Posts Tagged “money”

“…So you admit that you are a dreamer?”

On reflection perhaps this may be a typical reason why some prospective employers simply do not get back to me regarding positions that I feel that I am more than capable of fulfilling.

Yes I am an individual who thinks far beyond what most individuals normally would. A regular individual concerns him or herself with how to be a success in life. By success one would normally refer to getting a 40-hour job, a cool car, a wife (or husband), have kids, make lots of money, etc.

“I suppose its just the way you are…”

Hmm. I appreciate that some people might want to make excuses for what they may perceive as a flaw within myself, but unless I am hopping to and from hospital for tests or surgery, or otherwise severely hampered by circumstances beyond my control then I am not inclined to make excuses for myself.

This is particularly true if I believe that the conceptions upon which they are based are false. I am firmly of the belief that dreamers are not born so but develop to be such. I believe that the dreamer is close of kin to the creator – the person who manifests through art and music and craft and science.

Anybody can be a dreamer.

Dreamers are those who do not necessarily extrapolate from the real to discover that that which is presumed fictional can be achieved, but rather they can begin from the fictional and work with and beyond the accepted knowns to add the non to fiction.

Dreamers are far from useless and it is a commonly-held misconception that we are. It is why it is suggested that we call ourselves ‘visionaries’. A visionary is a person who is close of kin to a dreamer but has a deeper and narrower field of view, focusing upon a single ambition to the exclusion of trivialities that fall by the side. Many self-proclaimed visionaries are in fact closer related to dreamers as they lack the single-mindedness required.

We dreamers can be found in many fields of employment and, sometimes, we leave our imprint. We question the boundaries of the possible, we innovate and have made possible some of the most important as well as the most whimsical contributions that developed societies have enjoyed.

Yes I am a dreamer. Would you like to soar?

Sometimes in spite of one’s best efforts we come to a point where we are simply taken down by the common cold. I could not tell you if it were the regular or swine variant and neither would I be inclined to care, considering that there is little to set the two apart in lethality and also considering that the swine variant was manufactured and hyped in a diabolical money making spin.

Periods of down-time are best spent indoors, away from society, typing away at a keyboard with a cat slumbering beside you, and copious amounts of soft paper to expel into.

It has produced a bit of a dilemma, as I tend to pay ear to old wives tales on such matters. It is said that you need to feed a cold, and feeding myself would have been problematic from the standpoint of my supposed diet.

A container of mostly fresh chili peppers provided the answer. Simply rinse, cut off the stem section, snip the tip, slice down the middle and scoop out any and all seeds.

Chop it up very finely and add to a mix of scrambled egg before popping it into the microwave. The dairy elements added to the egg mix helps to take the edge off the chili and it turns out rather pleasant. It is just as well that a red chili is about four times as rich in vitamin C as a typical orange.

Avoiding dairy products directly before sleep is also something that I normally believe in, and yet my first clue that I had a cold coming on was within the throat. I guess there are no absolute methods of prevention.

And now here I am typing away, a dysfunctional voice and an annoying tingling, almost ticklish sensation in my lungs. Looks like I need to adjust my medication.

Mobile telephony is a phenomenon that exploded within Malta within the past decade. It rocketed to popularity and, as with any service that is considered of essence to ourselves, we have been moaning about it ever since. First it was the failings in the mobile telephony network infrastructure, then it was the expensive rates – having at one time been relatively amongst the most pricey in Europe, and then there were the pricey roaming rates for calls across boundaries.

Today I would like to add another one to the list – forced consumption. No, no telephony representatives are looming over your shoulder to dial a number or have you dial a number without your consent. I do however speak of the window system that mobile telephony companies use.

A time window is a set period of time. In mobile telephony, such as with GO, for every top-up card you purchase and consume your window is extended by a number of days relative to the value purchased, such as 90 days for a € 5.00 (less VAT) top up card. Should you have a single Euro cent or a thousand Euros stashed within your mobile phone at the end of your window, you lose your right to use your money until you purchase more call value and the consequent time window extension attached to it.

I personally consider it a highly questionable practice for a person to sell a usable product and impose a time-limit for consumption. The effect of the imposition of time-windows is effectively forced consumption as the mobile telephony companies set an invisible line in the sand representing a sales quota. The best way to make a sales quota in the absence of a truly open market is to impose restrictions that require a repeated purchase, which is a little like a car dealer selling you a synthetic fuel that becomes unusable if not topped up by a particular fuel station every few weeks (it is the concept, not the realism, that is important here).

Needless to say any such time window system is an imposition upon any and all individuals who watch the pennies when using a mobile phone, those who avoid using it for anything but emergencies or those who believe that less is more. Certain portions of the elderly could very well be amongst this population of conservative telephony users but any individual who does not feel wealthy enough to splash out on telephony is a candidate to hit this wall straight-on. And then, in the dead of night, when the vehicle sputters out and they reach for the dusty old mobile that they had invested some € 50.00 (less VAT) over the previous years and used very little, when they try to dial a family number to get some assistance the voice on the other side of the line odiously informs them that they either have no credit or their time window has expired. Such individuals are denied access to their own funds within the situations for which that they specifically invested money in it.

Needless to say I urge the telephony companies, both GO and Vodafone, to discard this insidious practice and to, for just once, place the consumers before the profit margin. Ironing out such ethical deficiencies is a lot more important than spamming the SMS in-box with all these special offers of how to save money spending more within one’s window. The responsible penny-savers will thank you for it.