Maru's Mun Journal

... sorta, because I have a new job: - I'll be starting in the little agency (Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce sized, not Sterling Cooper sized) where my old, old friend japanologist is a partner in September (officially and salaried-ly), but will do jobs for them before, which is very doable, as I only work part-time at my present slavery.

I'll be doing everything I can there: - managing servers, databases, CMSes, filling and building web sites (Stephan will teach me Drupal programming, too), editing graphics, typesetting, copywriting, translating, anything that needs doing. They do mostly online stuff and promotions, not classic print media (which is dead, anyway), but basically,yes,  I'll be joining a modern day version of one of my favourite TV shows.

I'll bet you anything that before the year is out, I'll have used Finnish for them, and taken pictures with my beloved Pentax (which I will now be able to buy off Thomas the Metropolitan) in some bland but professional capacity as well. Everybody does anything they can and that is needed, just as they tend to do at SCDP.

It'll be part time (20 hours, which I work now as well, but for a better salary and an option for 30 hours when I've learned the ropes, found me feet and do projects on my own), and that's what I wanted so I can still RP into the night and write for-pay articles for those book magazines. Oh, and if my present slavery wants me to carry on with my biweekly column in their new e-law newsletter, I'll do so as well for the usual fee, no problem. I'm definitely not ragequitting. Ragequitting is unprofessional and only causes more stress than it relieves. Much as I will be happy to never, ever see Madame Main-Stressor again, ever.

I'll sign the contract next Friday (25th), so that's why I am keeping this flocked for the moment, but I'm already in their system, have an email address and a Google drive account there, will be making my 'official' realname Google+ account for work (so if some Martina circles you in the next few weeks or so, that'll be me) so I can do official tech and promo communication there, etc., and have generally hit the ground with my feet already running -- I did the first work with the CMS for them today, putting an article online and fiddling with the illustrations, of which there were far too many to let the text flow around comfortably...

And I won't have to hide who and what I am -- nothing of it! Not the RPing, the fannishness, the geekery, the sports, the HAES, nothing! Stephan knows my blogs, I showed the lady who had the idea to hire me around collected_fudz ('That fish chowder -- best thing EVER EVER EVER!!') because they have cooking related projects, there is no need to hide either Yakalskovich or Sethos or Xarminta there, on the contrary, it's an advantage that I've been blogging since 2003 and have been writing text with a wild variety of disparate people in different time zones over the internet as a matter of course for years and years. Stephan even holds similar political views and knows I've joined the Pirate Party recently. I can use everything that I know and enjoy and am good at, and they're even going to pay me money for it!

And I'm going to be in an RL version of Mad Men. Sorta...


**squees incoherently and skips off**

Theoretically, anybody who wants to be vaccinated, can be.

But: the panic spread on the TV news has led to such a run on all the GPs etc. that do it (hospitals and central health authorities don't!), one can't come by it at the moment.

Of course, all that artificial panic is probably just meant to incite the chronically vaccine-wary Germans to get inoculated after all. When I said as much on the phone to the nurse/assistant at the office of the the doctor my colleague who lives near here has recommend, she said all that panic was 'bullshit'. Yep, that's the right word to translate 'Schwachsinn' with.

Calling a few other doctor's offices has brought up zilch, of various shapes, too. So I guess I'll call that same office again at the end of next week or so to see if they have new doses of the vaccine, because somewhere that has a nurse/assistant (notoriously very soft-spoken, bland & submissive) with an attitude that allows her to say 'Schwachsinn' on the phone to a stranger? I think I like a place that where people with attitude and independence can work.

Remember the rabid dead man who was alive, yesterday? I managed to get hold of the newspaper in question, and the front page article in its entirety reads as follows:


(Munich) On Thursday last week, he had been declared dead: a 60-year-old develoment aid worker who had allegedly been infected with rabies while in India. Now follows the incredible disclaimer: the man is alive and in intensive care in the Großhadern general hospital. And it's not even certain whether it is rabies he's suffering from: see p. 15