I am terrified by old age. Not myself at some point being old per se, but rather what old people tend to do when they're old. Or actually, what they don't do. They just seem to sit around all day, I don't know, doing crosswords or playing bingo or whatever. And as I'd rather spend a week doing all kinds of cool stuff than going through the same dull routine for a year, sitting around doing practically nothing worthwhile and being useless absolutely terrifies me. In fact I would rather die than become a useless fossil. So I wonder: did these grandpas and grandmas use to think the same thing when they were my age? And if they did, will I eventually become like them because apparently you somehow can't help becoming like that when you're old and unable to move around well and taking dozens of different medications every day? Or is there a different way?
Thriller author Robert Ludlum (who wrote The Bourne Identity among others) published his first novel at age 44 (which reminds me it's never too late to do anything!) and continued to write highly acclaimed novels until he died at age 74. I'm guessing he was on all kinds of medications and didn't move around too well in his last years, similarly impaired because of old age, but this man just continued doing what he loved. He has shown me that it is possible to continue to do worthwhile things when you are old, so I hold on to this thought whenever I shiver at the prospect of becoming a living and breathing but useless fossil some day, doing little or nothing worth remembering in his last years (and keeping people waiting in line in supermarkets time and again because old people seem to do everything in slow motion).
Also, I have read that (very) old people still in (relatively) good health often still work. For example I read about a 90-year-old man who still toiled on his farm every day and seemed twenty years younger at least. Now I don't relish the prospect of working until I die, but such examples have taught me I should keep busy when I get old (which will fortunately take quite a while yet!), also physically.
So when(/if) I get old, don't look for me in a retirement home, playing bingo with my fellow fossils, but writing stories for the world's enjoyment and going on all the cool trips I can still manage.
Hopefully with a cool grandma by my side who will beg for us to go parasailing again! :)
Monday 26 July 2010
Monday 19 July 2010
Standing by
It appears that most of the time I am merely "standing by" these days. Of course I do stuff while standing by, but still, I realised I am standing by most of the time, waiting for work to come along. And of course every time I am not standing by, work comes along. At the wrong time, with me being in the wrong place (e.g. taking a poop ;P).
Standing by is a peculiar thing. I actually have enough time to go on trips and all (as long as they're cheap, because standing by does not earn one stacks of cash), and do all kinds of stuff, but still I feel compelled to stay at home (or very close to home) on weekdays to be ready in case work suddenly comes my way. So I sit at my computer most of the day, not working, but merely standing by.
And of course assignments will pass me by just when I take a five-minute break from the tough job of standing by. Working a steady job is starting to appeal to me more and more...
Standing by is a peculiar thing. I actually have enough time to go on trips and all (as long as they're cheap, because standing by does not earn one stacks of cash), and do all kinds of stuff, but still I feel compelled to stay at home (or very close to home) on weekdays to be ready in case work suddenly comes my way. So I sit at my computer most of the day, not working, but merely standing by.
And of course assignments will pass me by just when I take a five-minute break from the tough job of standing by. Working a steady job is starting to appeal to me more and more...
Wednesday 14 July 2010
Bureaucracy II
Okay, this is so ridiculous I just have to write about it: I was forced to move in with my mom about 3 weeks ago because my house was going to be demolished and I hadn't yet been able to find a new place for myself. As my mom already had an Internet connection, I obviously wanted to terminate my current Internet contract (with Online). It appeared that you could prematurely terminate your contract when you move into a house where there is already an Internet connection present. Okay, makes sense. But the Netherlands wouldn't be the Netherlands without having to prove that you're actually living at this new address and that there is actually an Internet connection present. So I had to register with the municipality that I was coming to live here (which I had to do anyway), but I had to wait a week to get a copy of the certificate of residence (yeah, printing something is difficult indeed). In the meantime I needed a copy of my mom's Internet contract. But as you obviously can't keep everything, she couldn't find it. She had to call her provider (Tiscali) about this, but they give out contracts only once, they said. They could only provide a contract number, which would do the trick, they assured us.
Fine. So after three trips to town hall and waiting for over an hour in total, I had my little piece of paper to prove I live here. For some reason I couldn't e-mail all this and had to write a letter (who writes letters?!?), including the certificate and contract number. But just now they called and they said the contract number was no use because Tiscali wouldn't give them any contract information either (WHAT THE HELL?!) and now I had to go fetch some bank statement of my mom's to prove that she was actually paying Tiscali. I asked the guy if I couldn't just e-mail it, and he hesitantly said yes but wouldn't give me a direct e-mail address and started to stutter out some roundabout way of sending him an e-mail via the website.
As he was explaining this, I was browsing their website to find some link he was describing, and it hit me that I was surfing the Web at that moment because I was trying to prove I had access to it!! Angrily I told the guy that I was surfing the Web at that moment and that it was ridiculous that I had to spend hours doing all kinds of stuff, sending letters and whatnot, to prove I had access while I was using Internet at the same moment I was on the phone with the guy. He stammered something about it not working that way, and of course I knew it didn't, because we're living in this rotten bureaucratic society, so I didn't ask him if he could just perform some Google search, me copying his action and telling him what the top hit was or something, proving that I was indeed using the Internet. Utter absurdity.
Oh, and it was best if I just sent the bank statement via mail anyway, because "via e-mail it would probably get lost" :S. I told him that once this whole thing was finally over and done with, I would probably have moved again, rendering all my efforts moot. Of course he stammered some noncommittal nonsense answer, like such people always seem to do, uttering words but not really saying anything. So I guess I have no choice but to comply with his preposterous demands.
So. It's going to take me a month to prove I moved to a house with an existing Internet connection, costing me and my mom a couple of euros sending letters and calling hotlines (not a fortune or anything, but a complete and utter waste!), and costing this country money in paying the people working at Online and Tiscali dealing with this, while I could just have proven it with one simple Google search. This is such an utter waste of time and money - and it's definitely not the first time - that I'm losing faith in this country with its bureaucratic nonsense. And getting my Internet from a different provider once I move again is useless because it's the same everywhere. Maybe emigrating would be an option.
Any suggestions?
Fine. So after three trips to town hall and waiting for over an hour in total, I had my little piece of paper to prove I live here. For some reason I couldn't e-mail all this and had to write a letter (who writes letters?!?), including the certificate and contract number. But just now they called and they said the contract number was no use because Tiscali wouldn't give them any contract information either (WHAT THE HELL?!) and now I had to go fetch some bank statement of my mom's to prove that she was actually paying Tiscali. I asked the guy if I couldn't just e-mail it, and he hesitantly said yes but wouldn't give me a direct e-mail address and started to stutter out some roundabout way of sending him an e-mail via the website.
As he was explaining this, I was browsing their website to find some link he was describing, and it hit me that I was surfing the Web at that moment because I was trying to prove I had access to it!! Angrily I told the guy that I was surfing the Web at that moment and that it was ridiculous that I had to spend hours doing all kinds of stuff, sending letters and whatnot, to prove I had access while I was using Internet at the same moment I was on the phone with the guy. He stammered something about it not working that way, and of course I knew it didn't, because we're living in this rotten bureaucratic society, so I didn't ask him if he could just perform some Google search, me copying his action and telling him what the top hit was or something, proving that I was indeed using the Internet. Utter absurdity.
Oh, and it was best if I just sent the bank statement via mail anyway, because "via e-mail it would probably get lost" :S. I told him that once this whole thing was finally over and done with, I would probably have moved again, rendering all my efforts moot. Of course he stammered some noncommittal nonsense answer, like such people always seem to do, uttering words but not really saying anything. So I guess I have no choice but to comply with his preposterous demands.
So. It's going to take me a month to prove I moved to a house with an existing Internet connection, costing me and my mom a couple of euros sending letters and calling hotlines (not a fortune or anything, but a complete and utter waste!), and costing this country money in paying the people working at Online and Tiscali dealing with this, while I could just have proven it with one simple Google search. This is such an utter waste of time and money - and it's definitely not the first time - that I'm losing faith in this country with its bureaucratic nonsense. And getting my Internet from a different provider once I move again is useless because it's the same everywhere. Maybe emigrating would be an option.
Any suggestions?
Tuesday 13 July 2010
Unique creations
This blog entry was inspired by this trailer. "You can achieve immortality simply by doing one great thing." (0:50-1:00)
It seems nearly impossible to create anything really special. Of course, every creation is unique. Take this blog entry, for example. This combination of words has never been written before, which makes it unique in a way. But is it really so different from the billions of other blog entries that can be found on the Web? I don't think so. Still, every creation is of value to someone, like the author/designer and/or a select few (s)he likes to share his/her creation with. This is often sufficient. For example, when I write a short story for a special someone, it needs be special only to that person, or maybe also to myself. Were I to somehow publish this same story, only a very tiny percentage of the world's population would find it even remotely interesting, or would not even understand it.
On the other hand, if you really wish you create something that millions of people would enjoy/love, you need to make something truly unique. You need to add new elements to whatever it is you're creating for it to really appeal to people. Of course something familiar yet different (but without new elements) can be appealing to some people, but these creations offer fleeting entertainment. I'm talking about something people will talk about for years, or even decades: something truly unique.
Take writing a book (my personal dream). Write any kind of thriller and you will find it virtually impossible to add anything truly new. This doesn't mean it can't be a good thriller, but it will always have dozens of familiar elements. Fantasy and science fiction grant you more options, such as creating an entirely new fictional universe, even though it may bear a resemblance to Middle Earth or the Star Trek universe, for example. But thinking up such a universe, including a wealth of detail to make the world seem truly alive and real, is quite the challenge to say the least. And of course you will have to write an amazing and unique story set in that world for it to be truly appealing to great numbers of people.
This is true for many things. Any work of art will be unique but still bear a (close) resemblance to other works of art. A song can be good, but it could also be referred to as "absolutely genius" by critics and fans around the world. The boundary of "unique" vs "truly unique and enormously appealing" is always present, and it takes a person of considerable skill to defy this boundary and create something people will still talk about, say, fifty years from now.
It also takes a person with a certain mindset to want to create something like this. There are many people in the world who don't strive to create something they will be remembered by. For many it is enough to be remembered only by their friends and family, for example. Others don't even think about this and just enjoy life, thus thinking about the now instead of the future. But for some, and I count myself among them, the challenge of creating - or doing, but this may also happen spontaneously - something truly unique, something that will earn you immortality, that will inspire others in years to come, is something that is on their mind constantly, daring them to come up with just one thing that will earn them a place among the great.
Unfortunately, most of them will fail utterly.
Thus the sweeter the taste of victory will be for the ones who do manage to fulfil their dream.
It seems nearly impossible to create anything really special. Of course, every creation is unique. Take this blog entry, for example. This combination of words has never been written before, which makes it unique in a way. But is it really so different from the billions of other blog entries that can be found on the Web? I don't think so. Still, every creation is of value to someone, like the author/designer and/or a select few (s)he likes to share his/her creation with. This is often sufficient. For example, when I write a short story for a special someone, it needs be special only to that person, or maybe also to myself. Were I to somehow publish this same story, only a very tiny percentage of the world's population would find it even remotely interesting, or would not even understand it.
On the other hand, if you really wish you create something that millions of people would enjoy/love, you need to make something truly unique. You need to add new elements to whatever it is you're creating for it to really appeal to people. Of course something familiar yet different (but without new elements) can be appealing to some people, but these creations offer fleeting entertainment. I'm talking about something people will talk about for years, or even decades: something truly unique.
Take writing a book (my personal dream). Write any kind of thriller and you will find it virtually impossible to add anything truly new. This doesn't mean it can't be a good thriller, but it will always have dozens of familiar elements. Fantasy and science fiction grant you more options, such as creating an entirely new fictional universe, even though it may bear a resemblance to Middle Earth or the Star Trek universe, for example. But thinking up such a universe, including a wealth of detail to make the world seem truly alive and real, is quite the challenge to say the least. And of course you will have to write an amazing and unique story set in that world for it to be truly appealing to great numbers of people.
This is true for many things. Any work of art will be unique but still bear a (close) resemblance to other works of art. A song can be good, but it could also be referred to as "absolutely genius" by critics and fans around the world. The boundary of "unique" vs "truly unique and enormously appealing" is always present, and it takes a person of considerable skill to defy this boundary and create something people will still talk about, say, fifty years from now.
It also takes a person with a certain mindset to want to create something like this. There are many people in the world who don't strive to create something they will be remembered by. For many it is enough to be remembered only by their friends and family, for example. Others don't even think about this and just enjoy life, thus thinking about the now instead of the future. But for some, and I count myself among them, the challenge of creating - or doing, but this may also happen spontaneously - something truly unique, something that will earn you immortality, that will inspire others in years to come, is something that is on their mind constantly, daring them to come up with just one thing that will earn them a place among the great.
Unfortunately, most of them will fail utterly.
Thus the sweeter the taste of victory will be for the ones who do manage to fulfil their dream.
Wednesday 7 July 2010
Communicating
We've been doing it since we were monkeys. First by grunting to each other, then developing languages, writing...and then it kind of stood still for a while. The basics were there though, and people managed and all. But when phones were invented, communicating became a lot easier. Recently, even mobile phones and the Internet were added. Communicating couldn't get any easier, right?
Wrong. It seems to me that although some people become addicted to communicating (*cough* tweeps *cough*), many others somehow don't seem able to handle all these incoming communications, and disregard an X percentage of them, X being.....high ;).
It also seems to me that more and more people do not contact friends by themselves, but wait. And when they are invited to something, they don't reply. So what they seem to be waiting for, I have no idea. But taking initiatives doesn't appear to really bear fruit these days. Thinking of and organising something fun to do with a group of friends takes some time and effort, but it doesn't seem to pay off anymore.
Let me illustrate this with an example: when I invited over 10 people for a fun outing that wasn't that expensive and which I offered well in advance so people would actually be able to come, only three people replied, of which two said they couldn't make it for some reason or other. Now, if people don't want to - or can't - go and give me a reason, I get it. Maybe I should have planned it differently or something. But what I cannot get my head around is 50-80% of people generally not replying at all. And these are not strangers disregarding some newsletter they're not interested in, but friends who are invited to do something fun. I don't even know if they even read the message, but I'm assuming they do, since people may often be lazy, irresponsible and rude, but they are curious. It's human nature. So assuming they read the invitation, they must think it too much of an effort or too hard somehow (may I please sigh?) to reply in one or two sentences explaining why they can't come.
This strikes me as a degradation of human communications and extremely off-putting to organisors. Me being someone who likes and feels the need to organise things (as hardly anyone else seems to), I've been wondering a lot if I should continue to try. On occasion enough people respond to actually do something together, albeit with a smaller group than I had in mind, so it's not as if every attempt is in vain, but when you organise something, you want it to be rewarding, with the ultimate reward naturally being a amazing outing with a group of great people, producing memories to cherish, the culmination of your efforts.
Obviously it does not feel very rewarding to me, hence my dilemma: should I keep trying and probably fail more often than not, or should I give up and hope that maybe someone else gives it a shot (probably also feeling that (s)he will have to do it because no one else will)?
Something else I've been wondering about is: then what is it that these people do?? Since they never appear to have time. Do they have some secret club of friends I don't know about? Or (more likely) do they just spend time with a select few people who are easiest to meet with (living close by, etc.) so it can be done with minimal effort?
This seems to be the key phrase here: minimal effort. It seems that modern communications are making people lazier than ever. Almost daily I am stunned by how passive and inert people have become. Would it be different without modern communications? I don't know. Walking places for a lack of phones or an Internet connection as opposed to chatting on MSN seems quite active to me, but then again, I use modern communications all day long and I do always reply to invitations (even to say no) and make an effort to keep in touch with people. So maybe it's just natural for most people to be lax, and not bound to these modern times, as I've been suggesting, but if that's so, I think it's amazing humans have ever accomplished anything.
Wrong. It seems to me that although some people become addicted to communicating (*cough* tweeps *cough*), many others somehow don't seem able to handle all these incoming communications, and disregard an X percentage of them, X being.....high ;).
It also seems to me that more and more people do not contact friends by themselves, but wait. And when they are invited to something, they don't reply. So what they seem to be waiting for, I have no idea. But taking initiatives doesn't appear to really bear fruit these days. Thinking of and organising something fun to do with a group of friends takes some time and effort, but it doesn't seem to pay off anymore.
Let me illustrate this with an example: when I invited over 10 people for a fun outing that wasn't that expensive and which I offered well in advance so people would actually be able to come, only three people replied, of which two said they couldn't make it for some reason or other. Now, if people don't want to - or can't - go and give me a reason, I get it. Maybe I should have planned it differently or something. But what I cannot get my head around is 50-80% of people generally not replying at all. And these are not strangers disregarding some newsletter they're not interested in, but friends who are invited to do something fun. I don't even know if they even read the message, but I'm assuming they do, since people may often be lazy, irresponsible and rude, but they are curious. It's human nature. So assuming they read the invitation, they must think it too much of an effort or too hard somehow (may I please sigh?) to reply in one or two sentences explaining why they can't come.
This strikes me as a degradation of human communications and extremely off-putting to organisors. Me being someone who likes and feels the need to organise things (as hardly anyone else seems to), I've been wondering a lot if I should continue to try. On occasion enough people respond to actually do something together, albeit with a smaller group than I had in mind, so it's not as if every attempt is in vain, but when you organise something, you want it to be rewarding, with the ultimate reward naturally being a amazing outing with a group of great people, producing memories to cherish, the culmination of your efforts.
Obviously it does not feel very rewarding to me, hence my dilemma: should I keep trying and probably fail more often than not, or should I give up and hope that maybe someone else gives it a shot (probably also feeling that (s)he will have to do it because no one else will)?
Something else I've been wondering about is: then what is it that these people do?? Since they never appear to have time. Do they have some secret club of friends I don't know about? Or (more likely) do they just spend time with a select few people who are easiest to meet with (living close by, etc.) so it can be done with minimal effort?
This seems to be the key phrase here: minimal effort. It seems that modern communications are making people lazier than ever. Almost daily I am stunned by how passive and inert people have become. Would it be different without modern communications? I don't know. Walking places for a lack of phones or an Internet connection as opposed to chatting on MSN seems quite active to me, but then again, I use modern communications all day long and I do always reply to invitations (even to say no) and make an effort to keep in touch with people. So maybe it's just natural for most people to be lax, and not bound to these modern times, as I've been suggesting, but if that's so, I think it's amazing humans have ever accomplished anything.
Tuesday 6 July 2010
Bureaucracy
It is incredible to observe how we have become entangled in our own rules. They were established to create order, but by now we are long past order: our rules have become a waste of time and money, or, in a word: nonsense. There are so many examples to give from personal experience alone that I could fill a few pages with it. Now, I'm not going to do that, but one recent one may be worth mentioning.
In the Netherlands, the IB Group provides student grants. When you obtain just about any diploma of a three- or four-year course within ten years of starting your studies, you are aquitted of your debts with the IB Group. Should you not obtain a valid diploma within ten years, you have to pay back your student loan. I have been studying for about 6 years and by now I'm doing my third course, and I have two years to go before I'm officially a Bachelor of Translation. I am going to finish this no matter what. Not only because because I want and need this diploma to get ahead in life, but mainly because I have to pay back about € 8000 of student loans if I fail. So I have four more years to obtain my diploma, right?
Right... Only I received a letter from the IB Group saying I needed to start paying back my loan starting 1 January 2011. What?! So I replied saying I called them before I started my current course and that they told me the diploma obtained after completing this course would indeed settle my debts. But it appears I was still somewhat ignorant of the prevailing hypocritical bureaucratic ways of this country, and I didn't get this in writing. Now I cannot prove that they gave me "permission" to start this course. It taught me that you need to be able to prove everything in this wretched society, or...well...you're fucked.
Anyway, in my reply I also asked them to rescind this charge of me needing to start paying back the loan, and I gave them some other relevant information about my school and in what year I would probably obtain my diploma and all. And what do you think happens? It takes them about 2.5 months to reply and in this letter they tell me they'll see about if this diploma will aquit me from my debts and if I can please send them a certified copy.
....Huh? I just told them I had to study for two more years! And now they're asking me to send them the diploma I don't even have yet, which I told them loud and clear. In other words: it took them over 2 months to reply and they didn't even really read my letter, or they wouldn't have sent me this bogus reply.
So I replied once again, generally just expressing my indignation about their ridiculous message (I tried to be nice but it's hard when they're a bunch of lunatics in charge of your financial future) and simply repeating my initial questions. For some reason, this has to be done by mail, as if they haven't yet discovered the benefits of e-mail, which everyone but poor shepherds in countries I know hardly anything about have already found to be one hell of a step forward. So I also gave them my e-mail address again, though this will probably have been in vain.
I am curious as to how this will end. Will they send me a ridiculous letter every 2.5 months that doesn't answer any questions and doesn't help anyone, and thus take a year to resolve this? Or will it take a year without it being resolved, resulting in me having to pay back the € 8000 loan over the next ten years because at the time I didn't yet see the necessity of getting everything down in writing, signed and all, ignorant as I was of our bullshit government?
These are some expensive lessons, it would seem... Or maybe I'll get lucky.
So what is it that's happening? I'll tell you. So many rules were invented that everything needs to be proven, resulting in no one believing each other any more. And even if some employee you're dealing with believes you, this doesn't matter, because without any written proof, you're not going to get anywhere, and this employee is an irrelevant cog in the machine. But mostly it resulted in employees having to observe these rules not caring anymore. They don't give a shit what happens to the guy they're talking to on the phone, who is just a file to them, with problems that "someone else" will have to sort out (pretty obvious loop, though..). And so you get reconnected to six different departments when you call to resolve something (which will probably be about a problem they created by screwing up something or purposely robbing you by including some crazy rule in their general conditions (which no one ever reads, which they know)), costing you a fortune in telephone charges and precious time. And not resolving the issue at hand either.
Et cetera.
I could go on and on about this. But I'm afraid I have to go, because there is this one piece of paper with this one specific number on it that I need to prove something to some company, and since if I can't find it, I'll have to call them and say I lost it, and they will charge me € 13.50 in administration costs. Meaning they will have to think up a new number and give it to me.
Indeed, that is worth € 13.50.
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