Try something new…

It’s been a very busy couple of months and all I did was work, and work, and think about work, to the point of almost exhaustion.

So, needless to say that now I really look forward to my upcoming vacation. V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N!!!

So, while I get it all together, here’s an inspirational TED Talk, where Matt Cutts talks about trying something new for 30 days.

https://ted.com/talks/view/id/1183

It keeps on giving. And I’m so glad… right?

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.

Breaking bad

This is unbelievable. You really can’t make this stuff up. Well, probably everybody on the planet with access to Internet has seen this but it’s worth mentioning. In short, this flight attendant guy flips out after a passenger refuses to remain seated, goes on to tell the passenger — and frankly everybody else on the plane — to fuck off over the PA, grabs a couple of beers and makes a movie-like exit using the emergency slide. For the whole story, click here.

Now, the only thing I have to say is that I wish I had the guts. This guy represents thousands and thousands of people who think about doing the same thing every single day of their lives. I only think he was a little modest by taking only two beers for the road, I would’ve certainly grabbed them all. I love these breaking bad stories — obviously, as long as nobody gets hurt — and again, I wish I had the guts. I’ve quit a few times already. Some of them were a little melodramatic, with some crying involved, some name calling. Once I failed to show up to work for three days and I got a call from my boss. He asked if I was planning to show up at all. I said “no” and hung up the phone on him. Failing to show up reminds of the classic story of my friend quitting but not telling the employer of his decision. After a while, the company filed a missing person on the guy and he saw himself with the police knocking on his door. Priceless…

And then, there is this video…

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It’s been really hard to get any new TEDTalks to translate, so whatever is available I’m on it. I got lucky, though, and translated this talk by Carl Safina during TEDxOilSpill in June about the consequences of the disaster, the people responsible as well as the ones affected by it. Riveting talk available here. Translation reviewed by Durval Castro.

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Last weekend I saw the first episode of Breaking Bad, which looks like the story of a high school chemistry teacher struggling to make ends meet and diagnosed with cancer. He teams up with the local dealer and starts making his own crystal meth. Sounds interesting. With Bryan Cranston, former Seinfeld’s Tim Whatley… He’s good.

(Update: I hadn’t posted anything for some 10 days and I saw that there were some subtle alterations to the page. It wasn’t me, and it took me a few minutes to reorganise everything)

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.

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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.

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.

Students as customers

I got up this morning to find myself without water in the house. None, zero, all dry… With my beautiful morning face, I went downstairs to check out what was going on, if they were cleaning the water tank and hadn’t let anybody know. Obviously, the only good-looking guy in the building was going to work and had the privilege to see such beautiful image… Well, I contacted the guys in charge and they’re still figuring out what happened. In the meantime, I called the school and said I was stranded because I just couldn’t go to work as I were! No shower, no-show.

Alright, working from home then, which isn’t so bad because I’m watching the World Cup, England’s playing Slovenia and I do hope the boys win! You already know how I feel about who should be the World Cup winner!

I read this fascinating article yesterday in the NYT about university teachers in Texas having a “contract” with students and abiding by that contract. Also, the implementation of teacher evaluation based on student’s feedback. This is all wrong, man…

I’ve been a teacher for seven years now — there was the year-an-a-half break in London, but I was a student there, so still in classroom — and I can’t help wondering what’s happened along the way. I do a different job now but whenever necessary I teach, I prepare classes and I research material. In fact, I’m coming up with all the activities for the winter workshops the school is offering… Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that I couldn’t help thinking about our situation at the school after reading that piece.

When our school had a change in management — a hostile takeover perhaps — teachers became mere puppets, having no control over the material and the classes. I was in their shoes up to a year ago and can tell you that the situation is brutal. All teachers now have to treat the students as customers and they (the teachers) are evaluated by the number of people that come back for another term. Tough situation… So, the difficult part here is getting teachers and students to meet halfway. While teachers try to get them to communicate and put into practice what they’ve studied, the students don’t seem to be willing to help, because they think that showing up for class means they will learn automatically and further practice outside the school isn’t necessary. So, obviously the lack of SOME dedication will reflect in their results. Students really get mad and blame the TEACHER for their poor results. And the fact that there are language schools popping up everywhere isn’t helping either, because teachers go to class having in mind that if they aren’t just what students want them to be, if they don’t do just what students want them to do, they run the risk of losing these guys to other schools that promise people they can be fluent in English in just six months. I’m sorry, but the only way you’ll be able to speak English in six months from scratch is by going to England (or Canada or U.S. or whatever other country) and living there for six months and having no contact with Brazilians whatsoever. And I still have my doubts whether somebody would be able to pull it off in six months…

So, the “contract” is that in six months, or one year and a half in most cases, the student will be an advanced speaker of English, even though their writing is laughable and their speaking is just a frustrating translation from Portuguese into English, which can sound really weird in most cases. But what’s the teacher supposed to do? If they tell students that they’re not making any progress, the students go look for another school that offers what they want just to find out that in six months they haven’t learned anything for the same reasons they didn’t back in the other places. If teachers DON’T tell students that their English sucks and just keep allowing them to advance to the next level, the students will find out about it the hard way, in a job interview or when they travel abroad and figure out that they can’t communicate with native speakers or foreigners.

The question is: is it OK for the student to be a customer? Should we keep them happy so that they come back the next semestre or the next month in order to keep our based-on-results jobs? Or should we treat students as students, working on their weaknesses, pointing out their strengths and assisting them, not worrying if you’re being funny or not?

I’m just glad that the guys I teach are a little different and I still have some freedom to prepare my classes…

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Comedy show Fox & Friends is the gift that keeps on giving! Unfortunately I missed it today trying to figure out what had happened to the water in the building, but I’m glad that Time magazine made the highlight available online. Basically, according to Gretchen Carlson, being the president is just like being a TV anchor. Yeah, I can see the similarities… But that isn’t as surprising as seeing that Fox News is actually defending BP and slamming the government over the 20-billion-dollar escrow fund. Or is it really surprising?… Media Matters explains.

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Another TEDTalk available in Portuguese. I’ve translated this great talk by Brian Cox where he shows the importance of space exploration and the investment in this area, accompanied by great images! The reviewer was Fernando Marinheiro and the talk is available here.

P.S.: England qualified!!! This is the year! It was actually the first time I enjoyed watching a game during this World Cup…

Outcome: chaos

So, what’s the best thing to do on a Saturday night? Go out? Catch a movie? Dance? Wow… everything sounds very appealing, but I guess I would have to go with documentaries on Discovery Channel about the world being destroyed by major catastrophes…

I guess this is the “Catastrophe Weekend” on Discovery Channel, you know? Sometimes we see “Shark Week”, “Africa Special”, “Mafia Marathon”, “Tornado 360º”, “Airport 24 hours: Sao Paulo”.

Since last year — and I guess it will only increase until the fateful date — we’ve been bombarded by 2012 specials. What will happen on 21 December, 2012? And what we see is the possible outcome. One of the things we hear could happen is that Earth’s magnetic poles could be inverted. I thought this meant that the Earth would turn upside down but this is obviously not the case. What happens is that every some 10,000 years there are big solar magnetic storms, really big ones, and when they occur, radiation can easily penetrate the thinner parts of the ozone layers and through the holes that already exist. The way it can affect Earth is that it could generate dozens of magnetic poles scattered around the globe and, having no specific magnetic north, animals could migrate to the wrong regions in the winter, huge amounts would die and consequently the food chain would be affected. Outcome: chaos.

Another theory presented was that a planet — not only meteors or asteroids — but a whole planet could be coming towards our galaxy. And the thing is that it doesn’t even have to collide with the Earth. By only passing through the galaxy, it would immediately change the orbit of the planets. Outcome: chaos. (Before the commercial break, one scientist said it would be impossible for this to happen within the coming millions of years because if there was really a planet approaching the galaxy, they would have spotted it already.)

Needless to say that every new scenario they painted made me become more frightened. It was raining at the time and every time a bolt of lightning struck, it made me occupy less and less space on the sofa (I don’t know how that was physically possible, but it did happen).

I guess the most impressive one — because it’s the most realistic — was the supervolcanoes. Scientists say there are dozens of active supervolcanoes around the world and one example is Yellowstone. The park sits on an active supervolcano that erupts every 600,000 to 800,000 years. They said the last eruption happened 640, 000 years ago, which means that it’s already in the “red zone”. With the super explosion (couldn’t expect less from a supervolcano…) the ashes would take over the atmosphere all the way to New Zealand, literally covering all the surface of the planet and leading us to what they call a “volcanic winter”: cold and no sun light. This could last years and would cause the death of animals, plants and crops. Outcome: chaos. (Well, we all know what happened a couple of months ago with the Icelandic Eijjalgbcocksuckergjjlt volcano…)

I changed the channel to Nat Geo and the “Saturday Marathon” was on: Aftermath!, a series of “what if” programmes basically showing the worst possible imaginable scenarios happening to the Earth. I watched the programme about the Earth’s population doubling overnight to 14 billion people. What would lead to catastrophe is the lack of water. Los Angeles would build desalination plants but would discover this to be extremely expensive to maintain, so the plants would be shut down. New York City would have to build skyscrapers in Central Park to accommodate all the people living there. Farmers would abandon the countryside because the rivers wouldn’t have enough water for irrigation of crops and diseases would spread. People would start migrating to colder regions and even try to bring ice  from polar ice caps to supply the cities with drinkable water. Outcome: chaos. (After about 40 years, the population would slump to only 4 billion.)

The other shows were “What if oil disappeared overnight?” and “What if the Earth stopped turning?” but I thought I’d had my share of catastrophe for the day, so I decided to turn in. I wanted to read some news and logged on to The New York Times. Editorial: Another Bad Idea From Arizona. Now, what the guys in that state want to do is to make the children born in the US to illegal immigrants also be illegal, going against the 14th Amendment (read here).  Outcome: chaos. (Where’s Glenn Beck to defend the Constitution now?)

I finished reviewing this TEDTalk by Enric Sala, translated by Luis Eduardo Cerquinho Cajueiro. It’s another talk about the situation of the oceans and Enric proposes ways to try to preserve what we have before it’s too late.

We Feel Fine: “I ever doubt myself and what I can do All I have to do is call my dad and by the end of our conversation he will have me feeling reassured that I can do hard things”

Cheer up, Keanu!

When I read this in Time magazine I just couldn’t believe it. Yesterday was the official Cheer Up Keanu Day after this picture of him was taken recently. He does look pretty miserable…

Obviously, the thing went viral and we can now see him together with:

Forrest Gump

'My name is Forrest, Forrest Gump.' 'Who cares, dude?'

Construction workers in 1930’s NYC

'10 more hours to go...'

Bear

'No, it's my sandwich!'

The Thinker

'It stinks here...'

the Lost crowd

but this one has got to be my favourite…

'Please say yes...'

Well, I can give Keanu a few reasons to cheer up:

1. He doesn’t make the shitty money I do;

2. He doesn’t have my bosses;

3. He doesn’t have a prick mother fucker living down the hall;

4. He doesn’t live out of his overdraft limit;

5. He doesn’t know what ‘CALA BOCA GALVAO’ means.

So, Keanu, baby, cheer the fuck up already!!!

I was able to get up pretty early this morning, which means that inevitably I’ll turn on the TV on Fox & Friends and see if I can have a couple of laughs before going to work since Fox & Friends is, you know, a comedy show, right? Anyway, as I expected, they were talking about the Obama’s Oval Office address last night and, when interviewing Newt Gingrich, Gretchen Carlson asks if “some people” might think that President Obama’s remarks were disingenuous because he doesn’t go to church on a regular basis (Obama asked the nation to pray for the country during his address, Media Matters explains).  Now, these folks have got to be kidding (I told you it was a comedy show…). One day I’d like to see them actually disclosing who ‘some people’ are. Who are “some people”? Where do “some people” hide? How can “some people” give interviews overnight and have so specific things to say about the president and have all their views “reported” on a 6am show?

Two TEDTalk translations available in Portuguese. The first, translated by Fernando Marinheiro and reviewed by yours truly, is the absolutely amazing talk by Simon Sinek on how great leaders inspire action. He explains that almost all of us — companies or individuals — know exactly what we do but not so many know why we do it, and believing in the why is the key point if you want to be successful. Simply great, riveting talk. The second one, translated by me and reviewed by Francisco Dubiela, shows politician Omar Ahmad saying that the best way to get through to someone in office is not by writing thousands of e-mails or trying to contact them by phone. You might get a chance of being heard if you go old-fashion: by writing a letter.

We Feel Fine: “I sincerely hope you make the decision to ask for help There is no shame in asking for help if you honestly feel that you can’t do it on your own” (18 min ago)

Am I supposed to be excited about the World Cup?

It’s been a tough week. First part of assessment is taking place and the employees do an online placement test before moving on to the written task. With the whole changing of system thing, we’ve been experiencing a few bugs along the way and the frustrating part is that I have no control over it whatsoever. Any change that needs to be made I have to contact the guy that developed the thing and he doesn’t work at the school, it was an outsourcing kind of thing. The real problem is that when I do contact the guy he doesn’t even bother responding the fucking e-mail with a ‘I’ll get back to you.’ If it’s something urgent and I depend on that to keep my job, well, I better check out the job ads because I won’t get a response within at least five days.

People seem to be excited about the World Cup. I’m not. I gotta say that I am watching Argentina vs. Nigeria right now because there’s nothing better to watch on TV. What surprises me is that I’ve never been like that before. During the last World Cup I was living in London and I remember not giving a shit about my work because I wanted to watch the matches, especially Brazil. I would make deals with my manager to be able to leave earlier to get together with friends and watch the games. We even almost missed a Roger Waters gig in Hyde Park because I wanted to watch Brazil vs. France — and thank God we didn’t miss the show because as everyone knows Brazil was sent home on that day. Obviously I would like my country to win, but at the same time I think they shouldn’t get to the finals, you know, there’s much more to the world than stupid football matches.

And I think what irritates me the most about this is that I inevitably have to go broadcast if I want to watch the games and during half time they insist on showing those ridiculous takes from wherever in Brazil with a bunch of people rooting for the teams that are playing. And the questions are the best: ‘How do you feel?’ ‘Are you excited about the game?’ ‘Do you think they’ll win?’ NO, YOU MORON! I’m watching the game because want my team to lose!!!! I think that’s almost insulting… You know what? I’ll tell you honestly that I’m rooting for England. The boys should win a second Cup, shouldn’t they?

I came across this hilarious piece of news on The New Republic website. I guess it doesn’t need further explanation if you take a look.

A lot of TEDTalks were finalized but for some reason they haven’t been published yet. There is one talk, tough, translated by Daniel Sollero and reviewed by me that is available and totally worth watching! Steven Levitt analyses the economics of crack and proves that, different from what many might think, it doesn’t pay off being a drug dealer!!! Very funny and interesting talk to watch!

We Feel Fine’s randomly selected piece of story of the day: “I’ve gotten to see my best friends a little more often Life is pretty laid back and I think I’m loosening up quite a bit more from the rigor of the semester so my life is feeling quite a bit more laid back which is definitely nice”