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!