their notice, they can simply go ‘screw you guys, I’m going home’ on us and that’s that.

And the weather isn’t helping either… What is wrong with this place? We’ve been melting for weeks in boiling hot temperatures. I live in the Brazilian state closest to Antarctica but have experienced the hottest temperatures in the whole country these past few days. It’s so humid that even the Amazon forest would be a better place to be right now. The hot water in the shower is obviously turned off, but I can’t expect a refreshing cold shower; instead the water keeps getting warmer and warmer. I need to walk two blocks from the bus stop to the school, which takes MAYBE three minutes, but when I get to the building, it seems like I’ve walked two hours. This has got to stop… Unfortunately, the bastards that live down here will have to cope with that for three more months.

Well, even with all that shit, happy 2011! In late January!