Friday, July 3, 2009
An announcement addressing the absence of adventures
A bitty bout of bronchitis brought a bail on my blueprint! Currently a compendium of care and colloquial cures has calmed the calamitous cough. Dour doctors determined to disturb had deemed it dumb to not defer my discovery of different duchies; extra epochs engaged in ease were endorsed. I furiously found fallacies in these fabricated findings but finally forsook my fastidiousness and fell into frustration. The generalized gist is: I got to gingerly go about my going. I hated having to hold on my holiday, but heck, the hacking hitch didn’t help my health. Indubitably - the inclusion of an interval in my itinerary interweaves an indulgence of my instinct to idle.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Off to China
Hello Friends,
To all those that don't know, I am Bruno Cabral. I just finished up my second year at the University of Chicago studying philosophy and this summer I will be doing something fun. Whilst procuring work for the summer, I scoured the university's student employment website in search for valuable summer opportunities. One job that I got excited about was working as a secretary at The Arete Institute at the university. I was psyched because it was an initiative trying to bring together philosophy, neuroscience and psychology to create a "science of morality". You can check the site here. Exhilarated at the idea of working for these people, I sent in my application and suddenly began to discover the pit-falls of the student employment website; the position had been filled 2 weeks before it was posted on the site.
Alas, I kept looking and eventually found a promising offer: giving bike tours around Hyde Park out of the Du Sable Museum. The pay and hours were good, so I applied and had an interview. The lady who interviewed me was very nice and I was hired. For a while I was legitimately excited about riding a big cruiser bike around Hyde Park, telling stories about Obama and occasionally inserting a couple of my own anecdotes about the Hyde Park hobos. I had accepted the position whenI checked my inbox and suddently saw that Burgeon Education, a company that had put up a posting on the student employment website, had taken interest in my application. I had sent them an application and the day after I got the bike-tour job I got the China job. I instantly sent an apologetic e-mail to the bike tour people saying that something else had come up.
Something else had come up indeed; a two month trip to Hangzhou (often known as one of the most beautiful cities in China) with paid accommodations and food. The internship itself consists of talking to Chinese students about how good American universities are and why they should apply (along with purchasing the indispensable help of Burgeon Education to guide them through the application process). The clincher in this deal is that I don't need to know Chinese, of which I know none. I can already picture myself clutching onto my phrasebook as though it were more important than my passport. While this language-barrier might be close to total, it will in the least be a good opportunity to ponder all the Wittgenstein I read spring quarter.
All in all, I leave tomorrow. I plan to use this blog to tell of all the zany things Chinese people do
as well as of all the stupid things I end up doing. If worse comes to worst and I can't find any English-language keyboards at the internet cafes then I will have to find another way to publish (I'm thinking microfilm in milk-canisters tossed into the ocean. The medium is the message!).
If anyone wants a postcard drop me your address in the comments box and I will send off some personalized mail (with a picture!).
To all those that don't know, I am Bruno Cabral. I just finished up my second year at the University of Chicago studying philosophy and this summer I will be doing something fun. Whilst procuring work for the summer, I scoured the university's student employment website in search for valuable summer opportunities. One job that I got excited about was working as a secretary at The Arete Institute at the university. I was psyched because it was an initiative trying to bring together philosophy, neuroscience and psychology to create a "science of morality". You can check the site here. Exhilarated at the idea of working for these people, I sent in my application and suddenly began to discover the pit-falls of the student employment website; the position had been filled 2 weeks before it was posted on the site.
Alas, I kept looking and eventually found a promising offer: giving bike tours around Hyde Park out of the Du Sable Museum. The pay and hours were good, so I applied and had an interview. The lady who interviewed me was very nice and I was hired. For a while I was legitimately excited about riding a big cruiser bike around Hyde Park, telling stories about Obama and occasionally inserting a couple of my own anecdotes about the Hyde Park hobos. I had accepted the position whenI checked my inbox and suddently saw that Burgeon Education, a company that had put up a posting on the student employment website, had taken interest in my application. I had sent them an application and the day after I got the bike-tour job I got the China job. I instantly sent an apologetic e-mail to the bike tour people saying that something else had come up.
Something else had come up indeed; a two month trip to Hangzhou (often known as one of the most beautiful cities in China) with paid accommodations and food. The internship itself consists of talking to Chinese students about how good American universities are and why they should apply (along with purchasing the indispensable help of Burgeon Education to guide them through the application process). The clincher in this deal is that I don't need to know Chinese, of which I know none. I can already picture myself clutching onto my phrasebook as though it were more important than my passport. While this language-barrier might be close to total, it will in the least be a good opportunity to ponder all the Wittgenstein I read spring quarter.
All in all, I leave tomorrow. I plan to use this blog to tell of all the zany things Chinese people do
as well as of all the stupid things I end up doing. If worse comes to worst and I can't find any English-language keyboards at the internet cafes then I will have to find another way to publish (I'm thinking microfilm in milk-canisters tossed into the ocean. The medium is the message!).
If anyone wants a postcard drop me your address in the comments box and I will send off some personalized mail (with a picture!).
ChinaTrip by the books:
Totality and Infinity Emmanuel Levinas
The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie
Lady Chatterley's Lover D.H. Lawrence
Marquis De Sade reader
Forests Robert Pogue Harrison
The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo
Much Love,
- Bruno C.
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