- Looking for work. This hasn’t been an issue for me so far, but I dread the day on which I can’t find a new project. Times are tough and I’m not very experienced yet. The irony of companies asking for experience all the time is not lost on me: I need to get experience but I can’t get a job because they all require the experience I still need. The lack of job security can really get to me at times. How will I pay the rent if I can’t find work for a couple of months in a row? I won’t and I’ll have a problem.

- Managing my money. I’ve always had a hole in my hand, a black hole no less. Money disappears into it, nothing much comes back and I wonder where the hell it all went. Usually I find out I spent it on things like that one gadget I loved or nights out in Amsterdam, stuff like that. Putting aside half of what I see coming in has proven difficult for me, even though I thought I had it all figured out. Moving to Castricum made me take money out of that account, because I needed stuff for home improvement. I need more discipline when it comes to keeping money for taxes and BTW (VAT) in my account.

- The paperwork. Since my financial skills are quite poor already, I got myself a bookkeeper. She handles my mom’s bookkeeping as well so we drive over to her house once per quarter and we dump our paperwork. I would never have got it right by myself. Of course, a bookkeeper isn’t free so I earn a bit less each month. The paperwork still does take extra time; the so-called non-billable hours can fill up that fifth day of my working week. I need to invoice, which is quite easy but still takes time and then I need to check, double-check and double-double-check whether I get paid. Which brings me to:

- Agencies, ugh! IBM pays agencies after 70 days when they invoice. The first agency I worked for told me “yeah we can’t pay you until after 30 days” (this got me into some serious trouble in June last year since I didn’t know payment would take 30 days). So I settled, neatly put ‘pay within 30 days’ on my invoice. They did pay on time, except for with the last invoice when they ‘forgot’ to add the traveling expenses.
Then I switched agencies, and I was told “yeah unfortunately we can’t pay you until after 60 days” (which -again- got me in trouble, since I moved at that particular time). I complied again, even though I don’t know if agencies can even do this. So far, they’ve consistently not paid me on time, so the term lasted (almost) 70 days anyway. I made a reminder e-mail just to make sure they actually pay me after those 60 days. It got me an out-of-office autoreply today.

I hear people who love having a company, but I don’t understand them much. Sure, you can deduct almost all VAT on stuff you buy and you get to browse at the Makro store, but those are about all the benefits I can see. If I got a regular job, it would be much easier money-wise and I’d actually be done working when going home. Also, I like job security. Though I have to say, mentioning to people that you run a business is simply awesome.

Char is not the only person fooling us Dutch people. We have another Uri Geller show coming up and then there is Derek Ogilvie. I have to be ashamed of myself and say that even I believed that guy for a while, until I remembered Char and the Zembla report. I wondered if similar reports exist about Derek Ogilvie, and indeed they do. In a blog post by a spectator of his show the skepticism is quite clear. But this guy is better than Char. Cut the scenes for his shows right and you have a guy who knows that the wallpaper in the second room to your left on the first floor has been torn apart.

But all they do is guess. James Randi, the guy who’s trying to uncover all these frauds, tested Ogilvie and he only got 1 out of 20 tests right. Randi has a reward worth US $1,000,000 for the first person to pass his test. He has yet to meet the first person to pull it off.

So we know all of this. We know Uri Geller, Char and Derek Ogilvie have all been unmasked. So why do we still believe them? Why do the networks and these clowns still make money out of emotional people who are willing to believe anything? The answer to that is the same as the answer to why religion exists. It soothes people, they’re lured into a false sense of security. Your loved one is with you, don’t worry. What is his name? Oh is it a she? Does the name start with an R, E, or a T? Tina? Oh no of course, I meant to say Caroline. She’s with you. And she says you should give me more money.

But there are a number of drawbacks, which I care about in various degrees. Let’s name some of them.

There’s a reason why a tweet is only 140 characters long. If you need to tell a story that’s over 140 characters, it doesn’t belong in a tweet. This is a statement I’ve heard all over, so I think I can cautiously say that it’s a general consensus. Some people decide to tweet three or more times about the same subject though, or they literally break their tweet with a ‘…’ and continue it after ‘…’ in the next tweet. To those people I’d like to say: get a blog.

Twitter is not quite MSN. That is, you can send each other @replies, but only direct messages are private. It doesn’t happen very often, but I sometimes catch an MSN-like conversation on Twitter. It makes me feel like some sort of intruder and that’s a ridiculous notion since these people choose to let the world see their conversation, but still. I can’t put a stop to it other than to unfollow them. I’ve considered it numerous times for some, but what about the stuff I do want to see? It’s a tough decision, and in the end I always choose to keep the users and view the useless tweets anyway. I’m curious and I like to see the rest of their scribbles, so what can I do. If Twitter sported an option that hides @replies for specific users to other users from my list, that would solve a big part of this issue.

And then there are the endless complaints. I have refrained from commenting on people’s Twitter behaviour up to the writing of this post, because how they use Twitter is their own choice, and if I’m really that annoyed about it, it’s up to me to unfollow/block them. However, others don’t seem to treat me that way. I’ve been completely bashed over retweeting a tweet with which you could win a prize. It’s spam, they argue, and spam is evil. I think there’s little difference between this and your average ad, but hey, sure, whatever. I can see their point, and even though I think it’s their responsibility to unfollow me if they’re bothered by it, I can adapt. No more spam it is.

But what I really don’t appreciate is getting bashed over posting something about my day. Getting into a long discussion because I posted one tweet was not what I imagined Twitter was going to do for me. The most agonising part of it is, people tell me I should unfollow them if I’m that annoyed, but those same people badger me about my tweets and they still follow me. As an added effect it makes me walk on eggshells, I hardly tweet anymore.

Then why haven’t I quit Twitter? Because I like the idea of knowing when people are going out, and sometimes I see/hear something funny I’d like to share. And of course, curiosity. And maybe I can win a prize! Oh no wait…

Ik mis twee dingen aan het internet…

1) postzegels en enveloppen die moeite en geld kosten.
2) de mogelijkheid mensen met een hamer knock-out te slaan.

Zo, dat moest er effe uit.

When I was young (say, 10) we used to live in an area next to a block of homes for the elderly, and if you didn’t collar, tag and perhaps even spraypaint your cat to indicate it belonged to your address, you’d have lost it in a week. One of those sad lonely grannies would go ‘awww such a cute cat, and look I can feed it fish so it must be hungry and homeless!’, and weeks later you’d see your cat trail around that block with a strange collar on it and enter a pet door in one of their homes. Giving the cat a collar of your own didn’t always work. I wonder what they were thinking… “oh my, that collar has no name on it so God must have put it on there for me!” or some such thing? I’m amazed by what people think all the time, so it wouldn’t surprise me. Back then, we lost two cats in that way and we picked up a cat there too, since we found out where it went. I remember my dad got very angry over that with the lady who took the ‘poor’ kitten in.

Whenever you live in a neighbourhood and you have cats, things get complicated. The neighbours will always know better how you should take care of your cat, because cheap food isn’t good enough and cats don’t belong outside (funny, it’s always been my idea that they don’t belong inside all day since they’re hunting animals). Katja, our little cat, is basically being taken care of by the whole neighbourhood. My nextdoor neighbour gives it food because ‘it’s starving’ (bullshit, it eats anything alive or dead, like fish, cheese, our desserts and cake), and after that she complains that the cat’s always in her house (well duh, she gives it food, what do you expect!). On the other side a few houses down the road, we talked to people where our cat was staying because it really likes Whiskas. How it works I don’t know, but something in people’s heads stops working when they experience the cuteness of cats. They forget that they’re other people’s cats, or that they’re not sad and hungry when they beg for food.

Bottom line is, I really hate people who mess with other people’s cats. If our cats were dogs, it’d be unheard of. So, what is their problem? Why can’t they get their own cats? Ah yes, because they’re too busy working. Having a part time cat is handy, so it seems. In any case, they should stay away from our cats. Blegh.

In de afgelopen maanden heb ik enorm veel mensen hun mening horen uiten over het toekomstige rookverbod in de horeca. De algemene conclusie die ik wel mag trekken (al heb ik uitzonderingen gehoord) is dat rokers boos zijn en het verbod over het algemeen niet eerlijk vinden. Niet geheel ongerelateerd daaraan ben ik in de afgelopen maanden steeds een stukje meer geagiteerd geworden over de kromheid van die mening.

De meest gehoorde opmerking van rokers, of anders wel degene die het meest is blijven hangen is “maar wij hebben het recht om te roken, als wij onze longen willen asfalteren moeten we dat zelf weten”. Met dat laatste deel ben ik het meer dan eens. Over je eigen leven oordeel je zelf wel, net zoals ik weet dat ik met mijn eetpatroon ook geen 100 zal worden. De rokers met deze mening zien hier echter een belangrijk punt over het hoofd. Hun recht op roken asfalteert namelijk (in mindere mate, maar alsnog) mijn longen en de longen van vele anderen in dezelfde ruimte vrolijk mee. Wat nou, ‘recht om te roken’, wat dacht je van mijn recht op schone longen?

De mentaliteit van rokers is voor mij verder onbegrijpelijk. Niet alleen negeren ze dat stoppen met roken veel beter voor je is, daarnaast negeren ze ook heel vaak niet-rokers en de problemen die zij hebben met de rookwalmen. Dit artikel over de hersenen van rokers verklaart een deel van deze oogklepmentaliteit. Onderzoek heeft uitgewezen, zo meldt het artikel, dat de hersenen van rokers fictieve informatie wel registreren maar hier vervolgens niets mee doen. Informatie als “als je stopt met roken leef je langer” komt wel over, maar wordt ergens in de hersenen geblokkeerd en vervolgens zal de roker geen actie ondernemen om langer te leven en dus te stoppen. Daarom stuit je tegen een betonnen muur als je een roker probeert uit te leggen dat roken slecht is. Natuurlijk weten ze dat. Allang al. Ze hebben alleen geen zin om te stoppen, of ze vinden het lekker, of het kalmeert ze, of het is hun enige zonde dus waarom niet.

Smoesjes, allemaal smoesjes. Een duiveltje op de schouder, of in de hersenen, die ze dat doet vertellen. Dat maakt mij verder niet uit, want zoals ik al zei, mensen moeten doen wat ze willen. Ik zou het alleen heerlijk vinden als ze mij niet bij hun rook betrokken. Dan kan ik lekker verder eten.

Vervolgens pakte een van hen een strippenkaart, liet die aan de conducteur zien, en zei “doe maar een zone dan”. Ze hadden nooit gestempeld en de conducteur had er niet eens moeite mee. “Meneer de conducteur! Meneer de conducteur! Doet u ook aan de Ramadan?!” hoorde ik nog, maar aangezien ze mij waren vergeten lette ik niet meer op. Tot ik hoorde “Kijk maar uit hoor! As je te dicht bij haar staat wordt ze kwaad!” en daarna “Ze is een beetje dik! Hihi!”. Toen vonden ze het jammer dat ik niet reageerde. Ik kan nu natuurlijk de meest grappige, briljante antwoorden bedenken maar al wat ik toen kon zeggen was “jammer dat jullie jezelf zo voor lul zetten”. Bij de dam stapten ze uit.

Nu gaat mijn vooroordelen-generator werken. Ik word zo kwaad van die ‘buitenlanders’ dat ik er bijna Wilders van zou gaan stemmen. Maar helaas, dit soort pesterijen doet iedereen. Tot op de dag van vandaag weet ik nog steeds niet wat iemand beweegt te gaan pesten. En het vreemde is: ik denk niet dat ik een politieke partij ken die dit actief meeneemt in het partijprogramma. Ik ben zelf te oud om me nog te laten kleineren door pestertjes, sterker nog, als ik niet geblogd had was ik deze meiden morgen al vergeten. Toch zijn er heel veel mensen en kinderen die er last van hebben. Daar zou ik nou wel eens wat meer aandacht voor willen zien.