As I boarded the train back to Lisbon, I realized that my first “normal” week was now waiting for me. What exactly “normal” would look like at Rato, however, I (as so often) still had no idea.
The workday starts at 10 a.m., which in Portuguese terms allows for an arrival window of up to plus or minus 30 minutes. So, in order to arrive on time, I “always”- which is also Portuguese and roughly translates to “so far, actually rarely” – leave the house at 9:21 to get to the train station 15 minutes away. (Update – February/week 12: Still late. When I wrote this as a joke, I was fully convinced “future me” would fix the problem. He didn’t. Nuno (my boss), please don’t fire me.)
Arriving on time, Nuno had already decided that I would support him in the workshops and, from now on, work with Roberta, the Italian, on new content for the YouTube channel. That means creating YouTube tutorials about the daily use of the phone (like using WhatsApp) so older people can use their digital devices to connect instead of burying them in the garden and pretending they never existed. Nuno also left it up to me whether I might want to shift my focus again in the coming weeks.
