Thursday, April 23, 2020

In Limbo

Last week my mum found my Kindle. I was genuinely surprised since I thought my insomnia and carelessness had burned me on the train to Porta Garibaldi last year, where, lacking the energy and resolve of a general, only Dante's long trek and the sweet tones of the late night ticket inspector kept me from succumbing to the calm of the empty carriage.

Not wishing to play along with my contorted metaphors, the great traveller has decided to mock my lockdown lethargy by plunging me into the circle of those being purged for their rage and rid me of  the urge to log onto my bovine job by blinding my eyes with alpine fog.

Copy, paste, record and crash.

Hearing my voice played back in steely breathy tones makes me want for waxy ears; unfortunately my attempt at distance teaching is unlikely to bring my pupils to lyrical heights.

On my break today I walked up to the thick charred branch which marks the boundary between cultivation and a million brown leaves.
Hearing the crack of dull, vegan foliage whipped some life back into my creaking hands.
Layla, our resident primadonna, once a true night owl, has faithfully followed the zeitgeist by sneezing under her cover - a dusty Italian flag on my bed - staying in after dusk and totally disregarding the ceramic border placed upon the flowerbed.

Latoya, meanwhile, could truly be from New York. She has perfected people watching and extended it to fly-from-box-on-wardrobe gazing, although I suspect that if she ever saw a purple sky she would flip, making claw graffiti all over the curtains.

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Banned from Quora

Those of you familiar with my content will be aware that I mostly posted on Quora - over 2,000 times - to pass time, which helped me get through my long commutes (three hours a day in 2018 and 2019) and which was has recently helped me forget that I was stuck in this house in Monza because of the coronavirus.

I was also a part of the Quora Partner Programme. Hang me if you must.
Up til yesterday I had written around 800 questions and earned $10. Today I was bored and started translating questions from English to Italian. Once I reached my goal of 100 questions today, I sighed in relief, only to discover that I had been banned for writing low quality questions.
I'm not sure whether I made too many grammatical mistakes (I'm only aware of one of my questions being corrected) or whether the fact that nearly all of the questions pertained to goat, sheep and wolves was the crux of the issue.

But anyway, now my Quora adventure has ended.

It was nice knowing all of you!