Now there's no way back. I don't think I would consider that at all, tough.
The ticket's been bought and I'm outta here on September 7.
This is my last week at work and I've been saying my good-byes for three days now. Some students looked pretty disapointed, especially the groups that started a month ago. The school took it preety badly. I know that one week notice is kinda harsh on them, but it was beyond me, you know what I mean? And seriously, if they were to fire me or something they wouldn't even think about it, right? When they delay my payment they aren't even aware of the situation. All they could say was 'I'm sorry'. Well, that's what I told them, too.

I have two more lessons to go, one this afternoon and another tomorrow morning. I'll have the weekend to start packing my bags and organizing all my shit. Lots of books, some clothes, lots of jackets, no duvet, tough. I wanted to take it with me but that would mean paying extra money, not only here but in Sao Paulo as well (I'm definitely paying extra because they only allow one bag per person. Those bastards)

I still have a week here to take some pics, drink some vodca, walk without worrying about my belongings. I tried to takes some pics after my lesson this morning. The day couldn't be more perfect: clear blue sky and not so hot. But I took a couple and the camera ran out of battery. I got so pissed because I went all the way up to Wawel castle for nothing. Once up there I smoked a cigarette overlooking the Wisla river. I then walked to Rynek and had a grande latte in the Main Square. It's so great sitting there in the morning, not so hot and still not crowded with tourists and Brits shouting and zigzagging after a lot of beers.
Two things I'll miss when I leave this country: listening to my iPod and taking the computer to a cafe, two things impossible to do in Brazil.

I'm at this cyber cafe and there's a guy sitting next to me in a suit, with a briefcase and playing videogame. He might be at his lunch hour but it certainly looks wierd to me.
Man, the guy is really into the game... I wonder if with my laptop I can finally run Sillent Hill 2...

There's only so much you can learn in one place indeed

Well, that's it. I've had enough, alright. I don't think I should be putting up with this shit. I mean, when it certainly becomes clear that you have no chance at all to succeed in any way, should you wait some more or should you move to the next thing? I decided to move to the next thing, not necessarily being the thing that I really want, but at least I won't be stagnated any more. Having no money and no place to go, what do you normally do? You come back to the familiar place, even if it's for a determined period of time while you get yourself together, get your thoughts straight and plan the next move.
I've become familiar with unfamiliar faces and the mere thought that I'll be seeing familiar faces again kinda scare me. I'm terrified, actually, but I see no other way out. Seriously. To be honest I feel this urge to recharge my batteries because I've been running on the 10% level for a long time and the machine is kinda giving up. I think I'll go mad if I continue like this and in order to preserve the drop of sanity that I still have I need to get out of here badly.
Who am I kidding? I've never cared for these people here, never liked them, tried to engage but that proved to be the hardest task of my life. I'm not gonna spend my money on these pricks any longer, that's enough.

Last week, on my way home from morning lesson at Electrolux, as I was waiting for the traffic lights turn green to me, I saw Damian in a van. The first Damian, the one I met when I'd just gotten here in February. I saw that he saw me, but I didn't turn my head as he did, I was wearing my shades. After all these months I saw him again. I don't know if he's living far away now, because these vans they usually cover the outskirts of the city. But then he was gone, and I started to think about those days when I was discovering things here ad everything was new and strange to me.

Last week I also did some proofreading work for one of my students. She's written a series of apartment descriptions and she handed to me to see if everything was ok. In those descriptions there were a lot of tips on bars and restaurants and places to go that I've been enjoying these last couple of days. You know, all those months I've never had a companionship to go explore these places. I found this cafe in which the pint is 5.50 zlotych (compared to the average price of 7.50) and tea for 3.50 zlote (in some places the price reaches up to 7 zlotych!).

I'm figuring I'll be out of here within ten days. So I'll see the places I haven't seen during my stay here. Not that there's plenty of options, but I won't do the same thing I did in London.
Well, there's always the possibility of coming back... to London, obviously.

Ronaldo: just go online and appear on MSN!

9 days without booze

I stayed at home the whole of the weekend. I did nothing. I sat and I stared for a while, then I finished reading Obama's book, 'Stories from my father', then I saw a couple of CSI episodes, both Kill Bill on Saturday and, on Sunday night, I watched the documentary 'The Armenian Genocide'. It was a DVD that'd been here in the house for months and for the lack of options I decided to watch it. Not only did I watch the whole thing, I also clicked on the interview with a French historian about the war. It was an hour-long interview and after about 20 minutes I thought 'What am I doing? The Armenian Genocide?' I took it out of the computer and put it aside in disbelief. It was about 9:30pm and I started thinking about what I would be doing at the same time if I lived in another place. In Brazil I would be definitely drinking a beer with Adri, or watching cable on a 28" widescreen TV set. In London I would be at All Bar One reading The Observer sitting at table 25, drinking Staropramen or Edelweiss, waiting for Adri to finish his work (and giving him a little hand with the table-cleaning at the end) and set off to Holborn to Whetherspoon (aka 'the rat bar') or, towards the end of our time in the city, O'nealls; or I would be sitting in the TV room watching some program on a 32" widescreen set.
I wanted to cry but I didn't wanna make any noise. I went to smoke a cigarette at the window, sitting on the sill and looking at people walking from and towards Kazimierz. After a few drags, a light rain started to fall but it didn't seem to bother any of the pedestrians, they just kept slowly walking and talking, most of them British tourists. I tried to think of a solution, I reached down but there was nothing there.
I found two CDs with pictures in my box that I brought from London, one with pics from L.A., the other with pics from England. I looked at the L.A. pics and for the first time in days I was able to smile, remembering the things that'd happened there. The Snake Pit shots, Ro and I leaving the beers at the table with a coaster on the top of them to 'save' them while we went outside for me to have a cigarette. Then the pic of the guy who gave us a lift to where Andre was, I was positive that we would make it for a last pint but my watch was 20 minutes late. I guess the name was Todd, I'm not sure, good-looking guy, though. Then we went to Andre's place and he gave us the (worst) Beers of the World. I specifically remember us drinking 'Maldita', that was an accurate name, alright. I moved on to the Disney pics. I waited five hours until the guys came from a meeting in a neighboring town. That was fun... The roller-coaster which caused us to laugh for hours. The Splash Mountain moment that unfortunately isn't officially on record, but for sure is something that we'll remember forever. The party where Ro was in drag and the neighbors threw eggs at us because the music was too loud. One egg almost hit Ro and the police were called. The officer took a pic with Ro and his face was as red as Marlboro-red. We then decided that the party was over and got us a few souvenirs, as in beer. Ro opened up the bag and on 3 I desperately started to fill it up with bottles of MGD.
Pretty Woman's hotel, with my pants covered in ketchup.
My England pics with Ricardo, Claudinha and Fernanda. They were the ones who convinced me to go to Oxford and Cambridge on a day-trip. It was Sunday so there was nothing going on in the colleges, but at least I can say I've been there. Cambridge in summer must be great. We went in March and it was still kinda chilly. Pics at Walkabout on a Monday night, when the beer is a pound a pint. Pics at Belgo, the Belgian restaurant, where I first drank the 12% alcohol beer and the famous fruity beers. I would end up drinking the cherry and raspberry ones on occasion at All Bar One.
I'm not online now, but I wonder what I wrote after six months in London. I was probably complaining all the time. Maybe it's some sort of 'the six-month test' that you have to take to see if you'll be able to survive in the future in a certain place. The difference now is that here's not London, you know what I mean? Here's not Paris, here's not L.A., here's not Sao Paulo.
I really need some booze, any kind, whatever that can get me drunk and going.
Nine days is a long time for a person like me.

People don't seem to care

People don't seem to care. People don't seem to care at all. Who are the people you can truely call your friends, if you're lucky enough to use the word in the plural form? And, what from time to time comes to my mind, what characterizes a person that you can really call your friend? What qualities or flaws does this person have that makes you see they're your friend? Is a person your friend when you're feeling great and happy? Most certainly. Is a person your friend when you're feeling like dog shit? Hard to say. Why is it so difficult for people to realize that what you need is just somebody who is there for you, that you can count on just to sit there and listen to your problems, your weaknesses, your fears, your hopes, and maybe in the end come up with an idea or two to make you feel better, to give you that hope that you thought was long gone?
I've met a number of people through the course of this strange life, and I can tell you that only a handful is worth my friendship. As anybody else in this world I have my share of flaws, and I am aware that they are not just a few. However, I try to become a better person, I always have, even though sometimes it takes me quite a while to understand some particular aspect of a problem. Sometimes it takes me years to realize that something I've been doing so surely isn't actually the right thing to do. But once I'm finally convinced otherwise I change, I try to do my best to improve, and I try to make other people see my point of view. And, as I so very much know, if somebody doesn't wanna change, there's not gonna be enough words in this world to make them do so.
This is not my environment. This is not where I belong. I wanna get out of here as soon as possible and be with people I like. But when it comes to starting over, money plays the lead role. Always. If I had money right now, I would quite literally pack my bags at this very moment, head to the airport and take the first plane to whatever city. No joking about it. And for a moment I even think how I would do that, you know, the packing stuff, how I would accomodate everything perfectly into the suitcase, collect my CDs which are all around the house, get my bathroom stuff and separate my laundry from the clean clothes, switch off the lights, close the door behind me and never look back. But then I'm forced to abandon this fantasy minute after listening somebody on the street yelling at somebody else, the traffic noise and the trams crossing the avenue on the corner. And then I look around the room and see that the floor needs cleaning and that tomorrow is actually my turn to clean the apartment and try to unclog that fucking drain in the bathroom. And then I look at the pile of laundry that must be done but can't be done because I'm out of soap and out of cash to go to the market and buy the cheapest possible box of soap that ends up destroying my hands. And then I look at the canlendar and see today is the 17th and I haven't been paid, even though I was promissed I would receive my money before the 20th. I look at the watch and it's 6pm of a cloudy, mild Friday and I'm sitting in my bed with my computer, three cigarettes left in the pack, 1,50 zloty and no perspective of enjoying (or trying to enjoy) the weekend, doing basically the Seinfeld-CSI-Obama's book switch.
And do you think anybody cares? Do you think that anybody has taken their time to actually see if there is a problem, even though I've so many times taken the initiative to ask 'is everything alright'?
Well, I guess people are brought up differently. They've become so self-absorbed that they don't see what's around them. Or maybe I have a problem, a problem of all the time making everybody else a priority and forgetting about myself. Maybe I'm wrong and they're right. Who gives a shit if you're feeling sad? They don't want trouble, they just want what's best for them.
This town has aged me. I look old. I look at my face in the mirror and see lines under my eyes, gray hair coming out of my head every two minutes, my skin isn't the same as it was six months ago, my shoulders are tired of carrying around that heavy bag with books for the lessons. This town has squeezed all the life out of me, I feel like a robot, a zombie walking the same path every day, twice a day, coming and going, coming and going, passing by the same stores and banks and corners and streets and peddlers and bums, waiting at the same traffic lights, watching the same trams following their routes. Last time I drank a beer was Saturday. I could use four or five but I don't have the dough. Now my cigarettes went down to two. I try to figure out a way to come out of this but everything seems blurry. No light at the end of the tunnel yet, and nobody to try to show me the way.
My problem is that I still think I can find somebody to rely on but I don't think that's gonna happen here.

"Fers once tried to put the moves on this guy. Fers's not gonna go do that again"

Typical. But seriously, what the hell was I thinking? Did I really think I could stand a chance?
Obviously, after my "explicit" email, as in just a friendly invitation for coffee or something, the guy disappeared. It's becoming more and more frustrating every day when I leave the house to go some where and realize it's never gonna happen.
The funny thing about my life is the clear ups and downs. It's never balanced. I either go from rock bottom to feeling extremely happy. I'm in a rock bottom moment now. Everything seems to be going wrong: work, friendship, guys, money. Not even one feature to bring a smile to my face, not a little one. Today (Aug 15) is a holiday here, religious, nobody seemed to know how to explain what it's about, but at least it's a day off. It's a beautiful day outside, hot, clear blue sky, the leaves are starting to fall from the trees, and I'm here sitting in my room at 10:35am with nothing to do and nowhere to go. I woke up at 5:15am, stayed in bed until 8am, made myself some coffee and smoked a couple of cigarettes. The rest of the house was sleeping. I got an old Time magazine, one which I'd already read, and leafed through it while listening to the radio, alone, with no one around and nothing to say. I look around the house and everything seem so perfectly placed, none of this is my choice and it's supposed to be like that. I was waiting for the moment I would see her coming, dragging her feet throught the living room towards the kitchen, with that put-me-out-of-my-misery face, slumped, sloth, opening up the fridge and choosing what to eat. She's on a diet now, maybe because she might go back to Brazil in September and I don't think she wants her family to see her the way she is now. Man, the mere presence of this creature brings me down big time.
I'm tired of going to the same place every weekend. But I have nobody else to spend some time with, not even one little bastard to go for a walk or a beer. I don't know when I'm getting paid so this is going to be a very long and boring weekend. I've run out of sitcoms to watch, I'm already on reruns here, trying to get some piece of information that I might have failed to understand. Sometimes I read.
But ultimately, it's all part of having nobody around. Don't expect me to try to do that again because I'm not. They don't want me, I don't want them.

I have my computer before me but wasn't able to start writing for eleven minutes. I'm listening to the radio - ESKA ROCK - and they've just played the entire "The End". You know, that's the only radio station that I can really listen to. This afternoon (even though it's a rock and roll station, sometimes they play some pop or old songs) they played "Wuthering Heights", totally Kate Bush, and I just wish Junior was here because we'd been wanting to listen to that song for ages.
I need to get a second job. I'll try to find some other school which would be willing to hire me for the afternoon, especially now that the girls from Electrolux are going on vacation for the whole of August.
I also need to get out of the country, again. August 4 is coming. I don't believe it's already time to travel again, which means that I've been living here for six months. Half a year. 180 days.
I guess I'm having the same feeling that I had in London when I was there for the first six months. I didn't used to like it because my friends weren't there, but at the same time I was discovering things and places and somehow it kinda started to feel like home.
I went to Carrefour after my lesson at Electrolux. It's not far from there, a 25-minute walk, bought some things that I needed and when I got to the tram stop I got number 79 to see the route (of course I always have to know the routes, you know how I am with these things, don't you?) and I passed by Tesco. Since the day I got here I wanted to know where Tesco was and check it out to see if it would be worth it to buy there. Next time now.
I got home at 8pm and EW was here with Maitana's cousin, I don't remember her name. They used almost all bottle of oil, maybe to make french fries, and she's kinda stored the oil in the fridge. But there's no way I'm using this oil. And this was the third bottle in a row that I bought. I'm not taking the trash down, I'm gonna leave it there until Junior gets here, and boy is he gonna be pissed....
I decided to make the move, or half-a-move. I wrote the guy and asked if he wanted to hang out. Wrote my number and asked him to give me a call.
I don't want to waste valuable time on somebody that might not be interested. If he doesn't write or call in a couple of weeks (I should allow some time for them to process all the info, they are like this and there's nothing I can do about it) it means I should move on to the next one. (what next one?...)