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> What's Voip?

I'm not sure, perhaps Voice over Internet Protocol. It is the general abbreviation for talking over the internet. There is a company like voip.com or something that I had to use to talk with Jim when he was buying my the plane ticket to Canada. It is basically the same as Skype but just a different company. There are a lot of them out there, and for different regions. With some of them, as my Iranian friend uses, they are more regional based and he says he can call to Iran and neighbouring countries for free, or something like that. With Skype it could get more expensive to call these countries, and I couldn't even find the possibility of phoning the Turkish North Cyprus, which is apparently under some world embargo, because the Greek half is always using its EU veto to make a big stink. But they'lll never win that war. Turkey is prepared to subsidise the North half until hell freezes over - I'm sure the Turkish government values the strategic military benefit of having its bases on this island.

Cool that things are getting happier for you. Hope you find a mate who will be interested in settling down etc. Must be difficult in the US, I might guess. I was in Canada and already there I did not like the general aggression, and stupid conversations. It was embarrassing but everyone up there said "like" every like second like word like. I thought I was in California or something. And I generally find the society of the west more decadent, ungodly and selfish. Materialistic and shallow and all that. I find it so much more relaxing and simple here in the Muslim world, and I like the fact that I can talk about God anytime I want to. I generally don’t, like one doesn’t usually talk about bread, but if the conversation ever turned to bread, for whatever reason, people would talk about God like they are talking about bread – like a simple part of life. Which he certainly is. In the west, if you bring this subject up, so many people feel threatened and walk away from you. Or yo get the right wing conservative fundamentalist ranting Christians on the other extreme of the spectrum. They’re not so bad, but generally it is not a normal part of existence there, like it should be.

Well, have a good one! 

so my Iranian friend here in Turkish Cyprus gave me his old mobile phone, which would cost about 300 bucks to buy here and through which I can hook up my computer to the internet. I plan to leave it on most of the time, especially evenings, as I will set up a system with regular customers whereby they can send an email to a certain address, which will forward a part of the message to my mobile as a text message. But I am not sure if you can call to the Turkish north using Skype etc. Maybe Voip? Not sure. I can ask my Iranian friend if ya like.

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Yah, I enjoyed your visit too. Can't find your other letter but I remember you were saying something about understanding solitude. Well, actually did find some friends here. Play chess regularly with a Czech-American, and every day I spend in an air conditioned office with free internet at my Iranian friend, who needs to practice English. Have found that putting up fliers offering free English lessons in exchange for beer has turned out to be a great strategy. Actually, plan to print out some more fliers tomorrow, this time though saying "Nice Canadian boy willing to give FREE ENGLISH LESSONS to nice girl(s) - boys buy me beers." Heh heh. The girls seem all hot and yearning at the start of every school year, looking for new boyfriends. Anyway, I'm mostly just interested in female company, as I like to have a balanced life and social network. Otherwise, have grown tired of constant blabber. The last few years in Prague I would sit in the pub, sipping on my beer and listening to the conversation, and it seemed to amount to absolutely nothing. Little jokes responded by giggles and other little jokes, so I've actually learned to appreciate being much more productive by myself, working pretty well whenever I'm awake and choosing what I want to "work on" at any time. My life also gets sprinkled occasionally by travellers I meet etc. But I would like to know a few more people, because one does need a certain amount of interaction to remain sensible and sane.

What stories were you talking about? Will try to see your flick. I write my regular blobs on the internet, and have been trying to write better every time. Now I want to starts a "travel reflections" page for tidbits and ideas I cannot squeeze into my regular stories of my travels. All part of my mad science to help me get more customers (search engines like text), find co-travellers, and make money off of writing in other ways if possible. Have always felt I wanted to be a writer one day, so I guess the translations and learning how to type fast has been good partial training for that.

Hope your tulip works out! This is the time of year when they bloom. During the summer the bulbs are in burning hot and arid sand. Pine cones only turn to seed and grow another tree during a fire. Maybe you should research it on the net, as apparently these don't grow anywhere else. Have a good one. :o)

i really enjoyed seeing you and talking to you again as well! i wish i could come more often but it is not that easy. i think i was pretty lucky to get the ticket, the prices doesnt go below 400EUro per ticket. Anyway, i hope to be back some time and hopefully soon. i brought the shell you gave me and the sand and the bulb and i will try to grow it here, it is my project now. i also think that yu should keep writting the stories you were telling me about. i like it. i think you should see the "WALLY" movie.you would like it. thank you for inviting me/us for an exciting trip through the norther island, it sounds great and who knows, maybe it will happen. i miss it so much. it is 11C now and finally a little bit of sun but not for long i am sure. enjoy it there for me! take care. hugs,k

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cau dude,

so I finally got around to looking for the bus schedule thing but couldn't find it. Perhaps Craig nabbed it while he was visiting for two months down here. I'll take a second look for it in case he put it somewhere else than where I usually have it. In any case, I think it would be better to look online anyway, as the information is about half a year old and perhaps the times have changed or something. Did I already send you some weblink? I don't have much internet time so perhaps you could research it some ahead of time, and I'll try myself. There should be a regular bus service from Larnaca to Nicosia (forgot what the Turks call their half of the city at the moment). Perhaps try some of these searches:

Larnaca Nicosia bus service
Larnaca Nicosia bus transport
Cyprus public transport
Cyprus bus service

Lets start coordinating this now. The bus should go from the center of Larnaca, swing by the airport (where you can jump on), and get to Nicosia the capital in the center of the island in about an hour and for about 15 Euro or something. I've seen a bunch of busses parked right near the historic old town, so just ask the bus driver about that and how to get there. Everyone on the south Greek side speaks English, so just ask directions for the main drag. Recently there was a big hullabaloo historic event where ties have been strengthening between the north and the south and they finally opened up the border along the main drag, where previously you had to wind your way around and it was difficult to find the crossing to the other side. I propose we meet at this special burger shop on the right hand side of the main drag as you are walking towards the Turkish side (the historic old town had been carved exactly in half by the Turks). If you get to McDonald’s on the left hand side you know you’ve walked too far. The burger joint on the right hand side is not too far from the old town edge (surrounded by a big wall), I believe there are only two burger joints on the main drag, and this one blatantly advertises that it has free wireless internet, so I figured it would be a good place to wait for each other (you said you were bringing your laptop?). Worst case scenario there are internet joints in various places if we need to email each other from some other location. Just ask people. I’ll come there a bit early and just work on my computer and be online. Tell me what you’ve found concerning scheduling as I’d like to get to the city a few days early and look for work and run some errands, including laundry for your sheets and pillow slip.

If you want to check out Larnaca I’d suggest you do that on your way off the island, as I can give you some tips what to see while you’re here. Once we hook up in the capital, I was thinking we could walk around, as the military division can be interesting (suggest you bring your camera).

On another note, I’ve been investing a bit of cash to help me find work and one means was to pay 35$ to submit my main site to 300 web directories. So over a couple of days I was getting email confirmation of my submission from these 300 directories and it managed to bury an email offering me work. I could have made 650 bucks over the weekend and I intended to give you 500 Lira spending money for the month, so it rather sucks and sometimes I think I’m truly plagued. But at least things are happening a bit and I’m really aggressive about looking for work, so hopefully by the time you get here or leave I’ll be able to make a sizable debt repayment.

Cyasoon!

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> I do not preach, I am very concerned.

I guess with email it can sound that way sometimes. Especially after all my problems you say, "Get your computers in order." Something like that does not help me at all. Or when my harddrive failed in London you seemed to almost giggle on the phone that I would force turn off my computer, contrary to what I had been warning you against all these years. You say the computer is not your friend and that it frustrates you, but you cannot imagine the constant frustration I have to deal with. You cannot imagine because I do VERY complicated things on the computer. Much more than Marketa, and I cannot even explain all the things I know, and all the problems I constantly run into. So many times I want to punch the screen and throw the little box into the ocean. Many times I feel there are devils out there who constantly frustrate my every action, lead me to anger, and I can imagine them just giggling, holding their hand over their mouth mischieviously. I can practically hear them giggle every time, and it infuriates me more, and I hear them giggle again. So I guess I can get sensitive when someone gives me a blank statement like, "Get your computer in order." It is a nonstop battle and if I wasn't living on this beach but in some stupid big city I'd be pulling out my hair constantly.

Two days ago I practically wrote Simona a fuming email to sink into Ruskin's head the gravity of the problems he has caused me. He grabbed my ppc when it was next to me, I told him to bring it back, that it is for business, and now it is broken. I looked in Nicosia and they sell new ones for 300 Euro. I'm losing business because I cannot check my email regularly, and cheaply. All sorts of problems. Will have to buy something new as soon as I have cash. No one can fix it and I've tried a million times. It is too old and the manufacturer does not make the spare parts anymore.

Once I was in London and Ruskin practically through water on my laptop, like he thought it would be funny. Simona does not impart the gravity. Sometimes I feel that Simona is angry at men and the world and uses her children as a weapon. Sometimes I'm almost afraid to go to London for fear what they may do to my computer. My life depends on it. Especially now when I am earning so little. My life is on a thread, and I live in fear and trepidation that some part of my truck construction will fail, or my laptop... I no longer have any backup laptops. But I have reflected much over the summer and applying a different strategy for finding customers than before. Kind of difficult to explain, but I think I am going about things more practically now. Before I was writing articles, designing webpages and trying to get to the top of google, finding customers in that way. But I see now that there is still much more work to do. I am competing against large translation etc. companies who hire people, possibly several, to work on this full time. Nevertheless, I see that I am doing quite well compared to them, and I am reasonably near the top of google. Everything I have written and all the webpages I have prepared are still useful, I am just organizing them better. Right now my focus is on getting translation work for myself. If I can get enough of that, it will give me needed cash and some security. The good thing about that is, if someone doesn’t pay me for a job, at least I don’t owe money to someone else. And I can focus on one language combination only: Czech to English. And I know my own quality and do not have to depend on someone else. And it is not the end of the world if I turn down work. Once I start getting enough work, I can farm some of it to other translators and get back more into project management. Or I can work on everything I do in between translations, which I certainly do. But perhaps most importantly, when I make good money translating, I can hire others to write the pages for me. It is fun work and I can probably find some bozo American in Prague to do this for me. Basically I need to have pages made for each language combination I offer. It is a LOT of work and writing. Like on page from “English to German translations”, etc.

Yes, my Iranian friend lent me his phone, through which I can check my email, although it is frustratingly slow. Nevertheless I can use it as a modem for my computer. But he needed to use it this last week. I guess he’ll give it back to me once he gets back to Iran. So now I’m using his even older phone. I set up an email address which sends a text message to my mobile, so for regular customers, if they have some work for me or something is urgent, they can do that, and if it is important enough, I drive back to the stinky city and get on the internet. Like I have to do tomorrow Saturday morning and drive away from my lovely beach. Picked up 20 pages over the weekend, so that will pay for half a month of costs. Also negotiating with one customer who has a thousand pages until half way through November, so even if I only get a hundred pages of that, it will pay for three months. I started advertising in the Czech Republic and am really trying hard to get new customers for myself. I really don’t need much work to survive. So hopefully this new strategy will work. It is the first time I’m actually paying for advertising on the internet.

Well, have a good one, and hope everything will be fine with Jana. Would be nice if she came down for a visit. She likes the beaches here. Some sun could do her some good.

latero

Anyway did you ever tell Simona about the phone?? I do not think they should reimburs you but Ruskin should know that he did you a harm and he should be more careful and not so wild. It is educational for him that he has to control himself because these things should not be left without some consequences. So what has to be done that you get another phone and be connected???? I thought that somebody gave you an old phone. Are these things not available where you are? Whare are you anyway? What is the weather like? Keta was very happy that you remembered her biurthday:):):) We had a very nice day, thought of you , got drunk at lunch , weather perfect we were on the balcony and talked and talked and drunk. Then we drove her home and were going to play tennis but changed our plans since I probably would hurt myself on the court. So we went home and slept and in the evening went to Kings Landing to watch some movie with our old neigbours. Very nice day. Back to reality today, it is a grey day and we have some issues with the GST people. NOt good, so I am worried mnore again. So what about your phone? xxxxooooomaminka

Get your machines working properly, it is the only tool you have for good living. And do not tell me not to tell you things like that. I do not udrerstand how you can miss an imprtant e-mail with translation for 40 pages. Because I paid to submit my pages to 300 directories recently, so my inbox was flooded by emails confirming my submission, and this email got buried among them. Perhaps because I am online shortly per day and doing things more quickly. Now I just lost another 30 pages. If Ruskin had not broken my ppc I would have probably noticed these emails, reading them casually from my truck. So in all he's so far cost me over a thousand dollars and I could have purchased several phones with that price by now. It rather pisses me off. Your preaching never helps either.

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The entire below correspondence was with the following email subject, from a spam letter I found in my junkbox and which I thought I’d forward to her out of amusement. I love flirting with girls! But it’s the first time I saw my favourite word “banana” used in spam like this. I like to refer to many of my fond female friends with that word.

Re: (Fwd) Turn your banana into a steel pole

hmm, I thought there was another email of yours I was supposed to respond to. Perhaps I already did. Have to drive back to The Farm, as me and my Czech friend here like to call it, to do some internet in the morning on Saturday, boohoo, so I guess you'll get a response sooner than later. Just got 20 pages translation over the weekend and they sent me 125 pages previously translated, so I need to download some software (my harddrive recently burnt and I lost a lot of important data) so that I can process it correctly and pump it into my special translation software, which remembers how I have translated things in the past, so I can translate and work less in the future. Great program and useful for repetitive text, which is the case with contracts and EU legislation and that sort of stuff. And remembering terminology for me so that i do not have to keep looking in the dictionary. With it I think I can translate 30 to even 50 pages a day, or possibly more, if I have enough memory, which I want to start building up now. I have done quite large translations in the past and very quickly. Anyway...

ok, i just gave my freind farwell at the train station! She is a very nice person but she is also a girl so after 3 days i've had enough, she spent 2 weeks with me mostly so it sometimes drove me a bit crazy. but i do not want to seem like i do complain a lot, she is a good friend. So i think i know what you are talking about having a bit fear about the coming visiter especially if it is a person you do not like hanging around too much. i really keep my fingers crossed for your fliers! It is a "smooth operator" plan in a good way!o)

Yah, need some women friends in my life. I always find their company refreshing and a good balance for me. I don't even need sx but I get a high off their presence. Get tired of constant male company all the time. And getting tired of all these Turkish homos on the beach. They always seem to wait along the quite stretches where I jog along the beach in my shorts. Throwing little comments at me, I imagine they stare at my ass when I jog by, or they try to join me jogging for a while, or come to my truck later asking for water and if they can sit inside with me for a while, and I feel like telling them to just fack right off. Smelling their faint male sweat, makes me want to puke. So I need some female company otherwise I smell too much male sweat, including my own.  

 Let me know how it goes. i think i told you in my last email, since i got back from Cyprus i didnt have much chance to enjoy fine sunny weather and now i am back in Brussels and it just pour rains like hell. it is quite depressing. I quite frequently just close my eyes and get back in my mind to that lovely beach you cleaned up and where i had a great time! i so much envy you that!!! as you know because i keep saying that very often! i have this urge to just go and get the ticket for November but it is not so easy! Konstantinos is a nice guy and i like him a lot. He always takes a very good care of me when i am there. i just wish i could have a conversation with him just like we do. sometimes it seems impossible, he lives like a boheme, he loves enjoying life, which i also what i admire about him but sometimes it can be too much for me. i am not sure if you follow here what i am trying to say. anyway, he is not bad way crazy and i am just a coward, just like you said. regarding my tulip in a sea shell, i didnt do any research yet as i didnt have much time for myself lately but i will so now. i just left it in the sand inside of the shell you gave me and i water it ocasionally but mostly i kepp it drier. we will see what is going to happen. maybe it will grow and bloom next year! i will surely let you know!o) Mily Kajo, take care and kepp sending emails i live on them! they always radiate the sun shining and the smell of the sea here... kisses,bananak

It's always nice and refreshing to get your letters, like the female company that I need! Was great hanging on the beach with you. Come on down anytime you like. Will be in this small truck with that real crazy friend coming to visit for a month. That will be scary indeed, but will be nice to get drunk and party, and drive around the island. Certainly some adventures will come out of it. Have a good one! :0) 

Ahooj! Great to hear the "English lessons" are working out for you!

well, not yet. School will start soon and I'll drop some ads within the next couple of days. Konstantinos seemed normal enough to me. Then again, didn't talk to him much, and I'm a bit crazy myself I think! Then again, I think crazy is more normal than "normal" people, who seem more concerned about being "normal", which is essentially doing what everyone else does, because they are scared little babies who fear rejection and ridicule. So all the weak copy one another, and when someone else does something different, just because they feel like it and it seems normal to them, the week feel threatened, or envy the person's freedom, and start to badmouth and gossip about them. So I cannot consider them normal at all but just a bunch of cowards. What's new with me? Well a big trouble make is coming to visit me. Long story, but didn't want to see him ever again. But he lent me cash for a plane ticket to go treeplanting and I feel I owe him one, so I invited him for a visit. Now he will be here for a full month. He loves to get drunk, occasionally into fights, and he is a big womaniser. In any case, I think my next month should at least be interesting, but I'm a bit scared! Will have to ask him to control himself. Did any research on that tulip bulb you brought with you? Curious if you can get it to grow. It rains a bit now during the fall, and maybe winter. They bloom during the fall, and somehow survive 50C temperatures in burning dry sand over the summer. Amazing thing! byebaby

Tell me more. I want to write longer email but since i got back from CY i have a friend visiting and i didnt have much time for myself not speaking to write emails. Please give me few more days, she is leaving on Friday. I miss you, i miss the sun and sea, I miss the weather and of course, i miss Konstantinos too, even though he is crazy and if we were living together i would have to kill him soon! I am currently in Brussels and the weather sucks as usual, dark and raining, oh today is also a bit windy... good chocolate though. So let me know what is new with you!!! looking forward to hear from you. and remember even though i am not writing emails every day you are on my mind alot!!! take care. hugs, bananaK

was good to seeya again banana! If ya ever wanna come for longer and you can tolerate my sardine can, you're welcome to stay here for free. Even your friend. We can boot around the Turkish side. Maybe later I'll get insurance for the south side as well. My friend is coming from the 8th of October to the 8th of November. So early November the weather may still be a bit tolerable for a swim in the ocean.

 

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