Merry Halloween

Post by Laila Chris Batista.

minhas considerações sobre a eleição e quem devemos excluir no Facebook

Eu adorei essas eleições: perdi amigos (se é que contatos no face podem ser chamados de amigos?), pessoas deixaram de me seguir aqui, no Twitter, etc, e para lhe falar a verdade, eu achei deveras interessante pois nunca tinha visto POLÍTICA ser levada tão a sério desde quando pintei minha cara e fui às ruas gritar: "FORA COLLOR", a looooong time ago.

Se eu excluir todos os meus contatos que oPTaram, vou "blogar" e "facebookar" mais à vontade, com certeza, pois vou estar ao lado de pessoas que pensam como eu. Eu poderia selecionar meus 'facers' geograficamente, eu poderia "unfriend" todos os contatos Nordestinos, Cariocas e Mineiros... Uai, aí eu estaria anulando quase toda a minha família por parte de pai, mãe e esposo já que eles vivem nesses estados brasileiros... mas é certo pensar assim? É certo achar que separar nossas diferenças, vai nos fazer melhores?

É certo desconectar-se por uma bobagem? É realmente problema meu o que os outros  pensam de política? Bom, é problema meu quando o assunto é escolher quem vai nos representar politicamente.

Se fosse para excluir todos os eleitores do PT  da minha lista de contato, eu iria me distanciar de amigos de infância, eu teria que anular boa parte da minha família que é assumidamente Petista,  eu acabaria me distanciando de grandes amigos atores, músicos, escritores, pensadores e jornalistas que ainda acreditam ser possível ter socialismo implantado no Brasil, e, mesmo que isso seja possível, não é assim que eu quero viver, mas devo respeitar que é assim que 52% do meu país obviamente querem.

Assumo que não concordaria com o resultado mesmo se Aécio ganhasse, pois meu candidato não foi para o 2o. turno. Sou semi-vegetariana, adoto animais abandonados, não dirijo, evito produtos feitos de couro e testado em animais, e nunca concordei com rodeios, zoológicos, e pet shops. Sou membra do Greenpeace desde 1993... Sou Partido Verde. Eu não sou pró-capitalista. Eu sou anti-governo. Sou libertária. Por eu ser assim, não excluí, blocked, ou "unfollow" ninguém por POLÍTICA. Não vi razão para isso.

Eu adorei essas eleições pois todo nós podemos postar, "curtir", "descurtir", rir, compartilhar nas redes sociais aquilo que acreditamos, mesmo que sejam ideias divergentes. Foi possível até orientar pessoas mais jovens, como os meus alunos que nasceram somente depois da era PT e que não sabiam o que é ser de ESQUERDA ou de DIREITA. A pessoas se politizaram no Brasil e a democracia se fortaleceu. Se for para excluir alguém do FACE, por exemplo, eu acho que eu deletaria os que se irritaram com os posts sobre política e as eleições 2014. Vocês sim precisam encontrar seu estado fora do Brasil e isolado do mundo, e viver por lá para nunca mais voltar. "Y biba la demoCRAzzia!"

Brazilian 2014 Election Results

"Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was re-elected this Sunday. The Associated Press reports that with 99 percent of the vote counted, Rousseff won 51.5 percent. Her challenger Aecio Neves got 48.5 percent of the vote.

NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro has been covering the election. She says that the elections shows that the country is "divided over its future," and called the campaign "bitter, bruising" and "filled with attack ads and corruption scandals."

The AP also says this election was a contentious battle:

Rousseff and Neves have fought bitterly to convince voters that they can deliver on both growth and social advances. This year's campaign is widely considered the most acrimonious since Brazil's return to democracy in 1985, a battle between the only two parties to have held the presidency since 1995.

Neves has hammered at Rousseff over a widening kickback scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras, with an informant telling investigators that the Workers' Party directly benefited from the scheme.

Rousseff rejected those allegations and told Brazilians that a vote for Neves would be support for returning Brazil to times of intense economic turbulence, hyperinflation and high unemployment, which the nation encountered when the Social Democrats last held power.

And the BBC reports developments from candidates besides Rousseff and Neves also made this election a dramatic one:

The election comes after weeks of intensive campaigning by the two candidates and a presidential race that took a tragic turn after Eduardo Campos, a main opposition candidate, was killed in a plane crash in August.

His running mate, a renowned environmentalist, Marina Silva, was thrust into his place, vowing to become the South American country's first "poor, black" president.

Silva came in third after the first round of voting.

The AP reports that before voting in the runoff in southern Brazil, Rousseff said, ""We've worked so hard to better the lives of the people, and we won't let anything in this world, not even in this crisis nor all the pessimism, take away what they've conquered."

After the election results were announced, Rousseff tweeted "Thank you very much" to her followers in Portuguese."

I myself am particularly disappointed with our presidential re-election because this party does not admit not doing anything to improve local industries, services, healthcare, and school education.

This was my original candidate from the Green Party

Source: from here. 

Halloween spirit has arrived!

YoLo

Roberto got Gold medal on his jiu jitsu competition. In order to get that, he needed sauna to lose weight so he booked a room at a nice hotel. After so much adventure, we ended up spending the night at Blue Tree Hotel. The room is nice. The bed is wide and the bathroom is awesome. Gotta love blogging in a hotel room. It is feels pro. Yolo.

Burqas are simply amazing

ISHA FOUNDATION, there we go!

An opportunity = This influence usually represents a time of optimism and positive thinking in your life. You seem to be at a quiet point of balance that enables you to look over the affairs of your life and get a good perspective on them. Therefore, it is a good time to make long- range plans and to reorganize.

You should use this time to gain new perspectives through education or travel or by participating in one of the consciousness raising activities or groups that exist now. This is a time of psychological and physical equilibrium. If you have recently been ill in either body or mind, this influence will help tremendously with the healing process.

 This is also a good time to examine your ideals and your goals, for it may be possible to actualize them in various ways now. At other times there is too much tension in your life or too much resistance from others. If you are involved in any movement for reform, now is a good time to take some positive action. Or you might become more involved in religion or philosophy, because you need to know much that is beyond the apparent order of things.

 It is quite possible that you will do nothing during this time, because it gives you a feeling of balance but no drive to do anything in particular. You have an unusual sense of ease and relaxation now. This is also a good time to travel, both for relaxation and for educational reasons.

The important point to remember with this influence is that it is fundamentally an opportunity. You will not feel driven by any energies, nor will you feel any resistance to your efforts to do something. You can make great use of this time, but you have to take the initiative.

Sunday blogging Sunday

• No pun intended. I woke up late. Hubby went shopping for a scale. We must care about our weight so he got us a similar scale to the one we used to have, a darn good one. 

• The scale and the jiu jitsu fighter are on their way to São Leopoldo for a state championship. I decided not to go due to the road trips. The championships don't take place in our town and the two-hour drive on curvy highways aren't my cup of tea. I always get sick and end up throwing up. He's won the Gold medal, btw

• I don't mind airplane trips, though. But the rush before getting on the craft is not my favorite stress either. Especially if we are taking international flights, there is so much packing, checking, and waiting.

• Our country is going through the worst economical, political, and social crisis during its last 30 years. I am afraid of where this is going coz things aren't great to us. We own an educational business that depends on a very strong and stable middle-class and uppermiddle-class.  

• As there isn't much production in the country, whoever belonged to those higher social classes are being delocated and feeling pressure due to unemployment and high default rates. I am included in this group who used to have spending power and now, I must be happy for affording a much cheaper grocery shopping.  

• There will be election in Brazil for President next Sunday. The candidates are the worst ever. I don't see any silver lining, only dark clouds. I am super scared and at the same time, I am not. As hubby says, "We have got options." Yeah, we have got the world to sleep on it. 

• I've just got the news that a childhood acquaintance was murdered by his "friend". What is up with the world we live in?

Are bloggers megalomaniac? 10 years blogging and just now I could figure that out

A selfie taken for the first post ever published on Oct. 7th 2004

This title is gonna blow, in the good sense hahahaha. It contains the words BLOGGERS and MEGALOMANIAC; good ones for GOOGLE SEARCH. I have been told that a million times: "People on social media are megalomaniac and bloggers are the worst type." The answer to the title : yes, they are. However, in different levels. I am one of those nonsense narcissist megalomaniac bloggers.  I myself started this blog in 2004 when I had been living back in Brazil for less than 2 years, in a strange city where nobody knew who we were. During my first years in this place, I totalIy felt I was going to collapse due to loneliness and depression. Luckily those were the golden years for MSN and Torrents for music, films, the oldies MySpace, Buzznet, and to all the early blog providers such as Blogger, Wordpress, etc.

Back in those days, 2002 /2003 I even tried to develop my personal site myself. As I started becoming familiar with Blogspot, Wordpress, Buzznet and others, the idea of blogging sounded more realistic. I've always had this plan for writing two books. The plan is still up but I am not ready for this kind of commitment now. I thought of blogs and how they would be the easiest, coolest, and cheapest solution for self-publishing. Everyone who started blogs 10 years ago were interested in other people's blogs and everyone commented on each other's blogs and bloggers created bonds. Most of these bloggers I ran across back in those days are still my contacts on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and so forth.

Before social media networking became intrinsic world culture aspect, bloggers could quadruple the number of visitors to their blogs overnight by posting entries on these topics: Britney Spears, Facebook, How to get rich quick, British Airways, Lost, Friends whatever series was on TV, Five day weather forecast, and a few other words that they might not be appropriate to link to a teacher's blog. There were blog readers everywhere. In order to make my blogs my way, I had to teach myself html codes. At first, Blogger Blogs were quite difficult to edit. As I am a certified journalist, I did study in college a few things on editing and publishing printed materials. Blogs are digital, riiiiight, the color codes are similar, the types of fonts are the same too, and so on.

On my very first posts, I was not sure about opening to the readers facts about me or where I live. My first posts were cold and distant. Whereas, I've always published my poetry on my blogs. In truth, I even created an entire other blog dedicated to poetry. Click here. And lemme tell you, posting poetry can be a lot more personal. I confess that I did turn this blog a deposit of my old floppy disks txt files, at first. Later on, from 2005 on I made this place more like my trashcan. Huahuahauhau For a couple of years (2005~2007), this blogspot was read the most and very often commented too. Orkut had become the number one Internet spot in Brazil and from there, people swtiched off from blogging, including me.

My worst mistake as a blogger was the poor choice for my blog tittle. As I added the word PAWNSHOP to it, I've got several visitors who are interested in actually pawning. What I meant by adding the word "pawnshop" is to pay a tribute to Sir Charles Chaplin; the blog was entitled after one of his movies. It is also to be the title of a possible non-fiction novel that I've dreamed of writing for years and years.

Alright, in SEO (search engine optimization) terms, "PAWNSHOP" might not attract the kind of visitor that is necessarily interested in ESL teaching, psychological disorders, or makeups per se but I thought of this blog more as an experiment, a modern day Pavlov’s dogs if you will. Give them the keywords and they will salivate. Or something like that. I don't need readers who don't get the blogsphere thing. I don't write here to please anyone.

Is this a little arrogant? Yes, it is. Do I care? Nope. Are bloggers megalomaniacs? Some of them are. However, there is a slight difference between megalomania and narcissism. I know a megalomanic in real life, and this person does not write blogs. The symptoms are quite distinctive as pathology, however a low degree of megalomania is found in so many people as a way of defending against loss in everyday life.

This journal is turning 10 years old this month. My real life business is turning 12 and my marriage is turning 16 years old. I teach languages for a living: English, Portuguese, and German. I live in a small carpeted condo with a husband and 4 cats. I really deserve to write about me, my 3 college majors, and my work life. It is me who is writing using my own experienced hands. This has to be a virtual place about my life and nothing else. If I want to go crazy, I will. If I feel like posting a photo of my shit, I will do so and no one should resent that because it is no one's business. If you do not like this blog, do not ever come back here. 

I know, I know that it’s not quite so simple as that. Readers will love you, others will not mind you, or some will even hate you. Whereas, they keep coming back and they stop by for a while. I don't wanna sound like our presidentA Dilma, but you must fancy a few numbers. Here they are: 1,408 Published comments, 894 Published Posts, 19 Followers, 1,700 views last month, and 65,000 visitors from all over the world. ha! Megalomaniac, me? I sure am. ;)

I don’t really know what I’m doing here or where I am going. I am still figuring all out but I have a sneaky suspicion that there’s probably more to it than typing random words. (Then again, I also have a sneaky suspicion that it IS just a case of typing in random words.) The point is, I don’t know where I am going with my life. However I do see myself here blogging for 10 more years, minimum. And lastly, apparently, it’s seems not politically correct to admit having mental disorders or that we are narcissistic. Tsk. So there we have it, someone who is not afraid of being politically incorrect.

Experiment succeeded. Bamboozled. This is also my English grammar gym. Here I work out my ESL skills. It is mine and it is free. For sure I will keep coming back here every Saturdayish.

My all time faveTED Talks

Good morning, humans! I got up at 5:00 in the morning. Quite unusual for bipolars on medication. Here comes one more day, unfortunately along with one or two fewer dollars :(

I decided on blogging on TED Talks this morning. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, under the slogan: "Ideas Worth Spreading".TED was founded in 1984 as a one-off event. The annual conference began in 1990, in Monterey, California. TED's early emphasis was technology and design, consistent with its origins in the Silicon Valley.

Since June 2006, the talks have been offered for free viewing online, under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license, through TED.com. As of April 2014, over 1,700 talks are available free online. By January 2009 they had been viewed 50 million times. In June 2011, the viewing figure stood at more than 500 million, and on Tuesday, November 13, 2012, TED Talks had been watched one billion times worldwide.

Here you will find my personal favorite TED talks. You're welcome.

This Kit-Kat and M&M cake is for those whose birthday is in October: the month of children, teachers, ghosts, breast cancer awareness, Brazilian presidential election and more

If you don't appreciate American colorful chocolate candies, leave the whole thing for me coz I do :)

It is always good to move furniture around

The cats are Little Lentils and Felino Gracie. Sorry for the mess.

This is a blurry one. Little Lentils can be seen and Tibby's tail

I've got so many nick-nacks and wall art to hang on the wall

I have never entertained in our apartment because of the cats, I guess. We have adopted 4

This is the view from the armchair. The saying on the wall is a DIY project which I love

Today is Teachers' Day in Brazil. How about an inspirational movie list on this so important professional!

• Bigger than Life (1953)
• To Sir With Love (1967)
• Teachers (1984)
• The Karate Kid (1984)
• Children of a Lesser God (1986)
• Hoosiers (1986)
• Stand and Deliver (1988)
• Lean on Me (1989) 
• Dead Poets Society (1989)
• Sister Act II (1993)
• Madadayo (1993)
• Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995)
• Dangerous Minds (1995)
• October Sky (1999)
• Pay It Forward (2000)
• Remember the Titans (2000)
• Wonder Boys (2000)
• Finding Forrester (2000)
• A Beautiful Mind (2001)
• The Emperor’s Club (2002)
• To Be and To Have / Être et avoir (2002)
• School of Rock (2003)
• Mona Lisa Smile (2003)
• Akeelah and the Bees (2006)
• Chalk (2006)
• Half Nelson (2006)
• The Great Debaters (2007)
• Freedom Writers (2007)
• Schooled (2007)
• Happy-go-lucky (2008)

The History behind Brasil's name

The name of my country is Brasil or Brazil in English. It is located in South America and is the only country in the Americas which Portuguese is the first language. The capital is Brasília, located along the Brazilian highlands in the country's midwest region. 

Brazil is not even its very first name or second for that matter.  It was thought orginally to be on island when the Portuguese came here, so they called it Ilha de Vera Cruz (Vera Cruz Island).  Then when they discovered that it was not an island, the Portuguese changed the name to Terra de Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz Land).

Eventually, "Pau Brasil" was discovered.  It was a widespread tree that the Portguese found to be very valuable.  Why? "Pau Brasil" trunk is red.  At that time in history this was a very expensive color of the rainbow.  And they  used "Pau Brasil" for dye.  Later changing the name to Brasil.  According to a teacher I had, it is the only country to be named after a tree .  

"Pau" on the other hand has many meanings: Penis, or "pau duro" which means a hard-on for example. My grandmother of 95 years old uses the word "pau" meaning all sorts of things, especially anything wooden made, such as colher-de-pau: Portuguese for wooden spoon.  I think it is more instilled into her very language, because "Pau Brasil" was very important (heheh for many reasons).  It is mostly used in modern language for penis and sexuality. 

I pretty much enjoy the exotic stereotype of my country, but on the other hand it is not fun living here. We have the highest taxes, the highest fees on public services, there is no quality in regular school education, and poor public safety. Owning a car is way too expensive and don't get me started on owning properties. If there is any Brazilian way of life, I must tell you that this is not a fun lifestyle. Not at all. 

This post is inspired by Nina's Post @ http://ninadiasporaofthesky.blogspot.com.br/

Love seeing hubby gardening.

I  am so glad to see him working on his vegetable garden. 
He's got the green thumb and he's good at jiu-jitsu too.  I wish had any talent at all. :)

Blackfish, 2013

Hiya, dear humans. How's it going? How's life been treating ya? Me, not so good. I will write about my demons on another post. Today's post is a movie hint. BLACKFISH - I highly recommend this documentary. 

After watching it, your world will collapse.The flick is about how Sea World treats their killer whales. I have been to Sea World, Orlando. I saw the killer whales entertainment for the first time when I was 15. At that time, I was not even a bit aware of the harm this park has caused to these sea animals and to their environment. It is a shame what has been hidden to protect a two-billion-dollar-a-year industry.  If I were you, I'd watch it. 

Let us all boycott the park and spread about this amazing film. Blackfish is a 2013 documentary directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2013, and it was picked up by Magnolia Pictures and CNN Films for wider release.

Green makeup and outfit to vote for the Green Party - So proud of the election day in our nation. Let's never lose hope

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