A little imagination required...

... but not too much, please!

I have a new student, a pleasant enough fellow. It was a murky, rainy sort of day when I went to meet him. The bus broke down and I had to walk the last distance to his apartment. The gatekeeper was a little clueless. Ok, more than a little clueless. I suspect I disturbed his nap or something. I walked the wide, curved drive to an impressive entrance, then found my way to the appropriate lifts. At this point, I could see the building was old. It's in an older, highly respected part of town, the Jewish sector (different nationalities tend to cluster together in communities here, which is why we're in the Lithuanian community).

I arrived at his floor. The doorbell was funky. I rang, but heard nothing. Rang again and risked knocking. Don't you just hate that? I didn't want to knock if the bell was working, but didn't want to risk it not being functional.

Anyway, he opened the door and, looking straight ahead, I saw leather-couched bachelor comfort and someone who travels a lot. You know the type. He indicated to the right to the glass-topped table. As I turned, I looked down.

There... in front of the door, between me and the lounge area was a ball and claw bathtub....



filled with balls! You know the balls you get in one of those ball pools for kids?



On top of the balls was an 'arm' cushion.... a blue one like this one...

Now tell me... what would you think? I had to DRAG my eyes away from the bathtub! At the end of the meeting, I asked him gingerly if he had kids or particularly liked them. No, he's a bachelor with no kids and he doesn't mind them, but has little contact with them. So what's with the bathtub?? In the lounge??

Anyhow, adding him to my Tuesday and Thursday morning routine is going to mean that before noon, I get to take 6 buses and a metro. That makes for a lot of quality on-the-road time, but I'm happy. I've been wanting a mid-morning student to fill in the gaps. He travels overseas a few times a year, wants to know how to chat up Swedish blondes in nightclubs without sounding Brazilian and only starts work at around 11am every day. What a life!

Adieu Bonjour!

Art by Bea Douglas. I wanted a surreal image. I think this works and is fairly thematic considering some fools believe the vuvuzela is meant to resemble an elephant's call.
Yeah right!
Fiddling puddlesticks! I was so annoyed yesterday, but so proud of myself. A whole day went by without the use and abuse of strong language ; )

No, the title isn't some skewed attempt at French. I have an excellent firewall that allows nothing past its defences. Heck, it only allows me through if I've been really good and the same goes for all of you =Þ Every day, I get "Do you want Bonjour to access the internet?" Well, I neither need or want the programme Adobe insists on installing. Its main objective in life is to access the net and, deprived of that objective, it just sits there like a dead duck. My research cold me it was safe to uninstall it. Bagged and trashed, I was free of its daily "hello, I'm still here taking up 2 seconds of your day."

Then all dizzy heliotropes broke loose. My pc went belly-up. I restarted my pc, but it wouldn't restart. My empty wallpaper sat staring at me. My keyboard ceased to function. I eventually accessed my files with Jurgis' keyboard and in Safe Mode to do an emergency backup... and formatted.

Somehow, something had gone very wrong *makes a mental note to leave Bonjour in relative peace in future* It wasn't just Bonjour though. At that precise moment, my keyboard cable (thank goodness it was easily resolved) died.

Reinstalling my pc was not quite how I'd planned to spend my day.

                 ~~ ~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~

Sometimes life presents little scenes to check if you're awake and paying attention. I was standing in the cluster of humanity, crowded into the cattle-herding gates, waiting fro the next metro at the busy Sé station, idly watching people getting off another line. One man caught my attention. Bopping and jiving to the beat in his headphones, very carefully, I might add, he was a stereotypical big-afro 'out of a 70's movie' black guy - typical, except for the large chocolate cake he was carrying. It looked so surreal. Talk about stereotyping.

On the subject of surreal, it was so weird getting onto the bus this morning to actually find seats! Oh the joys of school holidays combined with world cup fever.

Don't you just love the guys that get onto the underground metro while it is still dark outside with their hoodies pulled up over their ears and dark glasses on? "I'm so bright, I've got to wear shades." Their whole posture, the slouch and pushing baggy hips forward, and bearing screams, "Look at me! I'm cool!"

Then Tweedledee and Tweedledum got on. Some grungy jeans hanging in multiple folds over their trainers, pale, scrawny arms stretching out of yellow sweatshirts, which were worn under the regulation-on-match-day Brazilian team t-shirts. Number 7 and Number 10. Two curly dark heads didn't look at each other or talk, but each move was identical, choreographed deep in their DNA.

Add further oddity to that. I waited 40 minutes for my usually very regular student, but he's vanished. No reply on home, work or cell phone and not a soul seems to even know who he is. We usually meet in a neighbouring department because of the free boardrooms, so I went to his floor, which has recently had all its 200 anonymous open plan desks rearranged. I stood in the sea of desks and called his number, but no phones rang. I checked to make sure it was Friday. Yep. *Chronicles of the invisible student*

I arrived home to the neighbours getting their gathering of friends and family together... each sporting a new vuvuzela *sigh* Then a call from my student, "So sorry! I had no work today (lucky guy) because of the game and I completely forgot about class." Grrr! I don't mind the time off. I do mind that I spent half an hour this morning trying to find something to wear... for nothing!


The cartoon is appropriate today. 'Visinhos' is 'neighbours' and "Esse copa só serve pra encher o saco" roughly translates to "This cup only serves to make one fed up" except that 'encher o saco' has a far more crude interpretation here.