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I’m a freelance translator / interpreter with 2 Toronto agencies. I have been doing it for a couple of years now, and even though it’s not a full time income, it’s pretty good pay when there are jobs. The one agency I’m with (All Languages) is a great agency to freelance with, and I get most of my assignments from them.

The other one (I won’t mention them here because it’s gonna reflect quite badly on them) has a few assignments here and there. I did 2 translations for them in April, and sent them the invoices within 1 day after finishing my assignments. Now, normally with All Languages, I’d get paid the first week of the next month, but with this other agency, somehow up until now (2nd week of June) I still haven’t received my paycheck yet. I already called up the person who usually gives me the assignments in May, and she told me that I should have it by the end of May. Well it’s the second week of June already, and I still don’t have the payment for those 2 assignments.

I realize that it’s not really a huge amount, but it shows how unprofessional this agency is. If I don’t get my paycheck at the end of this month, maybe I’ll just release the name of this agency so that people know how they treat their freelancers.

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Holy crap !!! My car insurance broker just emailed me, saying that my premium which was at a ridiculous $313 a month would have to go up to $477 with the same company. He found me another one at $350.

I’m just venting here, but what the heck is going on with car insurance in Ontario? The government said that the rates were supposed to go down all over the place, and this is what happens to someone who’s trying to do the right thing by driving safely etc? I realize that I have a suspension on my abstract (driving with a G1, although I had an International License at the time), but it’s gonna expire in January. I haven’t had any accident or claims within the last god knows how many years, my record is gonna disappear in a couple of months, and they decide to increase my rates ? WTH ?!#@$#@$^$#andand$#%and$

They call me ‘high risk’, but what risk do I have? No accidents, no claims since I’ve been driving in Canada? Alright, I drove with a G1, but what has that got to do with risk? (I had an international license for crying out loud + I’ve been driving outside Canada for more than 7 years). Does this make any sense to anybody?

Man, I can just hope that one day insurance companies will somehow have to suffer for what they’re doing to their customers right now.

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Well, our house is officially on the market. If anyone is interested or knows anybody who’d be interested in buying a house in Mississauga, ON – Canada, please let me know. We put it on the listing through an agent yesterday, and already a couple of people seem interested. So, hopefully it’ll be a quick sell.

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I received a letter in the mail from York University last Friday. It’s basically a letter to graduates of the Comp Sci program, asking us to put our records online and also to put in comments on how the program has impacted our lives after university.

Well, to be honest, I didn’t really benefit from a York degree. Most of the stuff I learnt (humanities, social sciences etc.) were pretty useless. The only really useful courses that I took (RDBMS, OOP, Networks) could have taken me only 1 semester in a technical college or even at night school. Instead I wasted 3 years of my life in university.

I found out that after graduating from York, finding a job wasn’t easy at all. Within 3 years after graduating, I had to take 2 low paying jobs (
So I posted what I thought about a York degree (not much), thinking that I’d probably be the only guy who would dare do so on the site. Little did I know that many people thought the same as me Check it out here (click on the comments button at the very bottom of the page).

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Oh wow, that was one hectic week. We had to move out of the house while it was being painted for a couple of days, and when all was clear, had to clean up a huge mess and put back all the furniture and stuff.

That took a lot out of me. Probably the only time I’d ever paint where I live as long as I live.

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Haven’t posted anything for a couple of days, and there’s a good reason for that. I’ve had to do some house cleaning. Emptied the shed and basement storage, and it took us 2 full days just throwing away junk. I just couldn’t believe that much junk could fit in such small storage space.

Anyway, that’s the hard work done, now the painters are in the house. Hopefully by the end of the week, the whole interior of the house will be painted. It’s a bit troublesome as people are working in the house all day, and it becomes hard to put my kid to bed in the afternoons.

Oh well, at least at the end of the week, the house will be ready to be sold. Yay !!!

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Well, I tried out Friendster today. I already had an account from a couple of months ago, but just never had the interest to do anything with it until now.

Anyway, I spent some time hanging around, finding old friends, current friends and putting up my profile. I know this is still a beta version, so it might not be perfect, but there are quite alot of annoyances, for example:

- When I tried to login, I was asked to confirm my email address. So I asked for the confirmation number to be sent to my email. Got it and entered it. Everything seems fine right? Well, the next time I tried to login, the same message came along, asking me to confirm my email address. Ok, I’m thinking maybe this is just a simple bug, so I enter it again. Little did I know that I’d have to do this almost everytime I try to login to my account, no matter whether I’ve checked ‘Remember my Email’ or not. After so many times, I’ve memorized my confirmation number.

- I uploaded a photo, updated my profile and it saved fine. The next thing I know, no photo and no profile. Argggghhh, just cost me a whole page worth of typing. Let’s see, maybe it’s just a minor bug… ooopps.. I made that mistake already, not gonna do it again. So let’s just do some simple updates and see if it’s fine. Turns out that sometimes it saves fine, and sometimes it doesn’t. What’s weird is that sometimes my photo is there and my profile is updated, the next thing you know… boom.. back to square one with no photo and blank profile, and vice versa. What’s going on here?

- Tried adding a friend, got confirmed by him, and tried to look at his friends. I get this error : “… user doesn’t exist”. ?@##@%?^?$#@and ? If he doesn’t exist, then why have that link there in the first place?

I asked around and most people just tell me that this happened to them too, and not too worry about it. So, considering it’s still a beta, I’d say it’s doing ok. Most of the functionality isn’t affected at all by the problems I mentioned above.

Overall, more improvement necessary on saving and updating data, but in terms of what it’s intended to do (connect people), I think it’s going fine. I might just hang out for a couple of days and see if I can find some of my long lost friends

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I have just had an interesting experience with a painter that came over to give me a quote on painting the whole house (We’re trying to sell the house). There were a couple of other guys who I called over to do the same thing before and after him, so I pretty much knew the average price for the service.

This guy came in, and was completely different from the other guys. He gave me a quote at 1/3 of what the other guys were offering. Of course, he didn’t do as much as the other guys, mainly because he kept saying “Nah, you don’t want to do that” or “Let the buyer beware” or “Let’s just get that low-grade paint and use that”. Of course I understand that he’strying to save me some money, but by showing that he only understands one side of it (the other side being, why would people buy this house at max price if you’re only doing the minimum paint job), it turned me off already.

So there are 2 things I learnt from this:
1. Know your value. If you value yourself as a low end kind of guy, then only low end jobs will come to you. If you place a high value on yourself, and offer high quality jobs, then high quality jobs will come to you. A cheap price is totally different than good value.
2. Get knowledge. You should understand what your customers want and need, and then adapt your service to them. Don’t just go on telling customers that they should use the lowest quality goods etc, so you can perform your job easily and quickly. Customer satisfaction is number one.

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It has happened to all of us. A very nice sales-person comes and presents a product to you. He/she seems very friendly and nice, and you dread the time at the end of the presentation when you have to try turn this person down. Often, you end up buying the product because of this person’s personality, not because you need it.

I’ve done this a couple of times myself, and after awhile realized that this is just not good for myself and my pocket, and that it had to stop.

So these are the things that I do when a sales-person comes over:
- Think about the product and ask if I really need it?
- If I do need it, and there are other people presenting the same thing (eg. in my case right now, real estate brokers to sell the house, painters to paint the interior), look at their products objectively. Which will give me the best value / service for the price? Selecting a person because he/she is nice but losing a couple of hundreds or even thousands of dollars is simply not worth it. We have to be wise with our money.
- When you have to say ‘No’, think about it in another way. Don’t think that you’re turning the sales-person down and making him/her sad, think of it as protecting your finance.
- Say it! Once you say it and stick to your decision, you’ll feel better about it.

I know it’s not easy at first, and I felt bad doing it to a couple of people who were really nice, but in the end it’s about whether or not the product/service is valuable enough for me to purchase, and not about the sales-person.

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Well, I really should have started this blog with this post, but it’s better late than never. I’d like to post why I decided to start blogging, and what’s the purpose of it. After all, why start anything if it serves no purpose and has nowhere to go. That would be useless and a waste of time.

There are 2 main reasons I started blogging (besides a couple minor ones):
1. To allow me to reflect on the daily activities that happen to me. I find that by having a blog, I’m forced to think more about things that occur to me during the day. I believe that there are lessons to be learnt during daily life that are often missed because I don’t take time to think about them. Hopefully by blogging, I can learn more of these important lessons.

2. To establish myself on the internet. I found out during my job search period that more and more recruiters try to find information about candidates on the internet. This blog will allow me to have somewhat of a presence on the internet when people look up my name.

The vision I have for this blog is this:
- That any search on the internet for my name will take people to this blog, where they can know more about me and what I’ve learnt.

It’s a personal thing in the beginning, and hopefully it will grow to include some professional writing later on. But until then, this blog is mainly about me, Darrick Rochili.

Thank you for reading.

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