Can you feel the pain?
It might be old news to some of you, but with the invention of WiFi-SM, you can actually share the world's suffering and pain.
From the developer's website:

"WiFi-SM is an Internet connected wireless device that you can fix on any part of your body. It automatically detects the information from approximately 4,500 news sources worldwide updated continuously and analyses them looking for specific keywords such as death, kill, murder, torture, rape, war, virus etc.. Each time the text of the news contains one of these keywords, your WiFi-SM device is activated through the Wi-Fi network and provides you with an electric impulse. This impulse is calibrated so that you can feel a certain amount of pain, but is completely safe."

All that for just $50,-
The only thing I'm missing is a "buy one, get one free" feature ... for the girlfriend or something.

Ta-taa.

A disturbing view on internet future
I just got this link from a friend of mine. Go watch that video, and do concentrate a bit on it. It's quite scary in my opinion.
Ironically enough, I'm reporting this through blogger...

Ta-taa.

Down with the sickness! ...and a bit of ego-polishing
Since last night, I've been throwing up pretty much everything I tried to eat: dry bread, soup, pretzel sticks; you name it, I've thrown it up.
In addition to that, I've been plagued with an increasingly annoying cold over the past few days, and the combination of those two is really starting to wear me down. I feel sluggish, I'm constantly hungry but afraid to eat anything, my stomach feels as if it was going to start eating up itself, I've got a painful headache that feels like someone stabbing a hot needle through my eye whenever I make a sudden movement...

To sum it all up: I'm feeling sick!

But it's not all bad and wrong in my life, mind you! Today, I got my letter of recommendation for my application at SOAS from my former Chinese teacher, and if there's ever been any written testimonial of me being teh b0mb, it's this recommendation! I got all warm and fuzzy inside when I read it!
I highly doubt that anything can go wrong now with my application, but I'm also sure that some sort of higher power I don't believe in is going to try and fuck me over 5 ways to Sunday...

In any case, I have to get back to the bathroom, my stomach's starting its act again. :(

Ta-taa.

The TV adventure
Well, well, well.
Turns out that the invitation to that trash-TV talk show was due to some 16-year-old girl having a crush on me, but not the balls to talk to me. So a friend of hers decided to sign us up for that show in order to ... well, achieve something I guess.

Why does this kind of weird shit only always happens to me with minors!? U-N-F-A-I-R!
Like. Why doesn't it happen with that cute becoming-a-regular blonde at the bar? No, no, of course, that one has a boyfriend.

Ah well. I've been living a (more or less) happy life as a single male sexy beast, I guess it doesn't really matter.

What gets on my nerves though is if that kiddo continues to bring her pack of girly friends with her to the bar, only to disappear in the bathroom for a few minutes, then leave again. Irritating and annoying, that is...

Anyways. No TV appearance of yours truly (of course not, I mean, c'mon, me? In a talk show?).

Ta-taa.

Come out, come out, whoever you are...
Earlier this evening, I got a call from the "Oliver Geißen Show", asking if I could be at their studio in Cologne tomorrow afternoon at 5pm, to "meet someone who wants to surprise" me.
The "Oliver Geißen Show" is a German TV talkshow of a rather trashy format, with topics like "You're my unborn's father (and you're gonna pay for it)", "Marry me (or I'll tell everyone about your fetish for used condoms)" and the likes.
I have no bloody idea who of the people I know would get the weird idea that I'd ever go to any talkshow, let alone one of those trash type of shows.

Luckily, I've got tons of work tomorrow (more paintjobs from 8-5, and the barjob in the evening), so I could stay polite and wrap the "fuck you, not interested" into nice words. After all, it's not the operator's fault...

That said, I'm gonna attempt to cure the headache that has been torturing me all night with some good old-fashioned sleep.

Ta-taa.

Opportunities and Japanese Fear Factor
Today, I was offered a 4-months job at the company I've been testing cellphones for last week; I'd be working there March through June. The only thing I have to iron out now are the tax issues and impacts on my general financial situation, but the overall gut feeling I have on this is pretty good .. no, actually, I've been smiling like a maniac ever since Ruxu asked me if I'd like to work there.
Rest assured that I'll be blogging about Finland, should it all work out! I just gotta get my laptop working again. Or maybe sell it and go for a MacBook Pro right away? ;D

On a completely unrelated note: Japanese Fear Factor (link; see disclaimer!) is .. uhm .. well, I guess 'weird' is the correct attribute. Guess it shows how far "entertainment" industry can go...

On another completely unrelated note: today I was taught the difference between face-to-face communication and chatting again. I had had a strange entry in my guestbook on a community website the other night, by someone I didn't know until then; and I thought I had managed to find out who it was. Today I talked to that person, asked her if it was her who left that entry and she seemed totally surprised. After a few minutes of back and forth she then told me "nah, it was really me, I was just fooling around with you".
Lesson learnt: in real life, this wouldn't have happened, as facial expressions and gestures make it so much easier to read if someone's kidding around or being serious. No harm done though, it was all very nice and friendly, and her "alter ego"'s guestbook entry was very cute.

And now, I gotta run off to work.

Ta-taa.

Disclaimer
Link not suited for minors! Depending on your location, viewing/downloading that video might be illegal!
I take no responsibility for anything you do, nor for the contents of linked websites, images or links.

Swamped and stuff
At the moment, I'm being completely swamped by work.
Last week featured the cellphone testing (see last blog entry), and my older brother needing help with his newly acquired 15" Apple Powerbook G4, this week features a huge paint-job in Düsseldorf, where a whole story of bureaus needs to be renovated for €11/hour.
Add a current bad habit of insomnia and you have one worn-out Captain, who's been trying to establish a working physical relationship with one of his female collegues from the bar (the girl+me thing mentioned two posts ago), which started out Saturday before last and seems to be still on, although hardly anything has happened since then due to the workload. Tonight's attempt was spoilt by a couple of regulars staying late at the bar, thus disabling me to get some time alone with her. Ah well...

On a more technical note: after setting up my brother's Powerbook, I've seriously started considering switching, but some time will pass before I'll be able to afford one of those Apple beauties. They are nice though, mind you!

Seeing how it's past 0130 already again and considering I have to get up at 0700 for another 11-hours-workday full of painting bureau walls, I'm heading off and trying to find some zzz's.

Ta-taa.

Eureka!
After 50 hours of cellphone testing in 4 days, it's finally over!
I've finished writing the last report just about an hour ago and sent it all off by email, so now I'm free to do as I please again and live like a bum. Time to put sleep back into my daily schedule again too, I guess. :)

I'm very likely to apply for a more permanent (part-time) job as phone tester for that company though, and it seems to be the ideal backup plan in case my SOAS/London plans go up in smoke, which I hope they don't.
In any case, it was a fun job (despite the lack of good sleep) and I realized again how well I go along with modern tech stuff.

While working at the bar tonight, a former regular customer of old times dropped by and it just so happens to be that he's running a translation bureau. I told him of my plans for London and the general translation/interpretation thing I'm aiming for and he said if I kept in touch with my boss from the bar during London, I should drop a line once I've finished studying and he might be able to offer me a job. I'm not sure how much there really is to that, but hey, it's a good thing to keep in mind!

Anyways, I'm off to bed, I'm dead tired and it's way too late already again.

Ta-taa.

Toys & Testing
OMG, I feel as if I was 14 again!!
No, I'm not madly in love (hah, as if that'd happen to me again .. fool me once etc!), but something a lot better happened:

I found an 18" Spiderman action figure with 67(!!) joints!

Is that cool or is that cool?!
You can put it into various positions, and it's able to support itself in quite a few extravagant poses, including this, this and this one. Admittedly, I cheated a bit for the last one, but I'll leave it to you to guess how I did it.
As you can see, I've been playing around with it quite a lot this evening...


...well, after I was done with testing mobile phones, anyways; which is pretty boring - or annoying, in the case of Motorola phones!

The Motorola RAZR V3 is one damn good-looking phone (especially in black), I'll give it that.
Unfortunately, the good looks is the only good thing about it. I'm very glad I didn't go for it when I had the chance to get a cheap RAZR a few weeks back, it'd probably have ended smashed to pieces within a day or two; the only thing that's kept me from bringing the same fate to the RAZR at question is the fact that it's supposed to be returned fully intact and in one piece.
My natural dislike of Sony-Ericson phones has vanished, on the other hand. I've tested the W800i and I'll also be testing the W900, which has a very funky side-slide mechanism when the upper and lower parts are being turned against each other (making it look like this).
Handling of the W800i was fantastic, and I even got along with menues, which were completely new to me and differ quite a bit from my ol' trusted Nokia 6610i. I'm expecting the W900 to feel and handle similar to the W800i, and I'm looking forward to testing that sweet piece of plastic...

More phones will be tested during the next 2 days, and despite the simple fact that it's pretty boring work (going through the same procedure several times just doesn't make for an interesting job), it's still something I have so far enjoyed doing - something which will most likely only change once I try my luck with the RAZR again, for the third time then.

Some other things have happened (including a me+girl topic), but I'll have to postpone that to the next blog entry (oooh, the suspense :P), as I really need some sleep for once or else I'll be dropping dead some time around noon tomorrow.

That said, there's only one other thing left to say and that is:

"Ta-taa".