There really is no middle way for me, apparently. I hope I have the same energy trying to re-do my philosophy assignment. Technically I didn’t fail because there’s an initial handover and commentary returned but from the looks of the amount of red text I can basically do the entire thing again. Butthurt! Though I would make a great politician, he said. lol.

Also sent out 4 variants of a website design to that charity I’m working for. Wish I could show it to you, the kids look so cuuute.

Tints of brown is still one horrible set of colours to work with. Depending on the type of screen / graphic card “tan” is somehow upgraded too bright or downgraded too flat. Hope they like it:) Also hope they can put one in gear themselves and come up with texts and menu items. We shall see! If they’re game, I’m game. I keep my promises. I promised to tell them when it’s becoming “too much” (working, studying and this). But… I see stuff like this as an opportunity to get into contact with more people, do something good for the (global) community and have some fun outside of work that isn’t “shutting myself in, within 4 walls”. So desu ne~ use it as long as I still have the energy, I’d say.

Did some research on cars today. Toyata Auris at least has decent engines. Kia Rio is really not bad, my friend was right. Only has itty bitty engines. Might go test drive all three (yes, DS3 too). Oh Doiha-chan (my old Peugeot), please hang on before October. October they’ll be raising the tax on luxury goods to 21%. I would be a douchebag if I don’t buy another car before that time.

Let’s go! Burning rubber :D

Nobody ever died from a hard day’s work, but I sure do know what else can flame people out. A few weeks ago they said on the news burnout rose to 14%. from 11% in one year. I’m just happy it didn’t happen to me. I told this a business contact one day in grey past: all that stands between you and ill health are the wrong kind of people. Determined to make a difference one day. Because I have a heart? Maybe. Can’t say I don’t have one, even though some people insist to confuse their own confusion as something that belongs to me or get seriously confused with what I’m actually saying. It’s most likely in my own best interest I do something that makes people around me enjoy their job because I want to enjoy mine. I’m quite through ignoring people’s problems or heave and pull a couple dozen without a license because I have no other possibility. Prepared to work insanely to get a grip on it, with or without permission, on or off office hours, as long as I’m healthy: I should find any way possible to butt into the real problem. This world is one big fishtank of problems, none of them ever start or finish with a zero or one [binary]. You know me, I’m “where ever the problem is”. Walking around for 8 years, all problems I’ve seen talk and wear shoes. Everything else sorts itself out if that’s kept “under control”; automagically. Quite funny that it’s only ‘under control’ for humans when it starts with trust and freedom, isn’t it? I never did like it, and my personal norms of right and wrong always did override any social norm. How else do you become a female engineer? If I would have accepted the “technology is not for chix fad”, I wouldn’t have done it. A little naive of what that would mean in the “big bad world”, but being deaf really has its charms;) I’m very persistent in my “shoulds”. The only thing a person should learn is how to be flexible in moulding their environment to reflect their values. Patience: I have none, that’s why I’m obligated to go through extreme measures and be a bit extreme in my spare time. The truth is people call it patience, the absence of flexibility, but what they really mean is to accept things that shouldn’t be accepted as a normal state. I live my small existence to challenge that, whichever way. Trust me, you’ll thank nameless people like me to at least “try” 100 years down the road.

It somewhat resembles a “Mini” I think, only it’s bigger. New completely unaffordable with the engine I want need. The problem with this car is, it’s only been on the market for about 2 years, so there’s only …. expensive occasions. Oh yea! Exactly that color, with the white rooftop. Preferably 1.6 because that’s what I’m used to. However, I’ve noticed from my parents car the engines have improved quite a bit. Even though Doiha-chan is more powerful than the diesel version 1.6 lemon, I might be shocked driving in this car.

I want a lemon! If only they put this car on the market a few years earlier! I’ll look around, see if the amount still makes me faint.

Mérde, the competitor sure knows how to fffuuuuuuuuu a good car:

Left is the model I got, only 5-dr, and the right is their ‘new model’ (out a long while by now). No, I say no!

Recorded some more summaries today, while cooking. Every once in a while before what is in the pan is going to burn, I run back and forth from the stove to the stairs to hear if my computer is still yapping to itself. If it isn’t I run up the stairs and put on the next text to read and record.

Do I get tired of myself? Yes! Yesterday I fell asleep with my netbook still on my tummy until I figured out that I was hugging my netbook instead of my pillow about halfway through the night.

Oh, and somewhere this weekend I hope I can finish the colours on the website I’ve been building for that good cause. Holding it back because even though that color looks good on my screen, the downstairs pc made it look ugly as hell.

I really should be searching for a new kah tomorrow. I have my doubts about Doiha-chan’s longlevity. I mean: I had doubts my car would live through winter, but since I drive so much these days I start to notice more and more things that make me worry.

Gehobelt (strips in english, schaafsel or geschaafd in dutch)

or

Geriebelt (grated in english, geraspt in dutch)”

Geriebelt I knew, but gehobelt is new to me too. So is that parmasan shaped into the humpback of Notre Dame?

Looks like every chapter is about an hour to two hours. If this works well, I’m filing for exam next week. Anything to prevent hating my time on the road!~

Hmmm. Maybe I should upload this for other students?

Afterwards we went for an ‘all you can eat’ sushi binge. Over here that’s with the Chinese. lol. Usually you don’t eat Chinese food because it isn’t real Chinese food because it’s adjusted to Dutch taste, but, since the joint was loading up with actual Chinese people our best bet was that we should have had Chinese! One of these days, I’m going to be find the absolute best Chinese joint that makes Japanese food. haha. There’s always something wrong with it. Close to my friend there’s a restaurant that doesn’t serve wasabi with sushi, even if you look under the fish it isn’t there! After nagging, I got my wasabi, which I could eat with a spoon it was that mild. Excellent meat dishes though, fish was fresh enough to pass, and the man did not lie they put a lot of effort into the rice making.

This restaurant we went to today has some of the better filled miso soups, portion sizes are huge. Their gyoza sucks beyond belief, I make better gyoza than that. It’s like they were trying to make steamed soup-dumplings. Rice a little too dry, and depending on the type of fish it can be really fresh or … “you won’t die eating it”. If you want to check, you need to order tuna straight up. If the color is pretty lifeless, don’t eat any more and skip to meat. I also ate something I will never _ever_ eat again: “spicy tuna rolls”. I don’t do spicy too well, and I believe I’m going to scream spicy tuna rolls at 3 am in agony.

This white couple came in, sat down, ordered drinks and left shortly after without having a meal. My friend heard the husband say: “Don’t they have saté here?”. *facedesk*.

The article also discusses single women’s view on ‘open relationships’, not surprisingly, nearly all respondents were negative on this. I’d have to agree, nothing as pointless to hang out with a man you can’t even call your own and waste a hell of a lot of time that way. It’s funny because it’s apparently emotional support women seek in relationships, but if you want that you’re better off with your friends chatting over a cup of joe. Oh, and of course I have a proven track record of emotional trainwrecks I had to support myself, which kinda left things very off balance.

I’m also not much of a relationship type. Don’t have this weird thing other people have about ‘spending time together’, ‘claiming each other’ and then get into constant fights about it.  It is sort of true that I’m double standard in that. If a guy would treat me as uninterested as I can come off, good luck, it would never work.

To me it has always been pretty simple: I’m always the one being counted on in life. I learned to count on myself, and it’s basically a sport of mine to make myself feel as secure as possible; if must be, jumping in strange curtains to make that happen. When man spells danger or drainage instead of loyal stability there is nothing I’m interested in.

*sigh* Where’s the remote so I can hit “pause”?

Also advertized to find a ‘study  mate’ for the last course I need for my P. Heh, I’d be surprised if anyone will actually respond. I mean, the amount of students in the same course can’t be endless. Besides that, I usually dread group assignments because I usually want to get ahead faster. It’s good then that I’ll be back on the job soon, and have two other modules to focus on so I won’t get on anyone’s nerves. xD.

Unlike many netizens I have every screen you served me during that transfer. Better keep your word on this one. I don’t know what fail Dougie Howser MD they put in charge of their bizzniz, but it made me ashamed I was a customer for the past double digits.

AU.

If you see the middle-aged apparatus that seems to work best I’m sure you’ll agree. It’s worse than 5 dentist appointments, but it does the trick for months like no other. Everyone knows the insane curly head of hair I have which is thinning out year after year; wish I could say the same for the furrrrr on my legs. I usually need a couple of beers to attempt it. Hell will freeze over before I’ll show you a picture of furry legs.

My mom was watching Andre Rieu last night; all I said was “Heh, if a bomb were dropped on the Arena there would be no more problem with the pension funds and dementia”.

I was naggin’ my mom today and she said “Just put it down the hole” (bad translation). Then I made a sexually inappropriate comment.

Got my next set of books today. One of them personnel management. Waw… so many things so little time ne, recruiter-sans. Glad I got rid of you people for nao. Look at the fucker:

It’s the last one in my HR-series, if you would call employment & sociology a practical module, that is.

As a human being who likes to call themselves Alien 1.0 for obvious reasons, I have my limits too. Sometimes I look back into my archives and find people have been asking me the questions “Have you ever felt that you’ve overtaken yourself?” and “Don’t you ever become nervous?” when taking on big tasks quite frequently. I’m reasonably thickheaded so I probably would have had this confused look on my face, puzzled where this would come from. It’s because I did not reach my own limitations in content and I don’t get nervous easily. I’m only easily angered, xD. That last thing is a daily challenge to me to still maintain the energy to keep believing in other people and believe in what I do and how I do it because I feel they believe less in themselves than I do or have given up liking their job a long time ago. That makes me angry because I feel that’s my limitation in life, instead of having the dignity to forfeit myself and say I’ve truly overtaken myself on something. My response to feeling ‘social limitation’ was always to work harder and ignore it somehow, or when having no choice – even though I would ignore my place and standing – start to heave and pull a couple of dozen. Knowing such a fate is unworthy and can’t continue for years on end, I started mediating that before I had “extra time to fill”. I will continue to do so because I feel horrible letting such a large portion of my life ‘swim by’ because that’s what other people are doing (?). Sure, it’s easy to ‘give me a challenge’ by putting me on a task with a lot of time pressure, but then, when that’s said and done with I’m just gonna butt in with constructive ideas and interesting questions so it won’t happen again and keep it a well-oiled machine because I want to like my job.

It’s in my nature, I know what I do best: the thing I studied for. Somewhere in between playing the court jester for business, and keeping the eye of Mordor on software vendors/ programmers, picking up after them a bit, cussing about, talk customers out of bad ideas, talk customers into good ideas (so on). Even though they’ll have trouble believing I’m squeezing them hard so they won’t get hurt by someone else in the long run, in the end I know I can get even the grumpiest pessimists and on occasional infidel that believes a woman knows nothing of technology to (at the very least) respect what I say. Sometimes that requires me to sweet talk and sometimes that’s done by – as one of my customers used to say – “being quick with corporal punishment”. I really have no ears for being told off using one or the other method when something is clearly not working and I’m the only one doing something about it. Being sure of yourself really is all that is required, god forbid you don’t end up being confident in an endlessly repeating record that plays the same goddamn thing every day which you can do with two hands tied behind your back.

Example: one time a software vendor of mine, the CEO called me up to say “that he questioned my ability to take care of this on the customer end of the deal” and I didn’t even make any mistake! We barely started this venture. Young, I was. Unintimidated too. So I reminded him “he is my supplier and I’m his customer” and “if he would like to keep it that way to not ask me any more of these retarded questions”. *pulls up panties*. You don’t mess with me, sorry to say. I’d rather be not liked, than ridiculed.

It is true I’m good at grabbing ppl by their little chicken necks to say “shape up or get out”, but the only reason for that is because everyone else is too afraid to do so; but I’m not a boogieman and never mistreat people. My punishment? Usually sent into war zones or dragging a dead horse from the river with no thanks later that I saved the day by excruciating effort. Some people have said  “I’m so jealous of people who specialize”. You know whom I’m jealous of? The people who are well-liked for no other reason then “bla bla bla” until I get to pick up after them. As some of my – needless to say – cruel experiments to demonstrate my ability to bullshit myself to high heaven just as much as the next guy show, I’m more than happy to get people off their high horses and show it’s possible to have both. Things like this may actually sound the “signing off” bell for me when it comes to this career. Any career for that matter. That’s how I also know changing my career from IT into something else in a company is not going to matter. The end result is always the same if people, by their marvelously chosen examples, make me very unamused with their efforts to like their jobs. That’s an example of unfair – which I’d rather describe as incredibly dumb -, but discrimination as I’ve come across it is not. Since we’re such lucky bastards being born with balls in our t-shirts instead of pants, the only thing I would have gotten out of a sector change was to hear nag worth even less chips than before. Unfortunately I’m not even talking cold hard cash on that one, psychologically it would probably drive me insane to be confronted with issues that aren’t even issues, if you know what I’m saying.

All I know is this: if I’m picking up after people like that at 40 years old I’m leaving to start my own company in… I still don’t know exactly… earlier than that. It was too early for me this time around to do something quickly enough. Only one thing is going to mediate it: feeling like I belong (not being mistreated, never being bored, doing something important and being appreciated for that). And yes, that’s how important the job is of managing me if you won’t let me do the job just yet (or never, I don’t care because I hope to be gone by then). I have no other option than to trust my new demi-gods as much as I want them to trust me, because that’s how human relations work. It’s of course understood that I cannot sell my soul for more than the time required to do a job I love and will insist to love. That being said, I don’t know how, because I’m going to be making 50-60 hour weeks again soon, but I better take responsiblity for myself before I’m caught into that noose of nothingness and limitation again. I know very well that I have but one responsibility to myself: guarding my health above all so I won’t exhaust myself beyond resources. Studying Psychology right now, has taught me nothing more than a fancy vocabulary for what I already knew. I made jokes about h00mins and their cooties. I can only hope I’m not fighting off “germs” for a lifetime. Unlike drifting along and doing some makeshift obedience and pretty eyes, you’re only serving demi-gods that are worth any effort if they realize that doesn’t cut it themselves – if merely for their own sake – just like it always was for my own sake I demanded at least to like my job. If only more people followed suit, half of what is unacceptable would disappear. In the end, that’s why I also jokingly said “IT is anarchy”; why I loved it, why I love it still, but it’s true that it’s a stillborn child still coughing up it’s little lungs in agony to enable people instead of disable. Because it is my job to know how my customers do their job, there’s hardly any road back from IT. If this were a taxi, I’m driving my customers around the must-see tourist sights. Whomever doesn’t believe it, is most likely crammed into the backseat to see for themselves. Partly why it’s hard for a woman like me to even get a boyfriend (and be beyond fixing, never pooping rugrats at this point) is that I have never seen such vehement passion in my male counterparts. I know this, like many potentially interested know this too. It would have to come from much more dedication and energy than anything I’ve been shown. The way to capture a woman’s heart however, still remained the same;)