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…
-- Never too many beers -- 