An Embarrassing Video, Working Out in the Cold and Saying Goodbye

This week we said good by to our friend Eva, from Chile. We went up to Sandy for the second time, two Saturdays ago, and Becca made paella for everyone. Eva has really gotten into playing Jenga and so after we went to the temple we played a few rounds of that game and 5 Crowns so Becca got another chance to trounce us all. There are some new members of our congregation at Church who are from Viña del Mar (Chile) and last Sunday, I had a webcam conversation with some friends of mine who live in Temuco (also Chile). I think that it would be wonderful to spend a week in Chile this December. Who knows what the future will bring.
It hasn't been this cold in Utah Valley since I moved here in 2003. We went most of the week with our record high of the day being somewhere in the upper 20's. That means that I have to bundle up before I go jogging on the icy sidewalks of south Orem in the miserably cold weather. Becca is very happy about getting a Golds GYM membership and, to her credit, she went both days after receiving it, she took Sunday off. Go Becca!

How would you like it if your absolute worst day at work was on live TV, recorded, edited to show the worst parts and then put up on youtube? Well, that's what happened to my friend Ziad Fazah. Ziad has been to almost half a dozen countries to be interviewed and kind of show off his language skills. They bring on six to ten people whose native languages are languages that he also speaks and then they ask him questions and he responds and interprets for the audience. He has done very well for himself every time but one.

After doing one of these shows in Argentina, a Chilean TV producer approached him and invited to fly him out to be interviewed in Chile. Ziad accepted and a couple of months later flew from Brazil to Chile. He arrived on a Saturday to go on TV the next day. The TV producer then told Ziad that there had been a change. He was going to do a language test in ten languages including Russian, Farsi, Finnish, Greek and Mandarin Chinese. Ziad learned a lot of his languages decades ago and then, when he moved to Brazil, had little occasion to speak many of them. How much Cambodian, Finnish or Bhutanese does a guy need to speak in Brazil? Before he does a language test on TV, he asks only to be told what the languages will be and what they will be talking about so he can review and get ready. After a week or two of preparation, he says that he is completely conversant in any of his 59 languages.

He really should have just said, Sorry I need to review some of those languages before I feel comfortable going on TV and speaking them but here is a list of 30 languages that I can speak well at the drop of a hat. The fact is that he didn't. He was so nervous that he slept only two hours before going on live television the next day. They started him with an Egyptian, which you'd think would be good since Ziad's native language is Arabic, but the guy was a snob and said to the camera, Well, he speaks Arabic but he doesn't speak the Egyptian dialect. Ziad felt attacked and responded that the Christian Lebanese were the most advanced Middle Easterners, even more so than the Egyptians. Things went down hill from there and he responded incorrectly to the Finnish, Chinese, Greek and Russian representatives. He did fine with the other six languages but guess what made it's way onto youtube? That's right, the Finnish, Chinese, Greek and Russian questions.

I saw that video linked to three different websites (including wikipedia) where people said that Ziad was a complete fraud. I defended my friend but the edited video did look really bad and it was hard to refute it. I finally called Ziad and he told me what had happened. I then found out who uploaded the video onto youtube (which was easier than you'd think) and sent him an email explaining the situation and how it was affecting Ziad's career as a language teacher. The next day the guy sent me an email saying that he meant no harm and that he'd be willing to take the video down. It was a big victory and Ziad was very happy.

I've got to take off now and go interpret at a fireside. We enjoyed the letters that you've been sending, updating us on your lives, as well as the blogs, phone calls and other such methods of communication. Have a good week!