Not sure…
August was a pretty slow month blog-wise, but at work it was the month of hell. Lots of work… Lots, lots of work… I guess Murphy chose me as the perfect example. You know when something goes wrong and then it’s kind of a domino effect? You see one piece falling after the other and there’s nothing you can do about it.
We had a guy for a 3-day immersion because he would go to the US as a translator for the group of farmers. His English is pretty good but he wanted a refresher anyway. I prepared the schedule and pretty much relied on new teachers to teach the classes. I was a little concerned because they had no experience teaching these kind of classes, but I basically had no choice. Well, when I finally came to terms and hoped for the best, the problems started.
One teacher that had been schedule to teach two 8-o’clock classes became suddenly unavailable, for my disgrace. I inevitably had to jump in, two and a half hours of teaching something that I had barely prepared. Then, in the afternoon, after having an hour of conversation class, the teacher that was supposed to follow didn’t show up but at this time I had nothing, NOTHING. I would sit in the classroom and stare for one entire hour. So I brokedown.
I called the teacher’s boss (she’s from another school) and called my boss and told them I was about to lose it. I had thought about pulling a Steven Slater and I couldn’t have asked for a better moment. However, I managed to keep it together and suggested that he had two hours of class on Friday morning, since he wouldn’t travel until late afternoon that day. Best decision ever.
What made me almost snap is the amount of work that has accumulated and deadlines approaching and I have absolutely nobody to help me out. The monthly paid teachers haven’t got time to even use the bathroom. Teachers paid by the hour are never at the school, they just teach in the evenings and Saturday mornings — almost all of them are still in college so they study during the day. At some point during that week I started feeling chest pains. Great. That would be understandable if I were a millionaire, with my own business and all that, but risking to have a heart attack for this??? I don’t think so, buddy… I was so happy when the week was over that I just slept through the whole weekend, slept and watched movies, and slept some more. That was it. No news, no booze, just zero.
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It’s been a while since I mentioned some TEDTalks around here. I reviewed many great talks and I’d like to share the links. Starting with Seth Berkley’s talk given earlier this year about the studies and development of vaccines that in the future could kill flu and HIV viruses. Very interesting talk, translated by Nadja Nathan and available here.
Filmed in 2007, Franco Sacchi talks about the Nigerian film industry, known as “Nollywood.” This talk was translated by Rafael Eufrasio and it’s available here.
Another fascinating piece is this presentation by Marcus du Sautoy about symmetry. Great images in this talk translated by Marcos de Almeida Santos Jr and available here.
And finally one translation of my own! A great talk by Ellen Gustafson about two problems related to food. One billion people suffer without food whereas one billion people are overweight. Are these two problems, hunger and obesity, interrelated? Fascinating stuff, reviewed by Belucio Haibara and available here.
-- Never too many beers -- 