Friday, 22. December 2006, 21:48:02
unemployment, working
Dear Santa,
Hi! 
My name is Lisa Salami. It's a funny name but it fits me really well. You see I work as a saleswoman in a big Super Market at the delicatessen department.
It's Christmas and the store is overcrowded these days and we work overtime and people seem tired and they sometimes speak badly to me and my colleagues and other people and our manager said a week ago that we must all wear a funny hat like the one you wear when you go around.
I tell you, it's really uncomfortable to work with this thing on my head (once it dropped into mustard and then people were laughing at me and manager called me in his office and was asking why I was so careless and sent me in the rest room to clean it up and I felt really badly and I started crying but then Nim (a beautiful girl working into the books department) came by accident and saw me crying and said that I shouldn't be so upset and that the manager is an asshole and she made me feel much better and afterwards we went for a coffee and she told me that she went to university and studied philosophy but it's impossible to find a job if you have studied that thing so she works at the books department.
Anyway, I didn't know what to ask you for this year and that's why I'm so late to write you but I'm afraid that again you won't get my letter (someone must be stealing my letters to you because I've been writing you since I was so little and you never got me any present and that was the reason why Nim and I argued yesterday because she was saying that you don't even exist and that you are just another creation of bastard merchandisers to keep selling their stuff and that you are just another one stupid lie that helps making rich people richer while you just comfort the poor ones and I told her that she was bad and that you are good and that she was telling all these because she had a fight with her boyfriend because he too doesn't have any money and he cannot enjoy Christmas and she told me to shut up and I left and we didn't say a word the whole day today).
Anyway, I thought really hard and I had decided to ask for a fairy music box but something happened and I changed my mind. (Nim got out of the manager's office half an hour ago and she was cursing him and spitting and crying and he called the police and policemen came and he was saying that she stole money from the counter and she was saying that he was lying because he was mad for her not wearing your hat and not doing what he told her to and people were looking and then Nim was crying again and she packed her stuff and looked at me with her beautiful eyes and said goodbye Lisa and my heart was torn apart because she was the best friend I've ever had and she was too proud to stole counter's money and now she went away crying).
So, dear Santa, since you owe me at least 27 presents, I'd like something special for this year. I'd like you to bring Nim back and to show me your big fat ass and take this salami up into it like a man and do this thing you do a little bit different. Like oh oh oh oh.
Lisa Salami
PS: If I were you I'd keep off my chimney.
Credits:
*Images: lighter from here (ask me in person for Santa)
*Retarded child speech scheme from the book "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon
Friday, 9. June 2006, 21:33:37
politics, Greece, unemployment
So in Greece we don't say the education like we are talking for a table. It's more like we are talking of a woman. And, boy, she must be a really beautiful woman because I can hardly remember a Government for the past 20 years that doesn't want to ... fuck her.
The current one isn't an exception to this rule. The story in sort goes like this: government (right wings) want to alter the constitution so as to allow private universities and it also wants to restructure higher education in a more "flexible" way in order to "synchronise" the Universities with the market.
Now, you may have private universities at your countries and may consider it normal for kids to have to pay in order to study. If that's the case you may also have in mind a lot of kids that CAN'T afford this cost and therefore they never go to University. I'm not talking about talents that may manage to get a scholarship but about average, yet smart and willing, kids. You may also have in mind some kids who, although not talented or even smart, they have a lot of money to study and be-someone. See, there's something wrong about paying to study and that's what Greek students are fighting to say.
As for the "synchronising" with the market thing, it would suffice to say that it's a paraphrase for producing-specialised-low-wage-workers-instead-of-high-demand-scientists.
Anyway, it's a huge topic that can't be analysed in a post (especially by a man that has left University quite some time ago). Yet, I'd please Greek government to exclude me (and several thousands other Greeks) when it goes on it's monologue about acting as the Greek people wish. I don't remember anyone speaking of major educational reform prior to the elections. And I would also please our dear government not to try to vote for the law in the middle of the summer (as it planned) like it is a law of minor importance. They can vote for it any other time and pretend they consider it a grand matter.
To all Greek students that fight for free education: Μπράβο παιδία! (It's the Greek phrase for "Kids, you are the best thing that this country has").
Tuesday, 16. May 2006, 20:18:06
unemployment, working
Tuesday, 11. April 2006, 19:57:45
unemployment, working, politics, personal
Heard the news? French protesters did win. CPE is dead. I don’t know if they opened champagnes but they certainly deserve it. Bravo guys and gals over there. Asterix would be proud of you.
I, on the other hand, can't say I deserve champagnes. If I was a car I would be running on fumes.
I had another zero meaning job interview today. Depression bit me for good and I wouldn’t want to www my sadness. Dragging her to my sadness is badly enough for one day.
I decided though to avoid medical care (which I hate) and I hope Mulder and Scully will make me feel better. Maybe if I see enough X-files episodes, aliens will abduct me for being a fan of such rubbish and I won’t have to worry about finding a job nor will I make people feel like shit.
Agent Mulder, I really want to believe (that I won't mess it up).
C U
Monday, 20. March 2006, 21:50:41
books, politics, unemployment
There are books that you read till the end just because you feel sorry for the pains you took till the current page. There are also books that you feel sorry to finish because they are too good.
The later category can be divided in further subcategories. One of those is the books that you wish that their writer never gave up writing (or if he/she did you feel like punching him/her). That’s where I’d classify “Three Dollars” by Mr. Elliot Perlman.
The protagonist is Eddie, a most-likeable guy that trying his best he ends up at the age of thirty-eight with a wife, a child and three dollars. There’s nothing abnormal in him, nothing that predisposes for failure except his morality and the world that decides to go globalized and nuts.
How can a writer down in Australia talk in such a comprehensive way about the way our lives have changed since 80’s? How can a guy so far away from Europe talk straight to the heart and the mind of a young Greek man like me? Damn! This was a bomb book. I kept reading in Metro, Bus, Taxis, Tram, when waiting for an interview, at the bus stop, before sleeping, just after waking up...until I finished it. Imagine that this is his first book. I really hope that he never thoughts about quitting writing. It would be a real loss.
Some excerpts:
The distance between what you say in a daydream and what you actually say to a superior at your place of work is proportional to the number of adults unsuccessfully seeking full-time employment.
The end of the Cold War was meant to usher in a new world order but since 1989 national, ethnic or religious differences have resulted in military operations in Liberia, Angola, the Sudan, the Horn of Africa, the former Yugoslavia, the Caucasas and the Transcaucasus, ex-Soviet Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, Lebanon, East Timor and Burma. Is this order? Is this even new? The New World Order is one of those magnificent calming, grandiose and meaningless terms coined by some bright young thing who, upon deserting the Bush administration, was immediately in a position to cash in on the riches of the lecture circuit as the coiner of the “new world order”.
The women knew two types of men: the men they were looking for and the men who had left them. Both types were on this train. One could pick the men who had left them. They had left them because on their return home at the end of many frightened and uncertain days at work their partners were still not home from long hours bending over backwards to keep their jobs. When the women finally did get home there was nothing teenage about them but their clothes, and the men, whose mothers had never made their fathers defrost anything, needed more than ever to escape with one of the kids from the magazines. These men, both before and after they abandoned their partners, kept voting for parties strong on traditional family values. They felt in their hearts that no one understood them and that there was nothing wrong with leering over someone’s shoulder on a train to catch a glimpse of a skinny girl-child in a very short dress. After all, their ex-wives used to dress like that.
Absolutely awesome.
Notes:
A -better than mine- review.
Just saw that it was shot as a movie too. My Earth. I have to see it.
Saturday, 18. March 2006, 00:10:16
unemployment, personal
I'm still alive (and unemployed).
The strike of March 15th was the greatest of the last 15 years which, by its own, is terrific news. The protest march was peaceful except for the part when policemen (maybe unused to such peacefulness) had to heat things up by beating a pensioner (I guess they would consider it a lost day if they didn't beat someone) - we called them names they rightfully deserved (e.g. pigs) and marched on. Pensioner is bandaged and OK but the poor government had problems justifying why policemen did hit him and told him "go to your home dirty old man". Strike percentages were about 70% for private sector, 90% for public sector and 100% for unemployed sector.
Me? Surfing the waves of unemployment-depression Sea. The weather looks fine so I don't understand where these waves come from. There must be a hurricane deep inside the ocean. Meanwhile, being a good boy, I invest on self-improvement. I sit on my PC and learn new tools. But after a while I feel a bit idiot having spend a decade in Universities and being rejected for not knowing the whole packet of ASP, VB, Oracle, CODEC-MPEG2, CISCO, PL/SQL, Java, SS7, ISUP, INAP, Unix, Linux, ... blah blah blah. What's more is that when self-improving I get drifted away in a daydream that begins with me outrageously explaining that I can't possibly know every stupid tool and technology but I studied to be able to learn it reasonably fast and that's what universities are for...and ends with a TFT screen being around interviewer's neck and me showing him/her the finger.
Take for example the point of view of this article (it will be of great interest to all of you that are in informatics one way or another). To paraphrase it's meaning "My job went to India and now I have to be better than 4 Indian engineers to get it back". Well, according to my books, reading and being up to date with your science because you like it is one thing but having to be up to date and concurrently be able to be manager, economic analyst, coffee-maker and secretary is another. Not all engineers and programmers can be managers. Not because we can't, (to hell with managers anyway - all they do is bossing people around - hiring and more usually firing without ever producing a thing), but simply because there aren't enough manager positions. This -self improving- ain't a solution and you know it. No-job situation will still await you or your colleague as long as your great corporation will strive to drive the costs down (and its profits disgustingly high) by moving wherever the wages are less than your coffee. A more realistic proposition to USA colleagues would be to get an Indian visa and go after their (Indian) work (and an Indian wage).
...
I'm really exhausted trying to be a good boy. I think I'll strike for the weekend. C U.
Tuesday, 14. March 2006, 23:12:28
politics, unemployment, working
Today (15th of March) the two major Greek workers organizations have declared a general strike which is good news as far as I am concerned. Oh, I'll join in -it's easy for me- I'm unemployed and I see no good signs of fate change in the near future.
What is the strike for? Well, in a few words it's about No More!
Public sector is being reformed to look like private sector which looks like hell for the last decade or so.
Public health system is being hospitalized in critical condition (you can get an appointment scheduled in a month if you are lucky).
Pensions (and pensioners) don't feel very good either as they get smaller and smaller while government wants to increase the age limit for retirement (they seem really concerned about the social insurance low funds and they would only smile if the limit got over 100 years, albeit "government" is composed of people that will never need a pension).
Prices soar like eagles full of pride but people don't seem to share their glamour (that is people that have to buy things and not the ones that increase the prices - the latter are smiling ever since Euro came into our lives).
Unemployment is on the rise too - but the official indicators are well cooked to show a mild condition. Yet, the truth is that decently paid jobs are under extinction, LOTS of overqualified people work in...cafeterias and the queues of young men and women waiting for unemployment allowance every 1st of the month is getting longer month by month.
...
So, that's it for today folks. I'll be striking for the next 24 hours. I won't write a word.
Showing posts 1 -
7 of 9.
WIDGETIZE