fulllife

Oh my, the blessings of these times and days! You never have to be ‘alone’ again as long as you have your cell phone with you. People can call you, you can call people and if you can’t reach them, you just send them a text message, or an SMS (short message service) or they send you a text message. Actually, I think that means that wherever you are at whatever time of day, you are within reach of anyone… I am not sure if that is a blessing or a curse…Sending a text message – or ‘text’ for short – is quite easy for those who grew up with that. Can you imagine there are millions of kids that don’t know any better than sending a text or a SMS is just as normal as eating and drinking? Kids nowadays spend lots and lots of time texting each other without a second thought. Now me personally I am in the situation that I have two cell phones. Since I reside half a year in my home country (the Netherlands) and half a year in Spain, I have two different phones to keep things within the budget and also for practical reasons. The only impractical thing about it is that both phones work completely differently…I won’t brag about being oh so sophisticated with all the electronic gadgets. As a matter of fact, I am not. I find it hard to ‘write’ with those little keys on the phone that always just do what I don’t want them to do. Plus the key for a space is different on each phone… I love getting text messages, answering them is a real chore though. But I think answering them is part of the deal so I sit down, put on my reading glasses, focus on which phone I am using and start texting back.Yeah well… it’s a good thing I don’t have to send bulk SMS’s or anything like that, I don’t think I would survive that. I just send the occasional text message, you know, to friends and family, or to my boss or colleagues. Nothing big, really. If I had to be surviving on those texts I would not really bet on my chances…However, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. I just heard of this website where you can buy credits to send SMS in either bulk SMS, or just individually. You type your text in at Bulk SMS and ‘they’ do all the rest for you. Very practical for me being abroad and all my friends and family want to know how I am and how I am doing. So I just type a general message (how fine I am, how great I am doing, or anything like that) and send that message to 10, 12 people, or whatever the number I choose. Of course I prepaid for a number of SMS credits, but hey, you pay on your cell phone as well. And I am one happy camper, not hassling with those little keys and keeping everybody happy as well. The last thing I want is to hear that I am so ‘incommunicado’. Thanks to Bulk SMS  I find sending a text message so much easier today, although I do the single, individual ones on my phone(s) of course. And the website is really easy to navigate, so even a non-wizard like person can handle everything like a breeze. I am not turning into a SMS or texting person all of a sudden, but whenever I do want to reach a few people, I just sit down at my lap top, write my messages and through the SMS gateway of Bulk SMS I communicate with whomever I want to. Who says technology isn’t a good thing? I LOVE it – as long as I can handle it…

How to take care of your patient and rob her at the same time? - could be the title of this blog. And ”taking care”…? Well, that remains to be seen. I have not been writing for a while, I have been busy writing for the internet mediator I mentioned before and moved for the winter to the Canary Islands. That’s better for me, health-wise. And this is what happend there to me last night…:

After a long day I decided to treat myself to some Spanish ‘tapas’ (little tasty ’snacks’) and a glass of wine. So I walked to my favorite tapas restaurant where I know the owner Oliver and eating alone is not boring. Suddenly I stumbled (?) and fell flat on my face on the sidewalk. A passer-by and a store owner came to my rescue… My front tooth broken, my knee swelling up like a balloon and blood streaming from my broken lip and face… The store owner wanted to call an ambulance (they call an ambulance for almost everything here) but I could stop him. Between my sniffing (I was really crying, probably from shock) I told him in Spanish not to bother. I  called someone I know and she took me to the first aid in one of the hospitals.

There they took some X-rays - after I had to pay 60 euro’s just to enter the waiting room - and told me my knee looked like fractured. Great! But, the doctor told me, in another ER they have better equipment so you go there to make sure before we put on a cast. We went to hospital #2, to make sure with another X-ray. There they told me I had to pay 70 euro’s plus every extra cost as well and I had to sign for that. “Private hospital” this was… the word “private” would pop up some more times…

Doctor #2 took the X-rays, looked at them and asked me where the fracture was supposed to be. How did I know? He examined my knee (#1 didn’t bother to do that) and told me no way I had broken my knee, otherwise I could not have been able to make the movements I just did - with a lot of pain, though. So it was ‘just’ a heavy contusion, he concluded. Okay…? I got a bandage around my knee, was told to rest it for 3 days and take it easy afterwards. Plus I got 3 prescriptions for medications.

In the presence of me and my friend he called his colleague at hospital #1 and had a Spanish conversation with him. My Spanish is a lot better than he thought, and that of my friend’s as well. We understood that he called his colleague an idiot, a bastard to send me over to him and started lecturing him on his incompetence, ending the conversation on a friendly note and some heavy smirks on being a doctor and being a doctor robbing foreign patients (I could not understand of course because of al the grinning and smirking, but my friend and I were convinced that must have been the content of the end of the conversation).

At the reception they presented me with a fat bill. The 70 euro’s for the doctor I already knew about, but what was  that 45 euro’s doing there, and those 23? Well, the receptionist was happy to explain: 45 euro’s for the swaddling bands (2 rolls) and the 23 euro’s for transporting them (from one room to another, about 10 meters). I was already weary of the pain, the heat, the long evening, no food let alone tapas, so I shrieked: “What? 45 euro’s for two swaddling bands??? I could have gotten them for you from the pharmacy for 4 euro’s!” Yes, the receptionist explained, but this is a private clinic… And those 23 euro’s??? Yes, this is a private clinic… A security man was moving closer as I started to lecture the receptionist - I really was warming up to the exercise - and demanded where I could file a complaint regarding medical incompetence and outrageous prices.

The receptionist came to the conclusion that I could best file a complaint against hospital #1 since they had send me unnecessarily to #2… after all, they were private and all… I had to pick up a complaint form at hospital #1 and then file it to the authorities… So then I demanded a copy of the diagnosis of #1, to sustain my complaint, and reluctantly she gave me that.

We stormed out of the hospital - metaphorically, I could only stumble a little - and went to the pharmacy, to buy the medication. Later at home I found out by reading the information leaflet, that the painkillers are not to be taken by people who are taking anti depression medication - which I do - so more money wasted…

“Common’ ” I told my friend, “I will buy you a drink for all your trouble.” We went to my tapas restaurant that was about to close, but Oliver opened the bar for us again and poured us the glass of wine I should have enjoyed hours before. On the house, for he was so sorry for my misery… Salud Elisabeth! So we toasted and I promised I would come back as soon as I could walk the half mile again…

Did you see Sydney on the news today?

The famous Australian city by the harbor is covered in orange dust. Not just a cover of dust, no it looks like a heavy fog of dust… the air is thick with it. From the quai you can’t even see the world known Opera House, and this landmark is not easily to be overlooked. My whole TV screen was orange as the reporter told us about this phenomenon that is being a new plague for the citizens of the city. Geez, if they don’t have bush fires or dingo’s in or near Sydney, they have other troubles with nature! Very dry in the bush, heavy winds, and Sydney has ‘fun’ again

I was in Sydney many years ago - January 1993, I had to look it up for you - and man, I really loved being there. I loved being in Australia, period. Travelled around for 6 weeks and had a lot of fun, both with Australians and other travellers. One of my best vacations ever. So you understand everytime Australia is in the news, I pay a little extra attention.

The people of Sydney took the orange veil with their laid back look on life. A 72 year old man said he never had seen it before, I think that counts for something. Everybody was wearing masks and shawls for their mouth and some were commenting that their throat hurt “a little”. Now I am an asthma person myself and my heart goes out to all people over there who have respirational problems. While the orange fog may be cleared in a couple of days, the dust will still be in their lungs, and they’ll suffer much longer.

Granted, this item was only 1 minute in the news, while the life of the people of Sydney was totally derailed, and it probably won’t kill anybody except for some people with heavy lung problems maybe - whose life expectancy wasn’t too optimistic anyway. But this little piece of news told us again that whatever we do to live our life in a nice and comfortable way, whatever invention is waiting for us around the corner, whatever new electronic gadget finds its way to the market, it’s nature that goes it’s own way, whether we like it or not. Nothing we can do about it, except cleaning up the mess…

There are millions of people who depend on daily medication. Thanks to “popping pills” for the rest of their lives they can live a full life and even have a pleasant one. Just think of all the people with high blood pressure, heart problems, too high cholestoral, diabetes, rheumatism, to name a few… Due to the growing number of people with obesitas these chronic ilnesses will only expand enormously the coming decades.

I am not a very healthy person myself. I have heavy migraines since I was 7 years old (I am now 57, so this year is a ‘golden jublilee year’). If not with migraine, I wake up with heavy headaches. I am also a woman with a bipolar disorder, also since childhood. This condition is also known as manic depressive illness http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/bipolar-disorder/index.shtml and it can really put your life on hold. According to my specialist people with migraine often are depressive and vice versa. It’s both in the brain, with those little neurons not transmitting well…

Add to those two allergic asthma, a bad back, digestive problems and arthritis in hands and knees (and several other ‘minor’ stuff) and you can see that every day is a battle. Yet I am a very optimistic person. I enjoy life (to the full), enjoy writing, have been working hard all my life as a journalist, very often disregarding my body that screamed for mercy. As long as I would move on, I didn’t have to notice those screams, and after I was done for  the day, I collapsed.

Now that I am older and wiser, I don’t push myself anymore. I have an invalid pension, can within limits do as I please and try to live a normal life. Since about four or five years I have medication that is well-balanced and well-combined for me personally, I even feel better from time to time. I have less migraines, my depressions are less deep so I climb out more easily. I have a wonderful doctor who even forgives me my drinking habit, which often comes with the manic disorder. Not that I ever get drunk, mind you, but “I like a few” so to say. Wine mostly, so lots of vitamins, my husband and I joke…

I realize now that my life has been hard on me ever since I was a child. I often wonder how I have managed to stay in the “normal” day-to-day circuit for so long, doing 40 hours jobs that turn out to be 60 hours per week - and more. Having friends, (unstable) relationships, a difficult family life… Quite an achievement, if I may say so.

There is one thing though I hate… Popping pills. Eight to ten a day. For (or against, whichever you prefer) my migraine, my bipolar disorder and my stomach. I know they keep me in business, but I hate it anyway. I will have to take them for the rest of my life. This summer vacation I was trying to take 1/6 off my anti-depressive dose - my specialist and I had conferred about this - and after 2 weeks my husband begged me to go to the old dose again. Which I did. Of course. My husband of 10 years comes first. He is the best thing that ever happend to me and although he is not the love of my life, we are a happy couple that fully understands each other. Which is great. Maybe one day I tell you more about him…

What I wonder about is WHY I so hate taking the pills. I mean, they have given me my life back. Without them I would me down and out forever. Is it because I feel dependent on them? Is it because it is so chemical (we all are chemical installations, I know, but still, some a bit more than others…) and they work in my brain? I have always been a very creative person. Would I be more or less creative without them, I can’t remember… don’t care to find out though. Is it the idea of having to eat them till my last day? Do I feel less because I “live” on pills? I don’t know.

I don’t even know if other people feel like that. I brought up the subject with some friends of who I know they are also on medication. My husband has a high blood pressure and has to take pills for the rest of his life, but he doesn’t seem to care… My friends neither. So am I just making life harder for myself than necessary?

Selfknowledge is the start of self-improvement. Yet you can look into yourself and not find any answers… Maybe one of you comes up with an answer, I would appreciate that very much. Or some of you might tell me I am not the only one feeling this way. That would be most comforting. Until that time I just keep on popping my pills and hating it.

We just came back from our vacation yesterday, my husband and I. We had a great time together, travelling in the south of France and the Spanish Pyrenees, topping it off with three nights in a luxurious hotel in Andorra, the dwarf state between France and Spain.

During our travelling we stayed in a few fancy hotels, we found an interesting offer on the Internet and booked a tour with those 4 stars hotels. Not bad, uh? Just bed & breakfast, lunch and dinner we could go anywhere we liked. Now there is this little thing that bothers me, actually puzzles me as well. And that little thing is: coffee.

Four stars hotels, great breakfast buffets with lots to chose from - fantastic! Very healthy food, nice food, top of the bill. Then why, oh why is their coffee so lousy? And I do mean lousy! With all this quality in their hotel rooms, at their buffets you would think that they do know how to make a good cup of coffee…

Now I must confess I am a lover of good coffee. If you drink it, it might as well be good, right? So I don’t want old coffee, coffee with the colour of coffee but tasting like next to nothing (or dish wash water) of coffee from the cheapest brand available. I just want GOOD coffee, like the ones you get in a coffee shop, or at Starbucks and the sorts, for the price you pay I think you are entitled to a good cup or two of the wake-up drink. After all, they do make a nice buffet, they do have a good ‘cuisine’ when you eat at their restaurant, so why can’t they make a bloody cup of coffee? Is that so hard? There is this English saying: “if this is coffee, give me tea”… heard that one before?

Do they have classes in making coffee? If so, I suggest to send all hotel managers there, so they can teach their staff afterwards…

Now I know, American (and English) readers, that your coffee is a lot different from ours - European. That’s why Starbucks etc is such a hit in your country. Because they make a decent cup of coffee - at an outrageous price, I might add, but that’s up to you the consumers. They even conquer our countries as well, although we don’t have as many in any particular city as you do. Aaah… but you have a lot to catch up .

Just to set your minds at peace: I did not let the ugly morning coffee spoil my vacation. No way, of course not. After breakfast our first stop was a good bar or cafe with those lovely big espresso machines that also do a magnificent cappuccino, or so I’m told - me myself I don’t come near the stuff… So now I am thinking… should I charge those hotels 4 cups of espresso per day? Would that be a possibility? Hm-mm that would teach them, wouldn’t it? What do you think???

Yes!! I good my first rating of 5 stars at oDesk after doing a few writing jobs for the same company. The guys who own the company apparently like my work… My workload is finished right now, as I am taking a few weeks of vacation, but in the meanwhile I did some re-writing about Search Engine Marketing as well, so I know now ALL about SEO, ha ha. Just ask me!!

Actually it is quite nice to work for different companies, as you get informed on a load of things you didn’t know much about before, or you just never realized how it worked… I am a great believer of life being one permanent education, and this woman here is getting educated lately…. wow!

As of my earnings: I now have about $85 in my account, $30 still have to come to me (the SEO rewriting thing) so that makes $115 in total. Slowly I am making some nice pocket money here. And as I said before, I only work about 10 hours a week for this website, since my life is full with other things as well… very full actually. And that $115 was for just 4 weeks of work. So you do the math if you are a bit of a writer, a data entry person, a web designer, a transcriber, a virtual assistent, or anything else to do with computers, internet, and so on… there might be some earnings in there for you as well! I give you the link again: www.odesk.com/referrals/track/etaverne (uhum, I get some dollars after you made your first $1000 with them)

Now I am going to rest for a while during my vacation, dreaming of how to spend those $115

I might or might not get back to you soon. In the meantime, have a good summer, all and for those of you on vacation: enjoy!!!

Back here to inform you about my oDesk experiences…. see previous post.

I’m on a roll!! Two weeks after I subscribed to the website, I got my first assignment! Writing short articles about unemployment and layoffs in the USA, based on facts but furthermore to be ‘creatively’ filled in by myself. Got paid $5 a piece (5 pcs) for it, not a big deal, but hey, you gotta start somewhere… Shortly after that I was hired to do some transcripts from tutorial videos on Forex, but since I know next to nothing about forex trading, I had to give the assignment back after two videos. Took me too much time and my work had too many flaws, I thought. My so-called buyer, the one who hires me, was quite happy with my work, called it ‘awesome’, but I wasn’t…

Since one week I am doing a third job: re-writing articles in a certain niche. Wrote about 25 articles on the same subject… OMG the last 8 or so were really getting to me, and although I am in a different niche now, I am not sure the “old” niche is already finished. I get pennies for that work, but the bulk does bring in some dollars… Twenty dollars this past week…

So all and all I can tell you I am earning money at the moment and people are happy with my work. I used this whole blog as a reference as to how I write… My customers actually like my writing, even though I am not a native English speaking and writing person! How about that, huh?

If I would be available 40 hours a week or so, I could apply for many more job openings and maybe get the assignment. But I am only available 15-20 hours at the most, so I have to keep in mind I am doing this “bulk re-writing” before bidding on anything else. The forex-customer throws some work at me as well, ’cause although I gave back the transcription of the video training courses, he still wants me to work for him…. How do you like that?

This rookie is getting things done, two weeks after my previous post… Still on a small scale, for a small pay, but unless I get a feedback from customers with 5 stars all the time - and I now have ongoing customers, who haven’t rated me yet - I will be working for pennies. As soon as I settle a good feedback score, things might look up a bit.

Now I can imagine you want to know more about this work-broker… A place where you can get work without paying anything to get it. Feel free to ask me anything you like, or check out the site by yourself www.odesk.com/referrals/track/etaverne . Somethong not quite clear? I am here for you! It’s not just for writing or re-writing, but also for web design, data entry, SEO submitter, and many tasks all having to do with the computer. Don’t let your talents go to waste… Use them!

As promised a few posts ago, I will get you some more info about a homebusiness I got involved with lately… Being a journalist and writer, it is only too natural for me to do this thing. Point is, you gotta stumble upon it! And I did… I subscribed to a program where you can present yourself as a writer, editor, blogger, webdesigner, researcher, data typist and many many more things. Take a look here http://www.odesk.com/referrals/track/etaverne  Needless to say I choose the writing part…

So I set up a nice profile with all my experience listed and described and started to react to job offers that are on the site or you can get emailed daily. All you do is write a short letter, add existing work if you have any and submit. The system automatically gives the so-called buyer access to your nice profile… Great system, used by many, many people and it free to use for us, the so-called providers. The buyers pay a percentage on top of the hourly or fixed price that is arranged between the two parties.

Such a great site… no buts? Yes, there are buts…

As a newbie, it is very hard to compete with the oldies who have done a lot of work through oDesk and thus build up a nice reference status. Those references are to be found in your profile. Who would you choose: someone with an empty ref.list or someone with a lot of stars on his list? There you go… it’s hard to get a foot in.

Second but: I am from the Netherlands, therefor not native speaking English. Even if I would write impeccable English I still am not a native speaking person. Nothing can change that. Even the oDesk free tests on all kind of skills (like English spelling, which I passed with 9.2) can’t really help me (yet). So if you want an English text written, who would you choose: … There you go… see my problem?

Third but: a lot of Asian people apply as well, and the wages in Asia are substantially lower than in the USA and Europe. I don’t even ask the question… see?

If you can overcome these three ‘buts’ or only meet one or two, oDesk is a great way to earn an income based on your skills, instead of all kind of opportunities that promise you paradise, but turn out to be the Garden of Eden for only some. I respond to buyers who want text translated into Dutch, or the other way around, to some writing jobs I feel I would do well and to some video jobs where I have the same feeling. I am very picky with responding, thus keeping the level of disappointment low. Plus I am going to take more English tests on the site, to show prospects that I am worth their while. This blog also helps, ’cause prospects can read it and see how I write. Just too bad I don’t have many comments on my blogs, but getting traffic and submitting to SEO’s are not my strongest points! I don’t respond to those job offers!

So if you feel oDesk be something for you, use my link on top of this entry and check it out. By using my link I make $50 everytime someone who joined the site makes his or her first $1.000. So if you subscribe, start earning soon…

I will keep you posted on my adventures there, so check in at fulllife.today.com regularly (that’s right, spelled with 3 l’s) If you have any questions regarding oDesk, feel free to ask here. There is a lot of information on the site, which might be a bit overwhelming at first - I felt exactly the same. Good luck to you!

I just saw the funniest news on television… the kind of news that makes you smile. This is the little tale:

Toddler Danny has a puppy, just one week old, so I suppose there were more, still with their mother. Anyway, Danny is playing with this one particular puppy, rolling through the sand and the mud and having fun. But, oh oh, Mum is not going to be happy when she’ll see Puppy all dirty and sandy, so Puppy needs a bath. Sneaking up to the bathroom is not practical, but there is another shower handy and nearby: the flush of the toilet!

Puppy doesn’t like the idea of the flush and wriggles and wriggles to get loose while Danny is persistent to wash all the dirt away… but flushing ánd keeping Puppy under control is a bit too much for any 4-years old. There goes Puppy, literally down the drain…

Panic…

Here comes the hero, in the person of the plumber. With a little plumbers’ camera he locates Puppy’s position in the toilet drain. He askes all the neighbours not to use the toilet flush for a while, starts pushing Puppy through the toilet pipe to a certain position in the sewer system where he can open the cover in the street… and voilà, there is a very little, very distraught and very wet Puppy! 

Danny happy, Puppy too (after a while). 

I bet Puppy will never ever gonna like a bath or a shower in his life…

I just read the most remarkable news… really took me by my throat!

You may have heard of the Air France plane crash in the ocean, when the flight was on its way from Brazil tot Paris, France. First the plane disappeared off the radar, then the authorities concluded it must have crashed. It took days and days before divers of the Franch and Brazilian marine found the first pieces of the plane. Only a few tens of the 228 people onboard have been recovered from the deep waters so far…

There are always people missing a flight. In this case an Italian lady missed the disastrous flight AF447. She and her husband had been vacationing in Brazil and were too late at the gate. Tough! Take the next flight, right? The two of them must have been ve-ry reliefed when they heard the news about their missed flight. Their time hadn’t come yet… 

They took the next flight to France.

But fate intervened… Shortly after she got back home, the Italian lady drove in her car and for unknown reasons - so far - her car got off the road, killing her instantly.

Now I am not a religious woman, nor do I believe in predestination, but this little piece of news makes you wonder… at first it seemed her time hadn’t come yet, but apparently her time HAD come! And only hers, not that of her husband or another passenger… Strange, isn’t it? Weird… I dare say. Apparently there is some bookkeeping being done, somewhere, somehow. This incident doesn’t turn me into a religious believer, but it does make me wonder…