56 Mondays

I have 56 Mondays remaining on the payroll of my current job. I have started listening more to the world around me. And while in Leiria, Portugal, I put on headphones to listen to young boys who were using Google Translate to speak to each other.

Both my son Dylan (13) and Salvatore (10), the son of colleague Filipe Santos in Portugal were exploring part of the Polytechnic Leiria campus together. They discovered the gymnasium, Chinese Pagoda, and the podcast studio. I enjoyed watching them ask each other questions through their handsets' translation tools. I quickly discovered they often slurred their words so the translations were a little convoluted.

After the first three days in Portugal, I resolved to learn counter service Portuguese (e.g., enough of the language to get by when ordering over the counter). I dropped into Google to see the Portuguese language tutors in Ireland and discovered I am directly connected to a native speaker in Clonmel! That is one of the beauties of the European Community. In fact, I have heard Portuguese spoken on my small university campus so getting upskilled should be simple enough.

I am indebted to Christian Payne (documentally), Maura McHugh (Splinister), and Simon McGarr (The Gist) for their weekly long form posts. I am trying to achieve their continuity of expression by launching my weekly Mondays series below the radar. It will be interesting to see if they spot my early alpha work here on Ghost.org.