What should you add to a miserable rainy day? A bit of rudeness, of course…

I’m getting to “perfect storm” moment the next couple of days, when we’ll have the second taping of video classes and also the first part of English assessments at the company. We’ll have some very busy days ahead of us and I hope I can meet the deadlines. Well, after never being able to meet my deadlines, why bother? The company keeps renewing the contract, even though there is this annoying issue. I try to compensate by delivering the best possible product, and apparently it’s paid off so far.

So, my colleague and I rehearsed the lines in a table-read style — we had hoped to do it with a teleprompter but unfortunately we weren’t able to — and afterwards off we went to meet the third party of our future enterprise. We like to meet at Vida & Saúde, a restaurant near Mauá which is kind of vegetarian, but it actually isn’t. Great variety of vegetables but there’s still the grilled chicken and fish. We really like the place, food is great, it’s always packed. But yesterday something unfortunate happened.

It was pouring with rain and we got to the restaurant soaking wet, carrying half-functioning umbrellas, when the restaurant’s doorman, who was in charge of assisting people by providing them with plastic bags to be wrapped around the umbrellas so the floor wouldn’t get wet — very environmentally unfriendly, but that’s not the point — ferociously yelled at my colleague because she couldn’t put the umbrella in the bag, even though the guy was there to supposedly help customers. We couldn’t believe it, and we acknowledged the attitude, which made him be even more rude. There were maybe some ten people around us watching everything, but obviously not stepping up, since nobody ever gets involved in situations like that, part of the culture. So it was really embarrassing.

We talked to a woman at the cash register, not sure if she was the manager, and we only got a “I’ll speak with him later” from her, not the answer we wanted to hear. At that point, even though the food is great, there was no way we would eat there.

You see, in any other civilised place this would call for  a law suit, we wouldn’t even think about not taking action. But here… totally different thing. We’ve been conditioned to accept every single piece of bullshit passively, we need to put up with all types of outrageous situations because, in the end, “that’s the way it is.” This is what we’ve heard all our lives, “nothing works,” “that’s the way it is,” “just leave it at that,” and those sons of bitches get away with anything. It’s frustrating and sad.

We all discussed the incident afterwards and she might do something about it, out of principal, unfortunately expecting nothing out of this.

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We feel fine: “I feel this really happened and all these places really existed” — from somebody in Imlay City, 4 hour ago

Postponing the inevitable

So, one more day at work… The time for the shooting of the second part of video classes is approaching – I think we’re shooting on 5 June – and the scripts have to be written. I’ve managed to finish five scripts, which is a good number for a 10-day period. Well, maybe not for a professional writer, but considering the conditions and that I’m not a professional writer, I think it’s a reasonable time. The first time took me two months! But after making a good start, I’m at a point that I really don’t know what to write about; writer’s block, if I may. I mean, I know the topics, but I need to figure out how they will be presented in a 12-minute video divided in two parts. So I can’t simply abruptly finish one topic and pick it up on the other side. Sometimes it takes me an hour to think of something, but then it will be too much content, so I’m back to “editing”.

So, to avoid dealing with that pain-in-the-ass situation, I end up clinging on whatever distraction is presented to me. And that distraction leads to another, and another, and another… One of those distractions was learning that my email account would change. The changing of the accounts started a couple of months ago with the managers, and now all the teachers and people without a specific function — meaning me — will have a new email address. However, I really need to find a way to keep the messages that I’ve sent and received so far, they can’t simply be deleted or disappear for good because I find myself time and time again having to go back several months and check if I received a specific message. So, I decided to access the new page (it’s web-based), changed the language, set a new password, explored it a little bit and eventually found out that I could transfer messages from other accounts to this new one (I’m not tech savvy, so to me it’s like I’ve struck gold…). I then followed all the steps and when I hit the button to finally transfer everything, an “error occurred”. Don’t you just hate these two words? “Error occurred”? I tried again, all the steps, clicking all the options, and… “error occurred”. Third time is a charm, right? Wrong… “error occurred”. I think altogether I spent one hour on the new account thing. I obviously did not solve the problem, but I didn’t want to ask the IT guys for help. One of the guys is all right. He’s nice, he does the job quickly and explains things in a way that anyone understands. But the other guy… obnoxious would be a proper word to describe him. He’s so unbearable, he makes these really unfortunate remarks, not to mention that he’s creepy-looking, you know, the classic movie character that snaps and takes a machine gun from under the desk and kills the entire office. Whenever I call them I hope that the other guy picks up the phone. If not, it inevitably reminds me of one Seinfeld episode where Elaine is trying to talk to a friend, but the friend’s boyfriend answers the phone and never stops talking, wants to chit-chat. She unsuccessfully tries to make the conversation short, and in the end she just hangs up the phone every time he picks it up.

But I’ll have to contact them sooner or later. And I’ll have to go back to writing. And I’ll have to resume Email English corrections. And I’ll have to think of material for next Immersion. NOOOOOOOOOOOO……..

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Didn’t you just love the Secret Service’s rogue tweet, or “mistweet”, about Fox News? Check it here. Simply “h-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s!”

Video class: the making of

12 long hours of production

10 people (11 with the doorman)

8 12-minute lessons

1 meal

Countless cups of coffee

0 beer

I hadn’t worked on a Sunday morning since London, when I would open the coffee shop at 7.30am (and during my last month there it actually opened at 9am). Not thrilled at all. In the cab on my way to work, I honestly regreted all of this happening. Well, I was really nervous, but definitely not as nervous as Mari, the teacher/presenter/anchor.

But the crew was great, and had we had the chance to shoot it in two days, we certainly would have enjoyed it much more.

I’ll give you some of the pictures of the making of. (Airton did a great job documenting everything!)

 

Preparing set

Giving a "David Letterman" feel, or at least trying to...

Before the action started

Mari talking to the director

Everybody getting on their marks

Discussing something with the director

Terrifying concern, priceless face!

Taking a break

The dreaded teleprompter

The director

The situation room

Necessary make-up

"The sacrifices I make for all the cash..."

Ready to roll

Sound

Everybody's nightmares last night started with that sentence...

Official teleprompter guy!

At this point, if the class was in Russian, nobody would care.

According to the text, that was the lesson on Present Perfect Simple and Continuous

Mari self-distructed after the last shot