Right, so I've ended up signing on to Twitter. I wonder if this is the end of the blog here. I'm not using it to update my facebook status yet, but I know it somehow talks to livejournal and does things. And how does Twitter fit in with my bloglines account, which I have actually started using regularly and actually find quite useful.

For now, I guess newness will attract me to Twitter, so www.twitter.com/dartogreen.

Well, from everybody's silence on my last blog entry I conclude that you don't know what I'm meant to do either, which I have to admit is a kind of reassuring feeling. It must mean that decisions aren't easy. And as I'm continuing my culinary joys in Germany (vegetarian BBQ sausages, white asparagus, odd crisps), I have procured some very posh Cinnamon chocolate. When I looked the company up on the mighty internets, I came across another page of pure joy: Chocablog, a UK-based chocolate reviews page. You read me right, it's a chocolate review page!

Here comes my own review of the famous Cinnamon choc, all in the spirit of internet discovery.

Leysieffer offer quite a range of interesting chocolate creations, and on the hunt for a collague's beloved Chilli chocolate I also came across this Cinnamon variety. I'm a big fan of all things cinnamon and couldn't resist getting to know this variety a little bit better. On closer inspection, the wondrous creation turns out to be white chocolate (28% cocoa).

A let-down? Better off going dark? The actual choccy colour is anything but white by any chance, and looks more like a delicious caramel. It smells surprisingly faintly of cinnamon, to be honest I'd have expected a stronger smell. The flavour is similar, it's definitely dominated by the white chocolate which is actually quite nice and doesn't overpower you with butter or greasiness. The only thing that's really missing for me is the actual selling point - the cinnamon! The flavour is very faint, and I ended up feeling more confused by reminding myself to taste it than anything else.

So if you're after some really good white chocolate with a tiny hint of cinnamon, this one's for you. But if you crave full flavour, maybe look closer to Lindt's Christmas chocolate. (6/10)


Leysieffer Zimt (Cinnamon) Chocolate, €3.15 for 100g, €17 for UK delivery

In other, potentially less exciting news, I am feeling a little bit under the weather, I am going out in Trier tonight (but I won't drink as I'm the designated driver), and I'm proofreading/editing my brother's massive thesis for wine technician. You should really check out his engineering skills: He's built his own portable jacuzzi!

beep

I always post on livejournal around the time of my birthday, and this year is no exception. I also tend to promise myself that I'll do a better job of writing this diary every year, but never seem to find the motivation or time for it any more. Well, the recent months have seen an accumulation of a number of digital goods and you never know, those might make it easier to update. I now own:

• The Sims2: Seasons Extension
  Yes after my computer was in sufferings following the work trip to Estonia in February (Tallinn is pretty, cold, Sowjet-looking and boasts trolleybuses) I decided to reinstall the whole Sims 2 game. It hadn't been working properly before and I was driven insane by stupid, never-ending mail exchanges with EA Customer Support (I refuse to believe that having a laptop makes it impossible to play a computer game properly). And this year's new buy is Seasons - it's cute and useful for the little sims and makes a penguin walk up to a snowman and chat animatedly. Winner all round.
• A new mobile
  It must be Christian's influence, but this year's phone upgrade had me geek out considerably and I now own a smartphone (a W960i) with touchscreen and stylus and 8GB of storage and other goodies. I can't work half of them. I can't get on the internet half of the time. But sometimes it does work out and then I feel proud. Time will tell if I can really be bothered with all-singing, all-dancing phones like this one. If not I'll sell it on ebay and get a Nokia 3310.
• WiiFit
  I got this for my birthday! Yay! It's a cute fitness game to play on my least used games console! But what is this? Step on the board? It measures my BMI? Bloody hell, I am fat! Take this horror back to the shop!

Ooh, had too much coffee after buying some really nice freshly ground beans from Atkinsons today. Heh, that's one of the nice Lancaster things - the local pubs have their own blends from the local shop. And I have a new bicycle, how ace is that! It's kinda grey but I really like it. I'll definitely have to look out for some reflective tape to stop myself from getting run over and some of those chord string things that you hold your luggage up with. They've gotta be on the internet somewhere!

In other news, I'm still in the same job. Longest I have EVER been in a job, and it's about to be completely overthrown and changed even to the depths of not fitting my job description any longer. People around the office keep referring to them as "JD", so I'm sat at work all the time thinking of whiskey. I'm not sure that's quite right!

Yep, with flying rushing time and everything it's now less than 10 days until Christmas next week. I've been busy over the autumn time, not only arguing with my boss but also doing quite a bit of work travel. The trips are nice, I enjoy getting away from the office and it's a good feeling of achievement to see that I'm traipsing around countries "en mission". But they're really not tourist sightseeing travel at all. You spend all day working and then catch a tiny flash of what a place is like at night. My list of European cities and countries to visit has really grown since: Bratislava, Vienna, Dublin, Prague and a lot of Poland wants exploring properly!

New job things are on the horizon. Our office is having some kind of management shuffle, meaning my line manager is now officially out of the line managing picture. He's off for Christmas but may come back as a senior officer only. I reserve comment and opinion on what's going to be done in the future mainly because I have no idea. There was meant to be an announcement last week but in true UCLan manner things are still in the air, some people in the know are keeping quiet and no one knows what's happening.

Nice photo. I'm beginning to sneak around Christian's DSLR a little bit more to try and learn more about taking pictures. I'm also taking part in 365 days, a project of self-portraits every day. Today is day 56, i think. Makes you even more aware of time flying.

I did it in 32:45 or something, woo! The weather this morning was surprisingly much hotter than expected, so that I really suffered from dehydration and had to down a whole 500ml bottle of water when I got in. Aww, it was really really great. So many women, so many back signs of people running to celebrate or remember others touched by cancer...it was many more than I'd expected - must have been hundreds of women walking or running the course! I got a little medal with it as well, and I'm really proud. After the run I think I got too touched and carried away with it all and just had a bit of a cry. I think next year I'm in again!

Race for Life is here tomorrow! I'm quite excited and a bit worried because I did muscle conditioning yesterday and now my legs really hurt. Also, I've never run such a long distance in the company of anyone else - I have the fear of being embarrassed a little bit and exposed as a rubbish runner. To be fair though, all I want is to run the whole course without major slip-ups and to not have hurting legs when I get there. I wonder what I'll have to aspire to after this. Race for Life (a 5k run, more like) has been a goal for about two years, from when I first started half-jogging around the houses and getting a little fitter. So tomorrow is a big day when I prove to the world that I can get sporty and do a bit of a run and stuff, which is great. Obviously it won't move many people apart from me, but I do think that my parents would probably be proud because they're the people who look at your health very closely. Personally, I think I'll be proud only if I finish it and do it well. If I was to walk too much during the race, I'd have to repeat it until it becomes better, so please hope with me that it won't come to that. Maybe I am a bit strict with myself sometimes. It's that constant ambition to get better!

There's also my new job to write about. I haven't done any of the much-anticipated travel abroad yet, but things are definitely in the pipeline for going to Germany, Austria, Ireland and probably some other countries. Until then I am contending with fighting the office politics (oh God! oh my God!! I had forgotten about these. They're so annoying! How much can people stand in each other's way, really, with their forms and authorisations and politics and dresscodes? One more argument for self-employment - note to self.), enjoying how much I am learning about UCLan and its courses and just generally living the working life.

I haven't used my new camera enough because I seem to have a talent for losing SD cards.

http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/dartogreen

I've moved house!
My new job is going ok.

I'm sorry i never update here. Soon. Promise.

Sorry about the absence of updates to this thing in the last month - there's been more than enough going on and I've just not had the time to write it in here. Before Easter, I went to Scotland to see K. who is currently looking for the perfect ball gown for her degree celebrations and excited about starting an LLM or LLB or LLwhatever at one of the best universities. We then travelled back to Germany together, where I had to cut my visit short and go to an interview for the UCLAN job I mentioned another time on here - it was funny, I hadn't expected to be invited for an interview and I thought "might as well give it a shot" when it came up. At the interview I had the same casual feeling about it, I thought I'll take part in this group thing and give these people some answers, but the other applicants are very much qualified and seem to be much more keen on working in this type of environment and direction - in other words, I expected them to get the job and was determined to just take it as a nice practice in interviewing. But once again that just shows that ambition ruins interviews and relaxing makes them better - I got a call that evening offering me the European Recruitment job on a 12-month basis and decided to take it! It was a bit of a shock because it meant deciding to give up on my translation work for now, and essentially not using the beautiful website that Christian made me - but I must admit I was too tempted by a regular income, pension plan and the opportunity to travel a bit! I start in 10 days and feel very curious.

Easter was quite cool except it seems to have involved far too much eating of really bad food and drinking. So much drinking. I hate alcohol forever. As a consequence, I'm not at my best of fitness this week and I'm feeling tired and have headaches which is not a cool feeling to have.

One more thing that's come up with the new job is that the regular income will mean enough monthly money to move to a nicer flat - and it seems to have thrown up the question of whether I want to move to Preston on my own. This is to be discussed in private, but currently looks unlikely. Christian and I have had a look around a couple of nice places to live in Lancaster. It seems that the most important decisions to make are: Modern "urban" (potentially even open-plan) trendy place vs. comfy, old and very not open-plan house where we could keep pets, consequently no pets vs. kittens (I know what wins that one!), furnished vs. unfurnished and location vs. price - or something like that anyway. I'll keep you posted on how it turns out.

I'm missing Manchester today. I somehow miss the big annoyingly irregular buses, the supermarkets, the many bars, the thousands of students all over the place, the large amounts of muffins that are sold in Manchester and the dirty warehouses that always look a bit dark and old (well, they are old). I don't know why, but today is apparently just one of those days. When I think of Manchester, I seem to remember showering, I have no idea. I shower no less or more than I have done over the last few years but somehow showering is what sticks in my mind. How strange.

Just to catch up on yesterday's rage. First I rang them up and was informed the lady left for the day. Then, this morning, she mails me and says she has another translator on it - without even saying sorry! Whatever people say, that is not a very nice way of dealing with someone you want to do some work for you. How rude!

Crap! Like, actual bloody annoyance! All day, and all of yesterday, I've been kinda looking forward to going to this step aerobics class tonight, and there's a weights session with it as well and everything and I've not been for weeks which probably means all my muscles have turned into ice cream or something. And now, 5 minutes before I really have to leave the house cos otherwise i'll be late, I check my e-mail once more and have an offer for a 500 word job. FFS!!!!!!!FFSSSS!!!! Now I've replied to this lady saying yes, I'd be up for doing it and thanks for contacting me and all and I really want to give her half an hour to reply before I leave the house. Them agencies with their bloody late notice jobs and all that, who do they think they are! The lady probably contacted 50 translators anyway and can now take her pick and not give me the assignment, and then not let me know straight away. Sigh. Anyway, I'm housebound for another 10 minutes just in case she wants it doing right now and then I'll have to miss out on fun aerobics and tackle the treadmill instead. This is so annoying. How much more on call can I BE!

OMG I'm watching Lorraine Kelly, which is a nice thing to do in the morning except for the risk of then being led on into watching the Jeremy Kyle show.......but anyways, they always have a fashion bit where some guy tells you about nice clothes that you can find in high street shops. Today their stuff is gorgeous! It's all black and white things with nice patterns, and some of them even have a sort of cool hand-painted look on them (next thing we know, tie-dye will be back - uh oh. They had a skirt from Principles, which I always had down as some old lady shop? But this one actually wasn't too bad, it was that skirt length that I'm always looking for and never finding. Oh God, why have I got no money! Here are some pictures of skirt shopper goodness:


and


Yesterday I spent most of the day trying to get to grips with the Wordfast manual. I understand about making a translation memory, that's simple enough, and about what placeables are. Unfortunately I think I messed up my saved training files after those bits and therefore ended up with a non-working glossary. I couldn't start from the beginning though because I've got important test translations to do! So now I'm using it while translating the test from an agency, and maybe when I'm done with that I can figure out how to build a glossary. It does look suspiciously like the kind of thing where the glossary is only useful if you already have one anyway, but the bit I don't understand is this: How, if I don't have a glossary but have a TM (i.e. a record of past translations), is the software going to recognise things and suggest a translation in the future? Does it just use the record instead of a glossary? That sounds terribly inaccurate. I must have got something wrong. IT Training on a DIY basis maybe isn't my greatest strength.

This week I am waiting for a cheque containing money from a client in the post. Maybe today is the lucky day. If not, I think I may have made an online shopping calculation error last week and may have to cancel the hairdresser appointment today and wait another week until money happens.

Right, so I thought I should keep up the good spirit of this week and do more updating of "the blog". God, sometimes I realise that the more I hang around with Christian the more my language becomes a little bit like his. There's so many things that I say now which used to signify "Christian" in my head, and now they're just funny things to say. I think what I'm trying to say is, I have the good man. I guess.

Enough romantic gushing though, I'm cramping my style. Today I ran from my house to Lancaster University - all the way (Google Maps says it's 3.5 miles, but they calculate a slightly different route)! I am a little proud of my achievement because it actually means I am currently fit enough to finish the 5k in 30-35 minutes and I'm definitely on form for this year's planned achievement. Of course that doesn't mean all that much yet, as the Race for Life isn't until July and I could therefore go either way. A likely possibility considering my current intake of digestive biscuits.

Last night I went to a gig at the Manchester Apollo to see the Arcade Fire, who were really good fun apart from the sound being the worst quality I have ever experienced in a gig. They played the more new and boring songs first which I thought was kind of a nice idea, because it stops you from being really annoyed at the end when it gets to a dull song and you can't stand standing anymore. Instead we had a second half full of "the hits" (i.e. songs I'd heard more than once) and for all of today I've had "power out" stuck in my head. I'm not sure that is a huge indicator of the gig quality though considering I had Kanye West's "golddigger" stuck in my head too, and him I definitely ain't seen in concert. The Arcade Fire were supported by Patrick Wolf, who looked like a premenstrual camp teenager gone wrong in Claire's Accessories. Unfortunately he did not sound better. It has come to my knowledge that this man's fans enjoy affectionately referring to him as "Patrick" as if he's some kind of good friend - how disturbing is that! Still, I think the gig has put me back in the mood for going to see some nice bands, and I'm now considering going to the Low and Nouvelle Vague gigs that are happening in Manchester soon - no more Apollo for me though.

I had 3 full days of translation work this week, which is nice. All came from one client though...I have to definitely get hold of some more. I have 2 test translations lying here and looking at me going "I am on your to-do list!!" but for tonight it's late and I'm just too tired to do them justice.

UCLAN has a job vacancy for a person recruiting European students and sorting out their applications and stuff, which sounds like the kind of job that I would love to do, as far as being actually employed with a company goes. It involves lots of travelling apparently, and languages. Cool! I'm tempted to apply, but unsure about changing my mind with regard to translating again. What should I do!!

PS: Today I have translation work. Looks hard.

After repeated nudges and huffs from miss siano, look at this. I've gone back to updating my blog. I do admit it's been a while and it's not even like I've been insanely busy with it all, but I'm here now and that's what counts.

Dear audience, you may remember me continuously failing to secure employment in the local area and sitting on my hands with regard to leaving lovely Lancaster in order to go out into the world and be employed there. This situation is actually still kind of similar, except there've been small changes. First of all I've decided that it cannot be completely impossible to work as a freelance translator and make a living with it, and therefore to give this whole freelancing thing a proper go: meaning I write to every single agency out there, contact anyone who may need a translation doing and go on on on at everyone for at least a couple of months, and then I'll see if money can be made. As many other freelancers out there (here and here are only 2 of the millions of websites offering really good support) have told me several times, it will be hard at the beginning and I'll probably go for weeks without a single assignment. But that will not discourage me! There's plenty of things to do, I'm trying to learn to use Wordfast Translation Memory Software and mailing hundreds of agencies asking if there is stuff going. Sometimes I even translate!

On the diet front, I started counting calories again, lost no weight, just ended up frustrated and grumpy about myself, now I've decided to give the whole dieting thing a total rest and just try to eat less than a tonne of chocolate every week and enjoy all my food, cos that's the main thing isn't it. Today I had a go at trying to run 5k on the gym treadmill and i actually did it - in 35 minutes! Not bad, not bad. I'll manage to keep that up until July.

This weekend we went to Preston where we partied in a fancy flat and then got served with a massive 1 hour delay at Pizza Express. Their tomato and mozzarella salad consists of 4 slices of tomato, each topped with a small amount of mozzarella, yet costs 4 pounds. Make of that what you will. The pizzas do rock.

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope you are all showered in fireworks, showings of "Dinner for One", delicious drinks, handy snacks, a sack of resolutions and most importantly strength, health and hope!

Let the celebrations begin.

After a few weeks of stressful work and preparations for Christmas while trying not to sleep standing up, I have finally made it home and I'm sat blogging next to our Christmas tree like every other year (was about time). I went to church today, had a gorgeous meal (my mother made tofu!!) and everyone is watching a lot of random stuff on television, especially ski jumping and sleighing. Strangely, they're playing the absolutely amazing opening music from Amélie over some report about the German ladies winning a bobsleighing gold medal. Christmas a-ok then.

Tonight I shall finally find the time for a good browse around the Monsoon website, where I shall attempt to leave some of my Christmas money in the sale. Kathrin has pointed out the new Monsoon Fusion line, which seems to be their attempt at going a little less middle-aged lady and more towards their younger customers. Well, if it means affordable clothes and cool designs I am all for it!

Looking at the current job situation in beautiful Lancaster (i.e. the near universities), things are looking bad. I've been offered an unpaid internship at a Foreign Rights Agency in London which seems to be a good way to find out about an interesting career path, make some contacts and get out of this risky business I'm in at the moment of waiting for Lancaster to give me some kind of shit job. Still, I'm not entirely convinced. Unpaid internship in London sounds like bad news on quite a few levels. Hmm reader. Do you have a mate who wants to rent out their spare room in London?