The Diary Of John

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Going to the movies hahaha

Yeah its going to be an invasion of Plano Piloto, just compare it to the land invasion of Ceilandia but worse!!!!!! I hope that they have some decent films on at the weekend for us to watch, could always visit conics if we get desperate i guess right? ;-)

Wow im getting a lot of text messages this morning, my students and also Rosa :-). I have to practice this text messaging stuff as my fingers are very slow at typing on my cell phone.. well what can you expect im 36 hahaha!!! Rosa Maria is very sweet though, will have to get her to visit the school on her way home from work in the vacation time to keep me company. Its a good thing my phone is a contract phone as i send so many messages lol

Copies of The Darkness cd seem to be going like wildfire so i have to get another copy of it this afternoon if i can. Thats one bad thing about Brasil, getting hold of decent foreign music is next to impossible and alot of people here had never heard of this group until i played the cd for them and now everyone loves this cd :-). Rock rules big time lol

Man i have just 90 minutes and i will have to get ready to go to work, its all review lesson today though so its not too bad. This morning i had breakfast with my students which was alot of fun and nice for them too as they get to do something different from constant studying :-). christ one loaf of bread cost me R$5 just cause it had currants in it, talk about a rip off :-( I have to try to get the students to finish excercises and bring them to the school so i can get them corrected before the exams start next week, you can see i am going to be really busy right? Lots of coffee and cola is the best thing.. trust me its a treid and tested method of stress relief ;-)

I cant believe it, my cell is flat already. I only charged it two days ago and its already dead. It just has to last until the end of december as i will trade it for a new cell phone then :-) A new battery is around R$50-60 and theres no way that i am going to pay that lol.

Okay time for me to get lunch and get myself over to the school and prepare the stuff for the review lessons :-)

posted at 11:12 AM by john |

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Teaching the neighbours about Nirvana hahaha

Yeah its time for my neighbours to learn of the wonders of Nirvana and im sure they will appreciate the wonderful lyrics and guitar playing ;-). Im passing time here while i wait for Rosa Maria to get home so i can give her a buzz on the phone.. My turn i guess lol. It'll be fun though and i think she will be used more now to my crazy Brasilian/English/American hybrid accent that i have developed in the last couple of years :-). Nice thing is that Rosa speaks alot of english so maybe ill have someone to help me learn portugues quicker as i really have to get some vocabulary to increase my language.

I have been calling as many of my students as i have phone numbers so i can remind them to bring excercises as the final exams start next week and they need to bring me alot of them so i can correct them ready for exam day. I wont correct them on Sundays though as its my day for escaping downtown for as much of the day as i can. Maybe a few of them will be good for the start day but at this time of the year alot of them are also taking exams at uni and their other schools so its normal for them to get a little late with things and i just correct as much as they can bring me :-) After all its the secretaries problem really so i just encourage my students and if they dont have time they can go tell the secretaries all about it and they can get stressed hahaha :-). The best thing though for dealing with this is Coffee or Pepsi or Coca Cola.. trust me they work just great :-)

Even with these things though working in a war zone as i do i still get a little stressed sometimes but was reading an interesting article in Newsweek about Meditation and Qigong with techniques for stress so i downloaded the pages to read and its really interesting stuff, breathing techniques and lots of ways to calm the mind and stuff. I will try out some of the simpler stuff just to see if it works. It'll be an interesting experience i think, it says to try to find a person who teaches Tai Chi too as they have similar techniques. Hmmm in Planaltina??? i very much doubt it hahaha :-) I will post a few links for this as soon as i get a minute free okay? :-)

I had to search around in my room this morning for my books and stuff. Someone had spring cleaned everything and you know what its like when this happens right?. Just has you get everything where you know where everything is, someone comes along and disrupts everything so now i cant hardly find anything lol. It took me from yesterday until this morning to find a single cdrom. By the end of the week ill have everything back to normal again (Yep.. in a huge mess again lol)

Okay time to go see if Rosa Maria is asleep resting or awake so i can call her before going to the post office to post some xmas cards to england and pick up some more customs forms to fill in too.

posted at 10:29 AM by john |

Monday, December 01, 2003

Jackson making his escape using the transportation of his victim

posted at 10:15 AM by john |

I think i got a little sunburned yesterday

Wow yesterday was a hot one, i got just a little burned when i visited the tv tower in plano Piloto but not too badly. I forgot to put on some sunblock with wasnt a very clever thing to do but luckily i spent most of the time in the shadow of the tower or in and around the different stalls :-) Still i got a little fried though lol. I met up with one of my students and her cousin there which was nice as usually i spent most of the weekend downtown on my own just wasting time or at the movies. Talking of the movies i watched SWAT which is excellent, Samuel Jackson reminds me alot of Shaft though for some reason i cant explain. I also wanted to see the film with Kathy Bates but it was only showing at Parkshopping and i cant be bothered to go all the way out there :-(. Maybe ill go there next weekend when i have more time to figure out how to get there lol

This morning i have some interesting stuff to type up that i read in some magazine that arrived a few days ago, facts of things that we english people do differently and there seems to be many of them hahaha. Hmmmm i never thought of alot of these things before... wierd lol. Ill put it online once ive finished typing it all up with a link so you guys can read it :-) Its quite interesting when you get into it but a few of them i dont really think that any people never mind english people would do but you can decide for yourself when you read it okay?

Im trying to get kazaa to load up but it keeps crashing, looks like i need to reboot here :-( god i need to get a new computer as soon as possible. Talking of computers i was browsing through the history on the computers in Planaltina the other day and noticed that although the 56k modem is only supposed to be used to send school emails while the other is being repaired that someone has been chatting in adult chat rooms (Delicious Men). This is the secretaries as they hide the modem cable so they are the only ones that they can use it. I guess it makes them feel as though they are superior or something.. yeah right and there is a puff of smoke from the grassy knoll hahaha. Can you believe that one of them wanted to give a class the other day but Helen.. honey.. first of all you need to speak english right and you are still at GS1 even though your in OM1 and there are Junior4 with more level than you hahaha. Practice my girl is what you need to do and sitting in front of a computer doing those drills wont help with speech trust me.

Im still struggling to get my amazonian blowpipe posted over to the UK. Cant seem to get a box big enough for it :-(. Ill try the big papelaria here in Planaltina later on if i get a minute or two free before i have to get the bus to Sobradinho. Its never going to get there before xmas you know hahahaha. Sedex cant give a bog thats the right size apart from this huge one that will weigh loads and cost me a fortune to post overseas :-(.

let me just reboot here okay as its really pissing me off now that i cant use kazaa hahaha.. one min please..

Okay lets try again and see if it will boot this time, if it dont work im going to be more than a little pissed hahaha. Okay waiting for it to boot up now

Wow Rosa Maria is sending me alot of sms messages this morning, awww how sweet :-). Its funny cause my cell phone is next to the monitor so it flickers when i get a message :-). Nice, we like the same sort of music it seems, something in common then :-)

YEAH!!!!!!! Kazaa is connected.. finally.. at long last :-) now i can search for some music, eat your heart out RIAA lol. I wanna get some WASP so i can use it in the classroom at the end of the semester lol. should be good for a laugh as they were branded Sexual Perverts my some womens organizations in America hahaha. OMG theres loads so its going to be alot of fun, its like being a kid in a candy store hahaha

Okay time to go get something done now as i have just a couple of hours before i have to go to work and need to try to find that bloody box hahaha!!!

posted at 9:42 AM by john |