Applying for Jobs

Well, one today. But I'm hopeful about this one... of course, I always am, and that doesn't mean I'm getting it.

It's for a data typist at a hospital, 20-24 hours a week, and 1 year for now. That is, if they'll take me. One weird thing is that they chose to write the female version of the Dutch word datatypist, namely datatypiste. Of course, this didn't stop me, but it may imply that they're looking for a woman. Two, actually, so if they can't get anyone, perhaps I'm good enough. I'd like to. Wish me luck. And I'll keep on looking.

Tie Break

I'm having a break from everything with my ties. For the first time, I'm going to re-tie all of my ties myself. To aid me in doing this, I have found this hopefully wonderful site.

I thought Google was supposed to be easy... but this looks like Yahoo! Where's the cool, simple interface?

Cooking with Me, episode II

I just found out that I was already registered on Guru.com, but I'm going to create a new profile from scratch, and seriously pay attention to, and bid on, projects. That said, let's start cooking.

Today's meal is what I call Super Mario Meal. Actually, I just thought that up. Things you'll need:
- Tortellini al Formaggio
- mushrooms
- olive oil
- pasta sauce
- salt
- water

Wash the mushrooms. Cut the mushrooms in convenient pieces and fry them, then add the pasta sauce. Meanwhile, cook the pasta. When both are done, throw it all together. Invite Mario and Luigi and have a great time.

I'm tired.

I feel so sleepy that it's not even fun. Sometimes being sleepy can leave you in a tranquil state of mind, so that you can focus on what you're doing. But.

After that comes what feels like a sudden, horrible absence of brain cells, and you feel like a zombie. That's when you know you should be sleeping. And that's how I feel right now. Sometimes I wish the Sun would go up when I get out of bed, and that it gently sinks behind the horizon when I want to. But alas, it is not so, and I should be happy we have a Sun and Moon at all (and not several, like the fictional bi-solar planet of Tatooine).

Still, I got up early to accompany Mom to the physical therapist, and now I'm paying the price for my willful insomnia. I need more sleep. And I need to research what it takes to write things for people who are too lazy to type (sometimes called Freelance Journalism).

Test Results

Comrades, I can safely inform you that the test of our new atomic weapon in North Korea has been executed and succeeded. Oops, wrong test.

It was a bit of a disappointment, this test. I mean, I already knew that I have an interest in languages and computers, and I'm not looking for an education in that in another part of the country. So, now for that Guru.com thing, I suppose... and if necessary, I'll have to lay aside learning Japanese for a while, in order to be able to learn skills that Really Matter, like PHP.

With the ongoing support of my dear friend Winnie the Pooh, I should be able to figure out my future. Hopefully.

Guru.com

Note: Anonymous commenting is now enabled for this blog.

What I'll do today, is to take that test I was talking about yesterday. You know, to see what I really like. I really don't have a clue.

Another interesting thing I'll do is to sign up with Guru.com. Maybe I'm too young to be called a professional in anything, but there are some things I'm pretty good at. My skills in HTML are at a level where I prefer making my sites in Notepad, and not with WYSIWYG editors. If I must though, I think I'll use Dreamweaver MX. I have a book about that with a lot of pages, so it must be a good book. Other things I know are: Visual Basic 6, with the opportunity to learn Visual Basic.NET if needed (I just need to actually buy that, but I do have two books about it); translating Dutch-English and English-Dutch, and writing in both languages for that matter; and even a bit of drawing, but I'm not sure if people like what I make enough to have me make it for them. In any case, I do know some things about Almost Everything, and I don't think hoping for a freelance Internet journalism job is unrealistic.

Finally, about the Japanese, I'll have to download those audio samples and add them to my playlist. It is my opinion and experience that when you listen to something often enough, you'll remember it in the end.

Japanese Language in Sounds

Before I'll proceed with the book, I'd like to get a feel of how to pronounce Japanese. That's where this mini-course enters the big picture. It has WAV files, and it's a cute little introduction to the language.

Results?

Some of those web sites (of Dutch colleges) are kind of hard to navigate... or just down. I'm going to take a test on one of them though, to see what I actually want to Study there. Also, I am going to research some job sites and enscribe in employment agencies - let them do the work for me.

As for the Japanese, I read through the introduction of the book with the pronunciation guide, and it kind of came back to me. Japanese is such a cool language. Although I don't have the audio cassette that optionally accompanies the book, so I'll have to hunt the Internet for MP3s or other audio for beginning students of Japanese.

Plans

By now, you should know that I live in The Netherlands. I'm going to look on the Internet for job( opportunitie)s. A way to do that is to look at sites. Like, we have an interesting TV station here with information on what my beautiful city does for education. I might have to be educated to actually have something to look for, although I'll also try with some employment agencies to get (temporary) work. This should be fun, and at least useful for me to do. Perhaps I'll even make links here.

Furthermore, as for personal learning projects, I'm going to learn Japanese. Again. But this time for real. I only remember 'hai', 'lie', 'hajimemashite', and 'dozo yoroshiku', and I might not even have spelt that correctly. I can't even count in Japanese anymore. But, since the last time I tried to learn Japanese, I think I've improved my sense of languages, especially of English.

Lastly, I believe reading books helps improving anything, provided they are the right books. Currently I'm into naval history, and that will probably show in the list of things I'm currently reading, which doesn't exist yet. Eventually, it might look something like the right part of this site, so Ron Gilbert will have inspired me in more than one way (the other way being Monkey Island).

Of course, all this will cost time, so I have to lay aside seemingly cool things you can do on the Internet, like posting in forums or whatever. Oh yeah, I did promise someone to look for music by Willy DeVille (some singer, I'd never heard of him before though). But I'm cutting down on my useless Internet usage. Which doesn't mean there isn't any useful use of the Internet.

Cooking with Me

And to show that I not only do senseless stuff, but also interesting things (in my opinion): I cooked today. The recipe is Madhur Jaffrey's, with a few alterations made out of laziness, weirdness, or other reasons beyond the scope of this Universe.

This should serve about 3 people. Okay, so you buy two broccoli-things (or whatever they're called, work with me here, I'm from Holland and trying to be bilingual), some garlic, and (Chinese) ginger. Also some of those cute little mini baby potatoes, or whatever you like with your food, and (very important) sesame oil. This is key to the whole meal. You can also just serve a plate with only sesame oil, but I don't think that's healthy. Sesame oil is available at those stores where they sell exotic food stuff you never heard of (and perhaps don't want to hear of). Get that? Okay.

Wash the broccoli, cut it into convenient bits, peel three parts of garlic (sometimes called toes, yuck), and squash them with a knife, or anvil if that's handier. Take three ginger balls (or whatever they came in, or more if you just love ginger). Now, make some bouillon - you're going to cook the broccoli in that later. Once that's done, you can put some oil (I use olive oil, but just about anything works, I guess) in a wok. Put the garlic and the ginger in, and then the broccoli. Fry until it's lovely green (shouldn't take too long), then put the bouillon in. Add about two spoons of sesame oil, put a lid on the wok, and just let nature do the rest. Then fry the potatoes, and when you think it's good to eat, you're done.

Now, maybe that sounds hard, but if I can do it, you can too. Next recipe will be one of my own, but I don't know when I'll post that (meaning I don't know how many posts until that).

Welcome to Me

Me being me, or this new web log of mine.

Why another web log? Well, I need to know where to go with my life. And writing it all down helps. Yes it does, don't argue. At the moment, I am out of a job, and mostly bored, because I do hardly anything else than playing mindless games. So we'll have to change that, and I'm going to use this blog to help me do it. Things I can (and have to) do are to find a job, and eventually to go to another (Uncle Sam's) country.

Between that and here & now are several activities I can undertake in order to make myself a more complete person. Such as. Reading, Writing (here), Learning. Learning: Japanese, Dreamweaver MX, Visual Basic.NET, Guitar.

Obviously, I'm not going to do all of those things, but I have to give myself a direction to go, and collect knowledge from everywhere. I believe that by reading, you can obtain a lot of knowledge and experience. Also, I finally have to work through some books that are now rotting away on my shelf, some of them being coursebooks of sorts. I'll update you with all this while I'm alive, Right Here. Enjoy.