Day 168

a useless day, a day without a story, nothing to remember nothing to tell. I spent most of the time on sofa with PC and Spotify, brain dead. It's bloody cold outside and some white stuff arrived with a storm, better to stay inside.

Day 167

a different kind of day; travelled twice to Tampere.  First the morning session,  which was great: I jumped to train at six, had a coffee in Coffee House in Tampere (picture below) at 07:45, walked towards Pispala, carried some furniture type of stuff for 3 hours, enjoyed to sit next to real truck driver towards Pori (hyvät kyydit Mikko), coffee in Havanna Pori, and back to Tampere, airport this time and with a car ( gave a lift), and now back at home with love ones and red wine. I had a good time today !! Cheers.

Day 166

Wednesday 28th of November

another day gone.. without a job. Every morning I wake up with a smile (not really, but..) due to fact that I have a priviledge to have another day just for me and people close to me. You know the feeling like having extended holiday. There are days though to worry a bit about the future and where to get my living after "extended holiday " period. There haven't be any matching job ads in last 3-4 weeks in the area of Satakunta. But I have done the decision NOT to start a new job in day 200, but rather day 300 or something. That gives me more time to find a meaningful job, and not to rush to the decisions which are not meant for me after all.

X-mas is approaching and I would though that no new jobs will be announced on that period, maybe its better to close the books for the year 2012 in a matter of intensive job hunting.

Day 165

3 days forecast give us some hope for a snow. Mainly the snow will land to the southern part of the Finland, and not that much -if any- to the west coast. I'm not too keen for snow yet; I have been pretty happy to cycle without snow, like today the weather was mild and dry enough to cycle for a coffee and later to ice hockey game.

Anyway, I have me own balls (snow) ready for x-mas, with or without snow:

Day 164

Right. I have spend basically the whole day trying to get Windows 8 working smoothly, and now I'm ready to give up. There has been and still are issues, which are not acceptable. (like you get error codes -which are not regionized by Windows support pages-, when trying to download applications or SW updates, but you need to find hacking information via various forums to get it work). Most of the drivers must be reinstalled and manually of course. Facebook does not work via dedicated Windows application and many more...

But the most annoying is the slowness of the operating system; responses to commands are far too slow, especially Internet explorer: it could take 45 sec to open a page.

This is crap, don't install - I know it's not meant to be like this, but I was expecting a bit better installation procedure. 10 years back Windows issues were acceptable because there wasn't none to compare (apart from Linux, which wasn't that widely used). But today both Android and Apple has shown what is the smooth SW and application installation process, and this falls far from that. Disappointing.

I must keep using win8 for couple of days as I'm not ready to downgrade back to 7 right now; more likely there are more problems waiting for me...

Day 163

I updated Windows 7 to version 8 tonight. Why? Wanted to get a feeling and compare it to the Android 4. The upgrade was easy and was executed nicely. Took couple of hours, including Win 8 downloading process (2GB). But then problems with email, printer ,Explorer 10 and... It takes time to get it ready for full use. I won't be able to finish it tonight.

First impression? Well, the interface needs some more learning and tuning before I can tell for sure, but it didn't give the "ahaa" feeling, so far. But the direction is right and who knows, it might start feeling good. BTW, it's installed in PC, not in the laptop or tablet, which would be better choice.

Day 162

the day looked like this at 10:45

Day 161

 

This is it.

Tomorrow I will win this Powerball (USA) lottery and I don't need to write any CVs anymore.

Problem solved.

 

 

 

 

BTW, I wont continue my blog after tomorrow; I'll need my own company to decide what to do with all the money.

Day 160

Abramovich makes me see red; He's a bloody joke! He really tries our nerves and makes it very difficult to support his decisions. This is the worst of kind:

"Rafa Benitez will walk into a Stamford Bridge on Sunday after being appointed Roman Abramovich's ninth Chelsea manager."

and this how the Chelsea fanzone replies:
"Dave Johnstone, editor of the main Chelsea fanzine, cfcuk, said: "Rafa Benitez is not a Chelsea manager. He isn't what we want."
"Some Blues fans threatened to rip up their season tickets in protest, with others stating a determination to show Abramovich they detested a man they describe as a "fat Spanish waiter" after the popular Di Matteo paid the price for the Champions League debacle against Juventus."
"When he was manager of Liverpool and we had Jose Mourinho he was very dismissive of Chelsea, very rude towards us. Whenever anything went wrong, it was always somebody else's fault, not his"

I would like to go and see the next Chelsea home game (next Sunday, Man City) and give my booooo, which I expect to hear a lot when Rafa shows up

Day 159

There's a new book by John Grisham called "Racketeer" which I saw in Arlanda airport (Stockholm) on my way to London. I did not buy it as it cost 32€. I though to get it cheaper in London. But I did not found it anywhere, instead I bought  another Grisham book which I did not know to exist (the book is crap).

Anyway, way back home I stopped Arlanda again and I skipped buying the book. again, because I trusted "Suomalainen Kirjakauppa" and I was sure to get it couple of euros cheaper from there.

Today I visited the shop to buy that book´(in Pori), but they don't have it. It takes 4 weeks to order it! But it's available in Suomalainen Kirjakauppa in Tampere shop. I wonder why it takes 4 weeks to get it to Pori. I did not order it, but I will travel to Tampere instead. Luckily Mikko invited me to Tampere next week to help him packing and stuff, and will have a chance to buy the book at the same time.

Day 158

Tuesday 20th of November

When I quit my job 158 days ago, the golden idea was to find something new, motivating and enjoyable job for next 20 years or so. But during the last weeks the athmosphere had been to find ANY job around here. Is that what I should setteled? No, it cant be. So I better keep on looking and wait for the right one.

Day 157

One of the reason (and there are many) to visit London was to get a feeling of living and working there again; should I still consider London as an option?

And I got the answer; I wanted to say "yes, I still have a desire to work there", but .. No, I did not get that feeling anymore. Damn, am I getting old and scared to step out of my comfort zone? Whatever is the answer, It's pretty clear now that moving abroad  is not an option for next 5-8 years. (unless, there's always "unless", a dramatic change of whole ecosystem).

That means following: I will stick with Pori, I'll use more time to find meaningful job around here. The rest 43 days wont be enough, that's for sure by now. Thus, I better start preparing, a new plan for the first quarter of 2013 and even for the 2nd.

Day 156

the weekend was all about this. Great wins, great time.

Day 155

Saturday 17th of November

Day 154

Why are you writing your CV again, I hear you asking. Well, is it's crap if we believe the online company which writes CV for you, with a nice price tag. They review your CV and gives extensive feedback, negative mostly, for free. Then they offer their professional services. It's a good concept. I was almost crying for their help.

They made a good point though; the content, the core, is pretty thin in my current CV. It really does not give the answer for the question "what has been my best achievements", but rather just says what have been my tasks. Being "responsible of" something does not tell enough.

Thus I started to study a) various formats of CV, and b) what I have achieved, really, during my years in telecommunication business. And THAT takes time. Deadline is by end of next week as there is one interesting job available in Vaasa, or kind of interesting. But this weekend I'm busy with floorball in Turku, where our season starts, in for both 40 years and 45 years finnish championship serie.

Day 153

Tonight we'll see the real Pori and what we really are like :)

 

 

Day152

It felt like a day at work today! Starting to rewrite my CV again and managed to do 5 hours; that's like a working hours, almost. Couldn't finish the CV though and need to continue, but not tomorrow; I need a couple days break now.

Day 151

I'm too lazy to write anything today. Instead, here's the picture of... a bedroom lamp. sight

Day 150

Day one five o. That is 50 days to go.

If I would be a project manager, I would send a serious message out to all stakeholders: red flag, re-planning to be started. Normally there would be actions to evaluate the situation and analyse the cause for the failure, and agree the new content with customer and ensure you able to deliver at least the mandatory part.

But this is one man show, and I can do what ever I want to :). This time the board has decided to... not to take any dramatic preventive actions to solve the foreseen problem, but instead.. continue to enjoy the spare time in hand. Reason: one day it all will end.

Day 149

they actually have some marketing effort after all.. this is from Selfridges & Co store window (400 Oxford Street London). And yes, X-mas was already present.

http://style.selfridges.com/store/london

Day 148

The view from the plain on Thursday

Day 147

Here's to cheer you up- this is how they teach history in the school today; after this you remember the names of politicans :) (thanks Hugo for the hint)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK4tbUBXfuQ

Day 146

Day 145

Today it's all about Chelsea and UEFA cup. The import win!


P.S. USA has elected Obama as a president, congratulations. But isn't outrageous that the whole show costs around 3 billion ? At the same time, americans spent around 6.5 billion for Halloween costumes and stuff alone. That shows the size of the market we are talking about.. and the priority.

Day 144

Unemployment rate in London is 8.9%, that is roughly 380 000. If I remember right, that is in  line with Satakunta figures, the %, not the actual number of unemployed; Satakunta has a couple of persons under 380 000 last time I checked. 

http://lseo.org.uk/data/london-data

I would like to attach nice pictures rather than dull fact, but havent managed to upload any, no matter where I have been and which network used, I gave up.

Day 143

This is the city where I could spend my days as unemployed. There are so much more than what Pori can offer ( u're surprised, eh ?). Like today: a sunny morning, beatiful buildings and surroundings, 2 hours walk, breakfast and no hurry to anywhere... and now in the pub, having a pint, reading Satakunnan Kansa ( not really!), and..

... I'm running out of the money. Gosh, how expensive this place can be for unemployed person. Damn. I must come back home, it's not fair. * I tell you what's not fair: there are 600 kids in the streets of London, stateless,(no record that you exist, due to various reasons) without of ANY help of any kind. And it makes you feel sick. So, I think again, what's " fair".

Day 142

I was about to attach some pictures today, but it was too much to be asked from this cafe place network, more likely due to poor upload capacity.

Anyway, there was a heavy downpour this morning and I was worried about my possibilities to walk around. But, the rain stopped right after I had bought the umbrella, how typical.

The QPR game, all the walking  and the shopping after made me feel very exhausted and I'm ready to call the day off. Tomorrow I'll change the hotel and tell you more. good night.

Day 141

Day onehundredfortyone was a good day, a great day. Everything went as planned.I was out in streets already at 8.15, and just returned, at 22.15 ( i'll go for a pint in a minute and finish this writing there as the WiFi is crap in my room).

I started a day with a coffee(s) and a paper(s) in two coffee shops, located 10km apart from each other, had a lunch watching football in a nice sport cafe. Travelled to West Ham (which actually is 25 km to the east from London city, but still in London) and got a ticket to the evening game. ( I was really taken by the atmosphere of West Ham United: Prior the game they sang " we are united" by Sham69, the 80's punk band. And, and the players were introduced with a "London Calling" by the Clash in the background !!!!!!! Wow! ).

I came back from Upton Park (stadium) by bus; and it took me 2.5 hours to get back. I walked some part and I needed to use 3 different buses, and I didn't always know where I was. I didn't want to use GPS or a map, but went by the instinct, and got lost a few times. It was fun and I saw many places, which I wouldn't have visited otherwise.( the route to be sent later once I have time, Sport Tracker recorded it all).

Day 140

Today I ..

and I will see this game...

and this game...

and planning to see this game...

 and rest of the time I ...

https://web.barclayscyclehire.tfl.gov.uk/maps

and I might, just might,  drop in to these kind of places ...

Have a nice weekend you too, and I'll keep updating the blog as usual. Surely I'll find suitable places with WiFi.

Day 139

Thursday 1st of November

Unemployment status in Finland:
(Sorry, it's all in Finnish).

"Kaikkien työttömien lukumäärä oli syyskuussa 228 000 (215 000 syyskuussa 2011). Työttömyys alkoi kasvaa huhtikuussa ja sen jälkeen kasvunopeus on tasaisesti kiihtynyt. Muutos oli 6 % edelliseen vuoteen verrattuna. Työttömien määrä on kasvanut aiempaa nopeammin sekä alemman että ylemmän korkeakoulututkinnon suorittaneidenkin joukossa"

"Ylemmän korkeakouluasteen tutkinnon suorittaneita oli syyskuussa työttömänä 13 000 (11 000). Tälläkin koulutusasteelle työttömyys on kasvanut entistä nopeammin kesän jälkeen, nyt muutos oli 18 % verrattuna edellisvuoteen. "

Be a dentist, not an engineer: