I first made the railway journey from Copenhagen to Amsterdam in 1974. Given my ridiculously good memory powers, it has been a source of concern to me for some time that I can remember very little about that journey. A final jog of the memory the other day persuaded me that it was the overnight train, but why take a train journey if you cannot see anything? I tried repeating the same journey in the daytime in 2001, and found myself stuck overnight in a 2-star hotel in Osnabrück (well, I have known a lot worse), as I could not get a connecting train.
So - the Netherlands. First comment, as a colleague politely reminded me when I was working in Uithoorn in 1997, "Amsterdam is not the Netherlands, only its capital". When you have worked in places like Eindhoven and Nijmegen, that is easily confirmed. The mistrust between provinces and capital city I should know only too well, coming as I do from the North of England originally (and finding a polite word for London and Londoners is still not too easy).
Second comment - unlike the countries previously examined, I have actually lived in the Netherlands. Nine years, spread over three separate stays, eight and a half of those years in Amsterdam (so maybe I was not, according to my former colleague, actually in the Netherlands at all (!)), and six months in Maarssen.
Anyway after Denmark, which was difficult to stereotype, we come to a country which is notoriously given to clichés. Windmills, canals, cheese, bulb-fields .... and drugs and prostitution (particularly the Walletjes - the Amsterdam Red Lights District (ARLD)).
Well tourists will come in every so often to check out the windmills, the canals, the bulb-fields, and the manufacture and sales of the cheese. Meanwhile if you want misconceptions, check out the drugs and prostitution side of things.
First point on drugs. Partaking of soft drugs like cannabis is not "legal"! Such substances are "decriminalised". It makes not a ha'porth of difference in the long-term, but it is well worth noting that the Dutch police do once in a while seize large cargoes of imported marijuana - check out the events with former Dutch Godfather of crime, Klaas Bruinsma.
Second point on drugs - smoking them on the street is, in fact, illegal. You have to be in a registered coffee shop to partake. Gradually the laws on this are being tightened. A few years ago they made one attempt at this, particularly trying to prevent foreigners coming to country to try out what was available. Now a second attempt is being made to restrict the amount available to local people.
Third point on drugs - heroin, cocaine, crack, ecstasy are all banned, the police will prosecute anyone trying to sell them, and will close down any establishment where these items are sold.
Conclusion on drugs - it is not quite as liberal or laissez-faire as you imagined!
Harking back to the police closing establishment brings us neatly on to the subject of prostitution.
This is another area that was not "legal", but "decriminalised" for years. It is always a shock for many people visiting the country to discover that in fact legalised brothels exist in the country since only 2002 or 2003 (the exact date escapes me - but, yes, it is that recent).
The Dutch police apparently have the right to close down establishments which are connected with organised crime. It is fascinating that in a country with so much respect for science and logic, that it took the authorities so long to link the worlds of organised crime and prostitution together!
For years more or less anything was allowed. The upmarket brothel "Yab Yum", frequented by the aforementioned Klaas Bruinsma and his cohorts, was finally closed in 2008 due to its links with the criminal underworld - all well and good, but remember that Bruinsma was shot to death outside the Amsterdam Hilton in 1991!
Meanwhile the wonderful myth about all girls working willingly without obligation on the ARLD (no trafficking here, nudge, nudge, wink, wink) was maintained for a very long time. If all of the girls working there had been Dutch, then you might possibly have been able to accept that logic.
As it is the last estimated figure that I saw for this was 43%. The rest (from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, South-East Asia, Eastern Europe, even Israel) just happened to be there as they had heard that they could happily practise their trade there, and came all that way as business would be so good, and they could make plenty of the proverbial brass (OK, to digress here, I read one story in the local press in the North-West of England in the 1980s of a local English girl who ran away to Amsterdam to do that "job" for that very reason! Probably the exception that proves the rule though).
This though is plausible? Really?
A documentary that I saw on the BBC in the 1990s, covering the activities of a gang from Rotterdam in the Dominican Republic, suggested otherwise.
Amsterdam's former crusading mayor, Job Cohen, finally decided that the relationship between the ARLD and organised crime had to be broken. As a result in the past few years, a large number of "windows" in the ARLD no longer offer ladies of the night, but rather designer jewellery and clothing to interested passers-by!
This takes some believing, and I personally think that potential purchasers would really prefer more salubrious neighbourhoods for their shopping expeditions, but that is how events are panning out in the Walletjes, even after the departure of Meneer Cohen for a more significant place in Dutch politics.
The Netherlands is changing. Its longstanding political liberalism is giving way to a greater degree of pragmatism, maybe forced upon it by an ageing population and a low birthrate. It is facing tensions that it avoided for years with its immigrant community, and the rise of so-called populist politicians like Geert Wilders is also serving to fan the flames. Some of the clichés still work, but times are definitely changing.
Given my fond memories of the time that I spent living there, and some of the amazing people with whom I worked, I hope that the changes do not prove too painful, and that it can maintain in these difficult times its traditional attitudes and values.
Friday, 24 June 2011
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Today's school test - essay writing
The following are provocative lyrics from the 1967 song "For What It's Worth" by the American group Buffalo Springfield:
Study carefully and write an article of not fewer than 259 and not more than 713 words on them:
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Study carefully and write an article of not fewer than 259 and not more than 713 words on them:
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
2008 - so what really caused the meltdown?
Well I have been waiting for some explanation from American conservatives on what caused the 2008 meltdown.
I have finally found out.
It was, surprise, surprise, the US government's fault. Bankers were not gambling with their customers' savings and assets on imaginative (that is a cute word for it) derivatives and ridiculously overvalued properties.
Banks are of course part of the private sector, and should not take orders from the government. But when it came to handing out loans they were doing just that. The government wanted everyone to own property, even if people were incapable of paying for them. The banks were told, and sure enough dished out the loans without asking any questions, after all the properties would cover the costs, wouldn't they?
Sounds like real business practices - you do not try and make profits, you let people who cannot pay you back have the money! Yes, of course that is what you do .... No questions asked - ROTFLMAO!
Excuse me for smelling a rat with this argument. Today the British government (the extremely conservative British government NB) came up with a policy where banks should separate their investment arms from their retail arms - so there would be no more risk in the future of people losing their savings in, get this, the "casino economy"!
What "casino economy"? The banks were only doing what they were told, private institutions or not (cough, cough, splutter, splutter!).
And then there is the question why so many foreign banks lost huge sums of money in 2008. All the banks in Iceland, the leading banks in the Netherlands and Ireland, important financial institutions in the UK and Switzerland, even a couple in Germany, all were handing out loans irresponsibly to financially ill-equipped Americans to buy properties in the United States, because the American government told them to?
Huh?????
Well we may, unfortunately in this case (and others - see how we have given the Chinese government carte blanche to decide what happens in the world economically) have the "Global Economy", but since when has the US government had the right, or the gall, to tell private institutions outside their country that they must lend money to US citizens?
Or maybe this did not happen .....
And maybe, in fact probably, in fact extremely probably, the whole story is a red herring! The banks were acting irresponsibly, they were acting like they were in a casino, they were taking huge risks for which they were not adequately covered (see also the item, on banks still taking large uncovered risks, by financial analyst Richard Rodriguez a couple of weeks back), and without much assistance or advice from anywhere else, they brought the whole financial system crashing down!
It may not be a politically expedient argument for those who do not want to believe it, but it is the only one which matches the facts of the situation as it happened!
I have finally found out.
It was, surprise, surprise, the US government's fault. Bankers were not gambling with their customers' savings and assets on imaginative (that is a cute word for it) derivatives and ridiculously overvalued properties.
Banks are of course part of the private sector, and should not take orders from the government. But when it came to handing out loans they were doing just that. The government wanted everyone to own property, even if people were incapable of paying for them. The banks were told, and sure enough dished out the loans without asking any questions, after all the properties would cover the costs, wouldn't they?
Sounds like real business practices - you do not try and make profits, you let people who cannot pay you back have the money! Yes, of course that is what you do .... No questions asked - ROTFLMAO!
Excuse me for smelling a rat with this argument. Today the British government (the extremely conservative British government NB) came up with a policy where banks should separate their investment arms from their retail arms - so there would be no more risk in the future of people losing their savings in, get this, the "casino economy"!
What "casino economy"? The banks were only doing what they were told, private institutions or not (cough, cough, splutter, splutter!).
And then there is the question why so many foreign banks lost huge sums of money in 2008. All the banks in Iceland, the leading banks in the Netherlands and Ireland, important financial institutions in the UK and Switzerland, even a couple in Germany, all were handing out loans irresponsibly to financially ill-equipped Americans to buy properties in the United States, because the American government told them to?
Huh?????
Well we may, unfortunately in this case (and others - see how we have given the Chinese government carte blanche to decide what happens in the world economically) have the "Global Economy", but since when has the US government had the right, or the gall, to tell private institutions outside their country that they must lend money to US citizens?
Or maybe this did not happen .....
And maybe, in fact probably, in fact extremely probably, the whole story is a red herring! The banks were acting irresponsibly, they were acting like they were in a casino, they were taking huge risks for which they were not adequately covered (see also the item, on banks still taking large uncovered risks, by financial analyst Richard Rodriguez a couple of weeks back), and without much assistance or advice from anywhere else, they brought the whole financial system crashing down!
It may not be a politically expedient argument for those who do not want to believe it, but it is the only one which matches the facts of the situation as it happened!
Monday, 13 June 2011
A quick guide to silly European stereotypes and Europe's ladies of the night - Part 2
Crossing the Skaggerak or the Kattegat depending upon your point of origin, you come to Denmark.
It is not just water that divides the Scandinavian neighbours (and do not forget the wonderful bridge now joining Denmark to southern Sweden).
OK - think of a Danish stereotype.
Attractive young blonde women (one-track mind, anyway what makes them any different from Norway or Sweden?).
Pastries. Yes, OK, fascinating. Next.
Beer (Carlsberg, Tuborg etc). Yes, and the Carlsberg brewery trip was one of the highlights of my mini-Euro tour in 1974. But the Germans and Belgians and Czechs have at least as much to offer in this regard, so hardly a stereotype.
Hans Christian Andersen. So Danish women go round kissing frogs which turn into handsome princes (not sure incidentally whether that is Andersen or the German Brothers Grimm incidentally)? Not exactly.
Religious scepticism - 40% of Danes are either atheists or agnostics, indicative if nothing else of an open-minded society. But that is hardly a stereotype.
Pornography ..... Once upon a time the Danes became the first country in Europe to legalise porn (in 1969 actually). For Europeans at least that is the nearest thing to a stereotype you get. The man in the dirty raincoat pushing sleazy pictures of .... THAT ....
A bit old-hat these days though, isn't it? Check the Internet, how much of the material of that type is produced in Denmark? Not a great deal, I would imagine.
I met a Danish guy in Sweden on our camping trip in 1976. He spent loads of time mocking the Swedes for being "serious" and implied the Danes were far more jovial and outgoing. On my trip to Copenhagen two years previously, I had experienced the joviality of the Tivoli Gardens, and generally found the people friendly enough. My encounters over the years since though (including working visits to Stockholm and Copenhagen in 2001) did not indicate a great deal of difference in attitude and culture.
So back to porn - this must, of course point to the fact that the Danes have a very liberal attitude to all matters sexual. Right?
Well "free love" was no more common-place among the Danes than anywhere else in Europe. Teenage kids doing what they do in the "permissive society" existed in Denmark as well as elsewhere, but the adult society is pretty much the same as elsewhere.
As for the ladies of the night, there are some obvious places in the vicinity of Copenhagen's main railway station, which are pretty obviously pick-up places for the like (and not a Danish woman to be seen in them apparently - though reputedly the odd person from Sweden might be found "working" there), but they cannot by law operate as such.
Liberal, but not that liberal, in other words. In a modern sophisticated society you know such activites take place, you just do not acknowledge them. The unsophisticated strangely find ways round the rules, which look like they were intended to be bent in the first place!
I personally have something of an affinity with Denmark as my surname is originally derived from Old Norse (Danish version), my home town was founded by Danish Vikings, and most of the area around there was part of historical Danelaw. I did all the interesting tours round the Viking burial sites, the Viking ship museum etc (there is also an excellent Viking ship museum in Oslo incidentally). It was an interesting (that word again) country to visit. And of course there was the Carlsberg Brewery tour.
Perhaps there ought to be stereotypes that work with the Danes. The curious thing, for me at least, is I am still struggling to think of any. Maybe I need to contact friends in Norway and Sweden to be reminded as to what they are!
It is not just water that divides the Scandinavian neighbours (and do not forget the wonderful bridge now joining Denmark to southern Sweden).
OK - think of a Danish stereotype.
Attractive young blonde women (one-track mind, anyway what makes them any different from Norway or Sweden?).
Pastries. Yes, OK, fascinating. Next.
Beer (Carlsberg, Tuborg etc). Yes, and the Carlsberg brewery trip was one of the highlights of my mini-Euro tour in 1974. But the Germans and Belgians and Czechs have at least as much to offer in this regard, so hardly a stereotype.
Hans Christian Andersen. So Danish women go round kissing frogs which turn into handsome princes (not sure incidentally whether that is Andersen or the German Brothers Grimm incidentally)? Not exactly.
Religious scepticism - 40% of Danes are either atheists or agnostics, indicative if nothing else of an open-minded society. But that is hardly a stereotype.
Pornography ..... Once upon a time the Danes became the first country in Europe to legalise porn (in 1969 actually). For Europeans at least that is the nearest thing to a stereotype you get. The man in the dirty raincoat pushing sleazy pictures of .... THAT ....
A bit old-hat these days though, isn't it? Check the Internet, how much of the material of that type is produced in Denmark? Not a great deal, I would imagine.
I met a Danish guy in Sweden on our camping trip in 1976. He spent loads of time mocking the Swedes for being "serious" and implied the Danes were far more jovial and outgoing. On my trip to Copenhagen two years previously, I had experienced the joviality of the Tivoli Gardens, and generally found the people friendly enough. My encounters over the years since though (including working visits to Stockholm and Copenhagen in 2001) did not indicate a great deal of difference in attitude and culture.
So back to porn - this must, of course point to the fact that the Danes have a very liberal attitude to all matters sexual. Right?
Well "free love" was no more common-place among the Danes than anywhere else in Europe. Teenage kids doing what they do in the "permissive society" existed in Denmark as well as elsewhere, but the adult society is pretty much the same as elsewhere.
As for the ladies of the night, there are some obvious places in the vicinity of Copenhagen's main railway station, which are pretty obviously pick-up places for the like (and not a Danish woman to be seen in them apparently - though reputedly the odd person from Sweden might be found "working" there), but they cannot by law operate as such.
Liberal, but not that liberal, in other words. In a modern sophisticated society you know such activites take place, you just do not acknowledge them. The unsophisticated strangely find ways round the rules, which look like they were intended to be bent in the first place!
I personally have something of an affinity with Denmark as my surname is originally derived from Old Norse (Danish version), my home town was founded by Danish Vikings, and most of the area around there was part of historical Danelaw. I did all the interesting tours round the Viking burial sites, the Viking ship museum etc (there is also an excellent Viking ship museum in Oslo incidentally). It was an interesting (that word again) country to visit. And of course there was the Carlsberg Brewery tour.
Perhaps there ought to be stereotypes that work with the Danes. The curious thing, for me at least, is I am still struggling to think of any. Maybe I need to contact friends in Norway and Sweden to be reminded as to what they are!
Sunday, 12 June 2011
A quick guide to silly European stereotypes and Europe's ladies of the night - Part 1
We will start in Sweden (where else, of course it is the first European country that comes to everyone's mind?!).
Back in the 1960s (how much ancient history can you stand?), the Swedes are supposed to have invented "free love". All sorts of strange tales emanated from there. One side effect is that for years Swedish women were labelled. All these gorgeous, good-looking, sexy blondes and they always "wanted it".
I never really believed this, but when I was travelling there on a camping trip with a friend in the 1970s, we asked a young man in Göteborg about this. He seemed more interested in ice hockey anyway (that may be a more typical Swedish stereotype), but he firmly denied that this was the story. "Maybe Denmark, not here" he told us in excellent English. See more on Denmark later in this series, but as I had already been to Copenhagen ....
Our camping trip didn't throw up any potential conquests either - at least according to the text book stereotype. We met a couple of very pleasant young women on a campsite, with whom we became friendly (but not intimate), and who knows where it might have gone if we had spent a few more days together - OK I can still dream about what might have been. They were not Swedes though - they were French! Tourists like us! For France, see also later in this series.
In the past few years you have (thankfully) not heard so much about Sweden being the place where it all happens. One thing that is well known about it these days though is its commitment to women's rights. If a man and woman decide to make love together, and halfway through the act, the woman decides that she is no longer interested, the man had better stop. If he is doesn't, that, under Swedish law, is rape! As the Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange has discovered to his cost - allegedly!
Yes, the law looks like it will lead to loads of cases under the "he said, she said" principle. The advantages are, though, definitely in the woman's court.
The insistence upon women's rights has also spread into the area of prostitution. Swedish thinking on this subject suggests that women are the victims of predatory men where prostitution is concerned. The attempt to stop the trafficking of women for sexual purposes is clear, although those women locally who would voluntarily undertake the activity for financial gain (and maybe fun - one Dutch girl who did this for a living once told me that she did it as she enjoyed it, believe or not - for the Netherlands, see later in the series) are also prohibited from doing so.
The law, skilfully created without question, makes the purchaser the criminal. It is not illegal for a woman to be a prostitute. It is illegal for a man to offer her money for sex. Even if the woman makes the first move (see also the UK later in this series). It has successfully limited the import of trafficked women to Sweden, which is a definite positive from any point of view. At the same time at least (not sure whether this fact is still current), it also led to the unfortunate by-product where sizeable numbers of Swedish males would head for Tallinn, in the former Soviet Baltic state of Estonia, for the various vicarious pleasures that they were seeking.
Neighbouring Norway also had this problem with trafficked women (nearly all from Eastern Europe). When I was working in Oslo in 2007, I was advised that across the road from the city's main railway station I should be careful, as the city's drug culture was prevalent in that neighbourhood, and I was likely to be propositioned by women from Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria etc.
Well living in Frankfurt I am used to drug culture near the railway station - so you simply turn your head away and walk quickly past. The ladies of the night? I didn't encounter any, but I wasn't exactly looking for them.
The Norwegians tend to see themselves as independently minded (OK, that may be a stereotype), but in 2009 they followed the Swedish example, and almost copied the law on prostitution. Again it was successful in cutting the trafficking of foreign women. It also led to a number of complaints from Norwegian ladies of the night, who were still prepared to ply their trade (a lot of them drug addicts who need money to feed their habit). Most Norwegian men were very wary of the new law, and the trade dropped substantially. Whether there has been an increased amount of male tourist traffic between Oslo and Tallinn I have neither heard nor read.
Other Norwegian stereotypes? I don't know many. It was a great place to work, the people were extraordinarily pleasant (which does not mean over-friendly), and I think that Oslo is a beautiful city - and you really should see the ski jump facilities at Holmenkollen. And with its petro-currency, it should always be remembered that this is one of the world's most expensive countries.
But as my wife (who has also been to the west coastal region round Ålesund) will tell you, it is an extraordinary place to visit if you love the glories of nature.
Back in the 1960s (how much ancient history can you stand?), the Swedes are supposed to have invented "free love". All sorts of strange tales emanated from there. One side effect is that for years Swedish women were labelled. All these gorgeous, good-looking, sexy blondes and they always "wanted it".
I never really believed this, but when I was travelling there on a camping trip with a friend in the 1970s, we asked a young man in Göteborg about this. He seemed more interested in ice hockey anyway (that may be a more typical Swedish stereotype), but he firmly denied that this was the story. "Maybe Denmark, not here" he told us in excellent English. See more on Denmark later in this series, but as I had already been to Copenhagen ....
Our camping trip didn't throw up any potential conquests either - at least according to the text book stereotype. We met a couple of very pleasant young women on a campsite, with whom we became friendly (but not intimate), and who knows where it might have gone if we had spent a few more days together - OK I can still dream about what might have been. They were not Swedes though - they were French! Tourists like us! For France, see also later in this series.
In the past few years you have (thankfully) not heard so much about Sweden being the place where it all happens. One thing that is well known about it these days though is its commitment to women's rights. If a man and woman decide to make love together, and halfway through the act, the woman decides that she is no longer interested, the man had better stop. If he is doesn't, that, under Swedish law, is rape! As the Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange has discovered to his cost - allegedly!
Yes, the law looks like it will lead to loads of cases under the "he said, she said" principle. The advantages are, though, definitely in the woman's court.
The insistence upon women's rights has also spread into the area of prostitution. Swedish thinking on this subject suggests that women are the victims of predatory men where prostitution is concerned. The attempt to stop the trafficking of women for sexual purposes is clear, although those women locally who would voluntarily undertake the activity for financial gain (and maybe fun - one Dutch girl who did this for a living once told me that she did it as she enjoyed it, believe or not - for the Netherlands, see later in the series) are also prohibited from doing so.
The law, skilfully created without question, makes the purchaser the criminal. It is not illegal for a woman to be a prostitute. It is illegal for a man to offer her money for sex. Even if the woman makes the first move (see also the UK later in this series). It has successfully limited the import of trafficked women to Sweden, which is a definite positive from any point of view. At the same time at least (not sure whether this fact is still current), it also led to the unfortunate by-product where sizeable numbers of Swedish males would head for Tallinn, in the former Soviet Baltic state of Estonia, for the various vicarious pleasures that they were seeking.
Neighbouring Norway also had this problem with trafficked women (nearly all from Eastern Europe). When I was working in Oslo in 2007, I was advised that across the road from the city's main railway station I should be careful, as the city's drug culture was prevalent in that neighbourhood, and I was likely to be propositioned by women from Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria etc.
Well living in Frankfurt I am used to drug culture near the railway station - so you simply turn your head away and walk quickly past. The ladies of the night? I didn't encounter any, but I wasn't exactly looking for them.
The Norwegians tend to see themselves as independently minded (OK, that may be a stereotype), but in 2009 they followed the Swedish example, and almost copied the law on prostitution. Again it was successful in cutting the trafficking of foreign women. It also led to a number of complaints from Norwegian ladies of the night, who were still prepared to ply their trade (a lot of them drug addicts who need money to feed their habit). Most Norwegian men were very wary of the new law, and the trade dropped substantially. Whether there has been an increased amount of male tourist traffic between Oslo and Tallinn I have neither heard nor read.
Other Norwegian stereotypes? I don't know many. It was a great place to work, the people were extraordinarily pleasant (which does not mean over-friendly), and I think that Oslo is a beautiful city - and you really should see the ski jump facilities at Holmenkollen. And with its petro-currency, it should always be remembered that this is one of the world's most expensive countries.
But as my wife (who has also been to the west coastal region round Ålesund) will tell you, it is an extraordinary place to visit if you love the glories of nature.
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Digging a hole for myself
One of my MyLot.com friends, a wonderful lady in the United States, wrote this comment to me the other day, after I made some noises about the criticism that the unemployed are forced to take from others:
"I do not understand why anyone would think that the unemployed are well rewarded. Unless things are different in your country, people only get a portion of their previous earnings while on unemployment. Since many of us are struggling to get by on our entire earnings, how would it be more rewarding to only get a portion of that?!".
Quite! I wonder why she gets it, and many others do not.
And then there is the loss of self-worth, the humiliation, the overwhelming sense of uselessness. And the poverty, which seems to increase as time goes by!
After the fiasco (and the humiliation involved) with my job at Procter and Gamble, it became a story of how I managed to make one day's work turn into two months salary - anything to avoid putting myself back on the dole. And then came May 31st - not a job in sight, the 'phone calls have dried up entirely, and there are few grounds for optimism.
I decided to become a freelance translator as IT is obviously out of the question now. There were some promising leads. They have now all fallen flat. Nothing appears to be happening there either. I got one piece of work which will bring in all of 54 Euro, if I can ever get the money off them. This hardly makes a dent in the monthly utility bills.
So where do you go from here? I have changed all my profiles on various websites, nobody appears interested. I am tired of the poverty, I do not want to be on the dole queue again, and I can see no other alternatives. You dig the proverbial hole for yourself, you jump in, and allow yourself to be buried up to the proverbial neck with the proverbial sand! "Bleak" understates it!
"I do not understand why anyone would think that the unemployed are well rewarded. Unless things are different in your country, people only get a portion of their previous earnings while on unemployment. Since many of us are struggling to get by on our entire earnings, how would it be more rewarding to only get a portion of that?!".
Quite! I wonder why she gets it, and many others do not.
And then there is the loss of self-worth, the humiliation, the overwhelming sense of uselessness. And the poverty, which seems to increase as time goes by!
After the fiasco (and the humiliation involved) with my job at Procter and Gamble, it became a story of how I managed to make one day's work turn into two months salary - anything to avoid putting myself back on the dole. And then came May 31st - not a job in sight, the 'phone calls have dried up entirely, and there are few grounds for optimism.
I decided to become a freelance translator as IT is obviously out of the question now. There were some promising leads. They have now all fallen flat. Nothing appears to be happening there either. I got one piece of work which will bring in all of 54 Euro, if I can ever get the money off them. This hardly makes a dent in the monthly utility bills.
So where do you go from here? I have changed all my profiles on various websites, nobody appears interested. I am tired of the poverty, I do not want to be on the dole queue again, and I can see no other alternatives. You dig the proverbial hole for yourself, you jump in, and allow yourself to be buried up to the proverbial neck with the proverbial sand! "Bleak" understates it!
Saturday, 4 June 2011
Boxers
I quote without permission from an excellent Paul Simon song:
In the clearing stands a boxer,
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that laid him down
And cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame,
"I am leaving, I am leaving."
But the fighter still remains
The song is actually symbolic - it is about taking blows from life, consistently being beaten up by, and wanting to be free of it, and yet knowing there is nowhere else to turn.
Like a journeyman boxer in the ring.
Friends are often surprised by my interest in boxing, but for those who emerged from working-class families in the north of England, it should not be so surprising. Life always had a hard edge, and proving your toughness was one way out of life's quandaries. Anyway, boxing is not pure slugging. Some boxers are extraordinarily skilful at their art.
But the majority of boxers are journeymen. They fight down the card every time, they win some, lose some, once in a while get thrown in with a contender for "match practice" and get pasted. It is a payday, though one with the danger of dementia setting it later in life if you get hit too hard too often. Check out one time contenders Kenny Lane and Ralph Dupas if you want confirmation of that.
Some people even lose their life in the ring, or after the fight has finished. Check out Benny Paret, Johnny Owen, Bradley Stone as tragic examples.
For a contender, you can see the point - the financial rewards make the risks seem worthwhile. For the journeyman though? The money is not amazing, the dangers obvious, eventually as you get older and you slow down, the defeats become more common, the pounding taken often gets worse.
And then there is the one-time contender who seemingly cannot accept that he never quite made it, and becomes, to his detriment, a journeyman. In some ways his situation is even worse that the normal paid pro - he is still a name, and the quality of the opposition that he has to face is better. He is, though, expected to give the rising star a test, but not beat him.
Take the case of Billy Waith for example.
A Welshman from Cardiff, he set a record of fighting eliminators for a shot a British titles at four different weights. He could box, often beautifully, he was also capable of landing the occasional stinging punch that could bring a fight to an end. The box-fighter, almost in excelsis.
That said, he was never quite that good. Against top-flight opponents, he would acquit himself with guts, determination and no little skill, but eventually he would lose. Look at the people he fought - he ducked nobody. A sad indication of this though is the fact that he undoubtedly went on too long. In the last 3 years of his career (retiring at the age of 34), he lost 6 out of 8 fights, being stopped three times. The defeats do not look too bad on paper - he did not fight "nobodies", but the accumulative effect has to be questioned. I hope that nearly 30 years after his final fight, he is still in good shape.
As with Lane and Dupas, though, who is to know what impact being hit hard on the head so many times can have? You can admire the bravery, the guts and the determination, you wonder what drives people to earn a living like this. At the same time when someone from the anti-boxing lobby grabs you and argues for the abolition of this "sport", it is extraordinarily difficult to justify it.
It will not stop me watching and enjoying the occasional fight, but the intellectual dilemna over this also leaves me with occasional doubts about myself and the sort of person that I am.
In the clearing stands a boxer,
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that laid him down
And cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame,
"I am leaving, I am leaving."
But the fighter still remains
The song is actually symbolic - it is about taking blows from life, consistently being beaten up by, and wanting to be free of it, and yet knowing there is nowhere else to turn.
Like a journeyman boxer in the ring.
Friends are often surprised by my interest in boxing, but for those who emerged from working-class families in the north of England, it should not be so surprising. Life always had a hard edge, and proving your toughness was one way out of life's quandaries. Anyway, boxing is not pure slugging. Some boxers are extraordinarily skilful at their art.
But the majority of boxers are journeymen. They fight down the card every time, they win some, lose some, once in a while get thrown in with a contender for "match practice" and get pasted. It is a payday, though one with the danger of dementia setting it later in life if you get hit too hard too often. Check out one time contenders Kenny Lane and Ralph Dupas if you want confirmation of that.
Some people even lose their life in the ring, or after the fight has finished. Check out Benny Paret, Johnny Owen, Bradley Stone as tragic examples.
For a contender, you can see the point - the financial rewards make the risks seem worthwhile. For the journeyman though? The money is not amazing, the dangers obvious, eventually as you get older and you slow down, the defeats become more common, the pounding taken often gets worse.
And then there is the one-time contender who seemingly cannot accept that he never quite made it, and becomes, to his detriment, a journeyman. In some ways his situation is even worse that the normal paid pro - he is still a name, and the quality of the opposition that he has to face is better. He is, though, expected to give the rising star a test, but not beat him.
Take the case of Billy Waith for example.
A Welshman from Cardiff, he set a record of fighting eliminators for a shot a British titles at four different weights. He could box, often beautifully, he was also capable of landing the occasional stinging punch that could bring a fight to an end. The box-fighter, almost in excelsis.
That said, he was never quite that good. Against top-flight opponents, he would acquit himself with guts, determination and no little skill, but eventually he would lose. Look at the people he fought - he ducked nobody. A sad indication of this though is the fact that he undoubtedly went on too long. In the last 3 years of his career (retiring at the age of 34), he lost 6 out of 8 fights, being stopped three times. The defeats do not look too bad on paper - he did not fight "nobodies", but the accumulative effect has to be questioned. I hope that nearly 30 years after his final fight, he is still in good shape.
As with Lane and Dupas, though, who is to know what impact being hit hard on the head so many times can have? You can admire the bravery, the guts and the determination, you wonder what drives people to earn a living like this. At the same time when someone from the anti-boxing lobby grabs you and argues for the abolition of this "sport", it is extraordinarily difficult to justify it.
It will not stop me watching and enjoying the occasional fight, but the intellectual dilemna over this also leaves me with occasional doubts about myself and the sort of person that I am.
Thursday, 2 June 2011
Nina Camara - a name to watch for
As regular readers will know, I go on the MyLot.com site very frequently.
A curiosity happened on there the other day. I had put a photo up on one of the discussion boards. Back came a strange reply which read like one of those phoney emails that you get from Russian women looking for romance. Plus email address (absolutely no-go where MyLot are concerned so the person's moniker disappeared in no time at all).
Anyway I took notice of the name (Nina Camara - sounds Senegalese, not Russian), and the email address (.in or India, would you believe), deleted the comment and went off and wrote an email to this person telling her I was married and I had no money (implying I would not give out my bank account details by email ....), but if she wanted to keep contact, all well and good.
Further checking on the Web, particularly the excellent anti-scam site run by Joe Wein, produced the information that this is in fact a scam. What they are hoping to scam from me, I hate to think. I am too broke and not stupid enough to give them any financial details, and do I need a girlfriend in Senegal, India, Russia or wherever? I don't think so ....
An update upon this - 5 years later.
This scam is still being used.
The name of the girl has changed once in a while though the scam mail (with reference to Darfur in Sudan and Dakar in Senegal) remains the same.
The photo of an attractive, smiling young black lady in a white dress is still also used. This is actually a photo of a lady called Zainab Abdulaziz from the Ivory Coast - who has absolutely nothing to do with this scam and whose photo is being used without her permission.
There are also a number of different ladies called "Nina Camara" listed on various places on the Internet (6 women with that name can be found on LinkedIn, for example). These individuals are all likely to be highly respectable women who have nothing to do with this scam. I hope that that point has been clarified.
A curiosity happened on there the other day. I had put a photo up on one of the discussion boards. Back came a strange reply which read like one of those phoney emails that you get from Russian women looking for romance. Plus email address (absolutely no-go where MyLot are concerned so the person's moniker disappeared in no time at all).
Anyway I took notice of the name (Nina Camara - sounds Senegalese, not Russian), and the email address (.in or India, would you believe), deleted the comment and went off and wrote an email to this person telling her I was married and I had no money (implying I would not give out my bank account details by email ....), but if she wanted to keep contact, all well and good.
Further checking on the Web, particularly the excellent anti-scam site run by Joe Wein, produced the information that this is in fact a scam. What they are hoping to scam from me, I hate to think. I am too broke and not stupid enough to give them any financial details, and do I need a girlfriend in Senegal, India, Russia or wherever? I don't think so ....
An update upon this - 5 years later.
This scam is still being used.
The name of the girl has changed once in a while though the scam mail (with reference to Darfur in Sudan and Dakar in Senegal) remains the same.
The photo of an attractive, smiling young black lady in a white dress is still also used. This is actually a photo of a lady called Zainab Abdulaziz from the Ivory Coast - who has absolutely nothing to do with this scam and whose photo is being used without her permission.
There are also a number of different ladies called "Nina Camara" listed on various places on the Internet (6 women with that name can be found on LinkedIn, for example). These individuals are all likely to be highly respectable women who have nothing to do with this scam. I hope that that point has been clarified.
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
Facing the truth about a career that you do not want to give up
Today I looked down the barrel of the proverbial gun.
Finally.
And a bit desperately.
Ever since I went to see career analysts in 1979 about what sort of career I should follow (when I decided to leave teaching), I have been committed to IT (or DP - Data Processing as it was known).
Ageism has forever been the problem with the industry. When I went to see about getting on a training course in 1979, I was told that I was, at 31, already too old. They did not quite understand my follow-up question as to where I should collect my pension, as I was obviously already entitled to it.
I persisted, I found another training course, after qualifying and after weeks of searching I found a company that would take me on, I moved, learned new skills, became as proficient as I knew how - eventually my job has taken me to seven countries.
Unless the management is so bad, it is impossible to do your job well, I have always relished the challenge. It has not always been good times, in fact there have been some really bad times, but it was where I belonged, where I wanted to stay, where I wanted to see out my professional life.
Then came the heart attack in 2008, my job disappearing while I was in intensive care, the dozens of applications since, and the endless rejections. Then there was the nonsense at P&G when they took me on for all of one day.
Still I kept applying ..... in vain.
Three weeks ago I decided to see if I could make something of a living as a freelance translator. I went on the off chance to see a language school in Frankfurt to see if they could give me some advice on getting certification. They were more interested in seeing if I were good enough to freelance for them. I took a test. Yesterday, I got a really nice letter saying that they were impressed and would I sign this contract ....
The money will probably be nothing special, the freelance nature of the work leaves me all sorts of problems with medical insurance and having to deal with accountants (ugh! I would more likely trust politicians, which is saying something). But it is work, I can do it well and from home, and as long as my wife is working as well we can pay the bills ....
Truth is though, I shall miss IT. The career analysts thought it was the ideal career for me all those years ago, and they were right. Pity so many employers out there lack that insight!
Finally.
And a bit desperately.
Ever since I went to see career analysts in 1979 about what sort of career I should follow (when I decided to leave teaching), I have been committed to IT (or DP - Data Processing as it was known).
Ageism has forever been the problem with the industry. When I went to see about getting on a training course in 1979, I was told that I was, at 31, already too old. They did not quite understand my follow-up question as to where I should collect my pension, as I was obviously already entitled to it.
I persisted, I found another training course, after qualifying and after weeks of searching I found a company that would take me on, I moved, learned new skills, became as proficient as I knew how - eventually my job has taken me to seven countries.
Unless the management is so bad, it is impossible to do your job well, I have always relished the challenge. It has not always been good times, in fact there have been some really bad times, but it was where I belonged, where I wanted to stay, where I wanted to see out my professional life.
Then came the heart attack in 2008, my job disappearing while I was in intensive care, the dozens of applications since, and the endless rejections. Then there was the nonsense at P&G when they took me on for all of one day.
Still I kept applying ..... in vain.
Three weeks ago I decided to see if I could make something of a living as a freelance translator. I went on the off chance to see a language school in Frankfurt to see if they could give me some advice on getting certification. They were more interested in seeing if I were good enough to freelance for them. I took a test. Yesterday, I got a really nice letter saying that they were impressed and would I sign this contract ....
The money will probably be nothing special, the freelance nature of the work leaves me all sorts of problems with medical insurance and having to deal with accountants (ugh! I would more likely trust politicians, which is saying something). But it is work, I can do it well and from home, and as long as my wife is working as well we can pay the bills ....
Truth is though, I shall miss IT. The career analysts thought it was the ideal career for me all those years ago, and they were right. Pity so many employers out there lack that insight!
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