On the door of the hospital was a sign saying No Smoking; no surprise to British eyes there. Just below it was one saying No Weapons; which seemed a little alarming.
Amanhã
In Portuguese the word Amanhã has a literal translation of tomorrow. However, it is often used to mean not now, probably not tomorrow, but maybe sometime in the future before the heat death of the universe. This confuses foreigners who when they they receive the response that something will be done Amanhã, expect it to be complete within the next twenty-four hours.
It seems that here in California the people at Yahoo lack a word that carries the same sense of desperate urgency. I sent an email on September 3 at 10:11. On Thursday 13 November I received a reply which included the following understatement:
It is definitely our intention to reply to your query within 24 hours, however, due to an increase in email volume, our response time has been delayed.
To add insult to injury, the reply bore no relation to the issue that I had raised and might as well have been generated as an auto-response.
