Friday, June 3, 2011

Brazil is too advanced for me

Sometimes I feel a little out of the loop. I wonder: Is life passing me by or am I stepping out of the way of a ridiculously speeding train barreling by? Luiz and I moved to Brazil to get out of the rat race that was our daily lives in San Francisco.
Slow down. Notice the sunshine. Kiss each other more. Don’t chase rainbows. Just be. Be together.
It has been more than a month since I have placed a call on my cell phone. Really. In fact, I’ve recently forgotten to check it for missed calls and text messages.  One of my translation clients is not happy with me.
We have an answering machine for our home phone, but for some strange reason Brazilians do not leave messages! And to leave voice mail is a scandal – you pay to leave the message and the recipient pays to listen to the message.  What’s up with that!? Few people even have voice mail service.
I recently downloaded the new, super cute, animated movie “Rio” and enjoyed watching it on my 21” computer screen.  Luiz, on the other hand, wants to watch it on the big plasma screen, with home theater sound.  So I bought the necessary cable, but today I utterly failed to figure out how to connect the computer to the TV.  I need a 14 year old nephew who can come solve my problem.
I used to think I was a pretty modern guy.  But now I fear I have fallen behind. (I KNOW I have fallen behind.) I rarely send a text message. I certainly do not know the short-hand text language abbreviations used in said messages. I don’t Tweet.
Make no mistake – Brazilians are at the front of the line in terms of technology.  EVERYONE has a cell phone (if only a “pai de santo”). As the saying goes: “kids these days” are all about the technology.
I have a client company that specializes in video games technology and I have had to learn a whole new language to translate their press releases. (Actually, two clients.)
Ok – so I am getting old and I don’t care about instant messaging while driving (except that it should be illegal). But I would at least like to be able to hook up our plasma TV to show a movie from my computer.  Is that too much to ask?

1 comment:

GingerV said...

tisk, tisk.... talking and texting while on the phone IS illegal... but the foot cop can't catch you unless you wreck right in front of him (lol, of course means laughing out loud!)every once in a while I have to ask what some abreviation means.... my daughter gets a kick out of telling me in - you guessed it - abreviation - I know how to do a lot with the new technology.... the difference is I don't really understand what I am doing....
so you have the cable with the yellow / red / green or white cable ends....? and what a usb on the other? because what you are trying to do is make the TV your monitor - right? maybe the problem is your computer / you have to tell it you want to 'split' the monitor....(control panel / monitor.... etc)
as usual this will probably not be of any help to you - but is a good mental exersice for me to try and figure it out....