California There I Went

This summer I will being going to live in Sao Paolo, Brazil to do an internship with my older brother’s company baby.com.br. Brazilian visas are expensive and obviously only valid in Brazil. I wasn’t very eager to pay for a visa that I’ll only use once but what other did I have?  Well most people don’t have any other options, but I’m not most people.

I was born in Quito, Ecuador and after some research I learned that Ecuadorians don’t need a visa to travel to Brazil.  The only issue was that in order to travel to Brazil as an Ecuadorian I would need to renew my long expired Ecuadorian passport. In order to renew my passport I would need to travel to either Phoenix or Los Angeles to visit an Ecuadorian Consul. After looking at the cost of flights I learned that I could either get a Brazilian visa for about $200 or I could fly to California and renew my Ecuadorian passport for about $200.  I chose the latter. 

I had a great time in California getting to know my grandma better, visiting other family members, and visiting Oakley.  The highlights of my trip include:

 (1) renewing my passport,

 (2) being told by Oakley that they might bring me with them to Azerbaijan in order to close a deal in Russian, and 

(3) dinner at Selma’s Chicago Pizzeria.  

It was a great trip.

Helping Someone More Stressed Than Me

I had just arrived at Long Beach Airport.  I was stressed that I had forgotten something and that I wouldn't

 accomplish all that I needed to.  I was only going to be in California for two days and I only had one day to renew my Ecuadorian passport or my trip would be in vain.  With only a few weeks left in school it was a real sacrifice to take a weekend away from school for this trip; I needed everything to go smoothly.  I called my dad to tell him that I had arrived safely and while I was on the phone a saw someone who seemed to be even more stressed than I was.  She was holding a young baby and trying to pick up her stroller that had fallen.  I could tell that she was just stressed and this was the cherry on top.  After several failed attempts to pick up the stroller I left my bags and helped her pick it up.  It was simple.  It really required almost zero effort from me, but you could tell that it was just what she needed and that she was grateful.

Russian One More Time

About a week later a got another email from Oakley.  They asked if I could translate a small 3-fold brochure for them.  Compared to what I had just done this looked easy so I accepted the job.  Well it wasn’t as easy as it looked and there was a lot more in that 3-fold brochure than I realized.  One of the hardest parts about it is that there was very little repetition, whereas the first translation job I did had a lot of repetition.  Ten hours later I was finally done. 
I learned a lot from this experience, but first and foremost I learned that translating is brutal! As fun as it was I would not was to translate for a profession. After all of this hard work not only did I walk away a little richer, but I can also say that Oakley is a $2.1 billion company, and I am their Russian translator.

Easter has always been a fun holiday.  For as long as I can remember part of Easter was finding a hidden Easter basket.  As I got older the hiding places became more and more difficult.  When it was only Tyler, Liam, and I left at home a new rule was added.  You could only keep your basket after you had found all three hidden baskets.  This was usually quite a challenge.  Every year I was amazed at how difficult it was to find our Easter baskets.  My dad is absolutely amazing at hiding our Easter baskets.

Another great part about Easter has always been Easter dinner.  My mom is an amazing cook and Easter dinner has always been absolutely delicious.  Simply put, Easter has always been a holiday to look forward to.

Well this year was a little different for several reasons, (1) I am the only unmarried kid still in Utah and thus the Easter basket tradition loses some of its grandeur, (2) my mom was out town for Easter visiting other family members, and (3) my dad so busy with work and I was so busy with school that I didn’t even get an Easter basket.

Because my mom was out of town my sister Janae decided to host an Easter dinner for my dad and I (her husband was also out of town.)  I was excited for this because Janae is also a great cook and it’s always fun to spend time with her and her family.  As Easter approached the thought hit me “I should invite Ali over for Easter dinner!”  I called Janae to see what she thought and she agreed that it was a good idea.  In the end it was the most bizarre Easter I have ever had: no Easter basket, a Mexican dinner shared by a Nigerian, my dad, my sister and her children, and myself.  It turned out to be a great holiday and I was grateful. 

Easter isn’t about baskets, bunnies, eggs, and dinners.  It’s about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and I’m glad I was able to share this holiday with such good company.

Russian the Translation for Oakley

It all started when I get a text from my Uncle Derik.  He is the VP of Finance at Oakley and told me that they needed some material translated into Russian.  I was eager to help and told them to send me sample of it. It was intense. There were tons of words that I didn’t even know in English, let alone in Russian. However, as I looked up these words in Russian I was happy to see that they weren’t all that different.  Ballistic fragmentation was баллистическая фрагментация (ballisticheskaya fragmentatsiya) and it seems like a lot of these big scary words followed this same pattern. 

I decided that I would accept the offer.  I told them that I would love to do it but I would like to do it after school ended.  They responded and said they needed it within the next 2 weeks. I looked at my schedule and saw that as soon as I finished a test in my econ class I would have an entire weekend to dedicate to it.  I told them I would have it to them by Monday morning.  After some negotiation we settled on a price of $0.25 a word.  I was excited for this business experience but I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into. 

I finished by econ test on Thursday and began translating.  I stayed up all night Friday translating only taking a small nap.  I translated all day Saturday and stopped at midnight so that I could observe the Sabbath.  I started again at midnight on Monday trying to finish it by the deadline of Monday morning but I just couldn’t do it.  I had to admit defeat and tell them I would get it to them by Tuesday.  They said that would be fine and I got to work.  I wanted to get it to them before 8 AM Tuesday morning so I tried to stay up all Monday night translating but my body shut down and I crashed at about 1 or 2 AM.  I woke up the next morning and get to work.  I finally finished just before noon on Tuesday morning.  Overall I spend about 40 hours translating and filled up 19 pages in Microsoft Word.  I was glad to finally be done.

ADD

I’ve always had ADD; when I was younger I took medication for it but as I got older I learned to compensate for it and stopped taking medication.  Well I recently had the worst experience with ADD and a test.  Tests have always been hard for me and I’ve especially struggled with finishing tests on time.  So I had been studying like crazy for an upcoming math and because of work just being busy I decided I would take it the last night. 

My cousin Donevan took the test earlier that day and he told me about his experience.  He said that he got 100 percent and that it took him an hour and a half.  I was excited because I knew that I was well prepared and would do well.  Donevan isn’t a super-fast test taker either so I assumed giving me self a little over and hour and a half would give me plenty of time.  Well I was wrong. Within the first 15 minutes I knew that there was no way I would finish the test.  As soon as I made this realization I had an anxiety attack and my body shut down.  Material that I knew well was suddenly foreign to me and I just kept skipping problems in hopes I would find one that my brain could handle.  In the end I got a 36 percent.  It was without a doubt the worst testing experience of my life.

The one good thing is that it motivated me to meet with a school counselor and I have since been given accommodations including time and half for tests and an isolated test-taking room.

Some Gum to Spare

So for my M Com class I was given an assignment to “give a stranger a coke” and write a blog post about it.  Now I need to confess my sin: I didn't give a stranger a coke.  However I didn't something similar and I felt that it had the same effect.

I was sitting in the airport waiting for a flight when I saw a woman trying to find a place to plug in her phone.  When I saw her doing this it reminded me that I ought to charge my computer so I took out my charger and saw that there was an outlet under my seat.  I informed the woman and scooted over to make some space for her so that she could sit next to me and charge her phone.  As I plugged in my computer charger I noticed immediately that the outlet wasn't working, in fact it appeared that none of the nearby outlets were working.  My computer said it had 40 minutes of charge left in it and our takeoff time was in almost 40 minutes so I decided that plugging in my computer wouldn't make too big of a difference.  I felt bad for the woman who couldn't charge her phone so I asked her if she’d like to plug her phone into my computer to charge it.  She was very grateful and said she would really appreciate that.  It made my computer die a little sooner than I had hoped but I was grateful for the change to help out a stranger.

As my new friend and I sat there I heard the man next to me ask his wife for some gum, she said that is was buried deep in her bag.  I quickly responded that I could give him a piece of gum and he accepted.  So I didn't end up giving anyone a coke but I was able to give some charge and some gum.