I almost feel bad

...for some words I've written about journalists and their work in the past. Well, almost.

The reason for this is a report I've seen yesterday. It stated that quite some people who used to make good money with their work are living off very little money today. Journalists, lawyers and architects are among them.

In the past those jobs were considered a safe way to lead a good life with enough money to afford a good car, a good apartment and a regular vacation at least once a year. And, after all, people had to put in quite some work before they got all those goodies. They had to study and build up a name for themselves. Today, it seems, that is no longer enough. That almost makes me glad I'm no longer working as a freelance editor. Currently I just hope I will get a job working for some company once I'm a webmaster. Working as a freelancer will surely be my last resort.

But how did that happen? There are various reasons, at least from what the report said.

One of the most important reasons seems to be the existence of trainees. Among journalists that's the main problem, at least due to the report. A trainee is paid very poorly - sometimes even not at all - and usually has to do the same things the paid journalists (or people from other jobs) do. That makes them a lot cheaper - but it doesn't necessarily improve the quality of their articles (which is why I'm only almost sorry).

Another important reason seems to be less money than in the past. That's the main problem for architects. There aren't as many people building houses any longer (and a lot of people building their own little house use pre-constructed houses - not much to do and earn from them, if you happen to be an architect). Communities can't afford new buildings either and apart from that, there's not much to do.

The third and last important reason seems to be the large number of people in the job. That's a problem for the lawyers. There's so many of them around, none of them can get enough clients to make a good sum during the week. As Germany does not have a restriction of the number of lawyers working in any given town, that cannot be avoided. Too many people are studying to be lawyers one day - after all, it still seems as if they're making a lot of money.

Now I wonder: If such formerly well-paid jobs cannot sustain people any longer, what is going to become of us? If there really is a boom, then why do people not feel it? There have been some new jobs, but most of the unemployed who have found work lately are still financed by the government to a certain extend, because they actually make less than they would if they didn't work at all.

Is this how motivation should work? Telling people "Well, if you work, you'll actually be off worse than if you don't, but as we can't make the companies see the need of minimal wages, we'll at least give you the difference between what you earn in your job and what you would get if you didn't do it"? Or giving them the good tip to get a second (or third? or fourth?) job? If they really do, how many people won't even be able to get a first job, because someone else is doing it after his work already?

Politicians from all parties celebrate the low number of unemployed people (and in the area where I live, the rate of unemployment is at about 4.8 percent, that's quite below standard in Germany). What they don't say during their speeches about "how we did this impossible feat" is "okay, so about 30 percent still get money from us and another 40 percent make about the money they got from the state before - or even a little less". (I've made those last two numbers up, the unemployment rate I've read about in a local newspaper.)

Maybe I was too strict with journalists in Germany and should keep in mind that the journalists writing the bad-researched articles were wondering how to pay the next rent while working.

Monopoly

I guess you can't grow up anywhere in the western world without playing "Monopoly" at least once in your life.

My very first memory of the game is from when I was about five. I was far too young to play then, obviously, but I remember fondly sitting in my cousins' bedroom and playing with the little red and green houses (I was five, how should I have known the red ones were hotels?). Of course, sooner or later they would take them away from me and put them on the board - even though the streets I planned with them looked a lot better than that square.

When I was slightly older, they allowed me to tend the bank. I couldn't play with them then, but about seven was old enough to handle the money bills.

Later on I usually played with my father - we even tended to write up everything so we could continue a game later on.

From my point of view, "Monopoly" is ideal to be played at the computer. (And I still treasure my special edition "Star Wars Monopoly".) The computer is a perfect bank, it won't give you too much or too little money. And it keeps all the rules in mind, too. I like that. In addition, you can save such a game without having to write up in minute detail who owns which street, where houses and hotels have been build and how much money everyone has. That's great, too.

Now, "Monopoly" might teach people capitalistic values, but it's an interesting and taxing game for older children as well as for adults. And - given the fact that no two people I ever talked to about the game were playing by the same rules - there's a lot of varieties around, too. For example, we used to gather the taxes and other money spent on 'public services' because of the community and chance cards in the middle of the board so the first person landing on "Free Parking" would get the money. I still treasure the memory of getting thousands upon thousands after being the first to hit the space after we'd all been landing on the taxes and paying for our houses and hotels for ages. It was quite a sum and enabled me to make my streets far more dangerous by building loads of new houses. We also used to decide that you didn't have to own all streets of a set to build houses on them - and you could build houses irregularly and hotels without putting down the houses beforehand. Made it more interesting.

"Monopoly" can be a guaranty for a nice evening with friends or family - or for a row, if somebody's getting too much from the others.

What a wonderful view

Isn't it a wonderful view? Well, it is, for someone playing "Anno 1701".

Do you see all those houses with the green roofs? They're housing the nobility. Noblemen and -women living in a settlement pay a lot of taxes, financing not only their own needs (which are quite high, those people want everything), but also anything the player might want to add for himself (like a really huge palace with large grounds and a lot of buildings ... ahem). It's a long way to such a big settlement.

And it's a long way to this picturesque view of mills and farms, too. It takes a while until you have enough citizens in the right stage to be allowed to build it. Farms, mills and bakeries are a very efficient way to produce food, though, and so they become necessary sooner or later. After all, over 4,000 citizens have to be fed.

I'm enjoying my view tremendously, to be honest. It has taken quite some time until my little settlement with a handful of sturdy pioneers, living off fishes and only demanding food, cloth, a church and a town square, has become a bustling town full of noblemen and -women. Yes, I did a good job there.

Ice Cream!

Now, why is she thinking about ice cream right after claiming the first snow had fallen and it's gotten cold outside, you might wonder. Well, first of all, I can always think of ice cream, I just don't have to eat it while it's cold outside. But that's not the main reason.

"Cindy's Sundaes" is the main reason. And it's a good game, too. And the ice cream definitely looks very delicious as well.

It's an arcade game in which you advance through the levels by matching three or more bullets of ice cream of the same kind to earn points. In addition to advancing through the levels, though, you can also build your own sundaes with the contents you slowly gain by gaining tokens to invest. The one in the picture above is from me, by the way. It hasn't got a name, though, although it might be called "Summer Delight" or something like that.

The levels can sometimes be vexing, but then, even if you screw a level, you still get some tokens, so not making it a couple of times helps a lot to unlock new contents and build better-looking sundaes.

I've gotten through the whole game once already, but as the levels are build up new every time around, it's quite interesting to do the game again.

And the ice cream looks damn tasty, even if it's cold outside...

The first snow

Yesterday in the evening we had the first snow this winter. I can't really remember whether we had any snow in January or February this year, but I distinctly remember a very warm March, so we definitely didn't have a long, cold winter.

There wasn't too much snow around, though. I'm living in a small pocket of time and space where the weather usually is a tad bit warmer than everywhere else around. It's nice, these days, though I tended to miss not having 'White Christmas' a lot when I was younger. (To be honest, I still get a bit giddy and hopeful before the 24th of December every year.) And the snow was gone around ten this morning, too. But it's gotten awfully cold – good thing my heating is working.

Winter is coming fast, that can't be denied any longer...

Ringtone Madness

Normally I'm not really interested in what kind of ring-tones people have for their cells. Normally. But Christmas is coming and so is the WHAM "Last Christmas" ring-tone that makes me want to kill people. Slowly. Painfully. Repeatedly. (Richard from "Looking for Group" might want to assist with that.)

I don't think the song itself was created by the devil to torture me, but what I can't stand is the repeated use of it every year, starting in mid-November. By the sixth of December I'm so sick of hearing it, I start to growl whenever it is played somewhere.

In the past I could avoid the song by not listening to the radio and avoid music television of any kind (MTV and VIVA in Germany). But with the invention of ring-tones above the build-in sounds that once came with a cell, I can't avoid it any longer. The first ads for the "Last Christmas" ring-tone (full length and original sound) are out and soon a lot of people will either have bought it or remember they have it already. That's how I sometimes imagine Hell to be: being forced to listen to "Last Christmas" for eternity. Scary idea, almost makes me want to be a good girl.

But even beyond "Last Christmas", ring-tones can be a curse. I have to admit I'm not free of this madness myself, either. Currently my ring-tone happens to be "He's a Pirate" from "Pirates of the Caribbean" - and with the many TV melodies I've finally transformed into mp3, it might soon change. (I got the program for the transformation for one measly Euro, you can't get a professional program any cheaper outside the internet.)

But, as I don't get all that many calls anyway, I don't think I really torture anybody with my ring-tone (whatever it might be). But spent thirty minutes in a public transport and you will hear anything from rap to pop being played by cell phones. Most of the time the sounds are turned up rather loud, too. That's not so bad, as long as there's just one phone ringing, but usually it's three or four at the same time - and that just sounds dreadful. It wasn't half as bad in the past, when it was just the Nokia-sound and some others.

I wonder what the next stage will be? Can it get any worse?

Technical development

After I read (and watched) Elisabeth's post about Jack Bauer in 1994, I realized that the whole thing works the other way around as well. "24" would not have worked out like that in 1994 and a lot of the stories I read and watched as a child would not work out the same way today.

Information is traded much more easily today; the internet with the many sites, with email and chat-rooms and forums has changed the way we treat and gather information a lot.

As I read a lot of books about junior detectives when I was a kid myself, there was a lot of information-gathering in them. But while they had to resort to local research in newspaper archives, libraries or by talking to people, they would have a whole new host of possibilities right now. (And I don't want to imagine what Sherlock Holmes would have been able to deduce with means like those at his disposal ... although it's an interesting idea - I should file it away for now.)

Most of the stories I read (save for "Sherlock Holmes", of course) were set in the times I was living in, so the kids featuring in them were more or less living like I did (apart from having adventures, of course).

This made me think about the technical development of the last twenty or so years. That covers the time it took for the internet to become a well-used and much-frequented medium (opposite to the scientists' network it was in the beginning). That covers the time it took for cell phones to become a normal means of communication. The computer became an everyday thing, too, during that time.

I guess you could spent millennia discussing whether we need all those technical means, but then, theoretically, we could still live in cages, wear animal skin and eat our meat raw - and who wants to, seriously? They are here and they are used. It's up to us to use them sensibly.

10 years ago I didn't have a cell phone (and currently I've only got my third model, but then, I'm using a prepaid phone). 10 years ago computer games didn't look realistic enough to scare anybody. 10 years ago DVD was a new medium and only very few people actually had a DVD-player.

20 years ago nobody had heard of cell phones (at least where I live). 20 years ago computers weren't really everywhere. 20 years ago even video recorders were expensive (they are again, today, because there's not many of them around any longer).

Technical development can't and shouldn't be avoided. It's what 'civilisation' is all about.