Welcome to Canada Or how to find an ice-cream in Robson street

Today, the second week has passed when I, packed with my newly-bought long-wished Samsonite Hommage luggage bags and total excitement on my face, landed in Vancouver, BC, Canada. It took only an hour of waiting in Borispol for the delayed flight, two more flights, 3 meals on board, and a lack of water between flights to get to Canada. I was bewildered to hear no announcements in Ukrainian when leaving Ukraine with a Lufthansa plane, mostly in German and French they were. That was only the start No Ukrainian in a future fortnight.

So, Vancouver met me with 2 am morning twilight, a perfect bouquet and sweet hugs from my husband in a deserted huge airport halls with a sterile soft carpet floor. So was my coming.

But what about the ice-cream? In Ukraine, I’ve not eaten ice-cream for years because of a total taste and quality abuse of this ancient treat. I used to eat it in my childhood when, you know, the grass was greener, and ice-cream sweeter. In my student years, I opted for this desert as it was the only appropriate and cheap dish to refresh herself in a daily 3-hour journey from the university to home. Nowadays it should be a great disappointment or failure to search the ice-cream.

Today, it is the day! What is the reason? Oh, this is a new little story waiting to be told. See “How to persuade your medical insurance company that you aren’t a camel” soon. But now I’m waiting for my husband who is smarter and can find even a camel if I need for me, even in Robson street

I am not followed and I am lucky

When I started this blog, the great thing seemed to write my way to crowds of worshippers and win the recognition. As no one even noticed my pieces of art (!), instead of disappointment, a brilliant idea crossed my mind – I can be anonymous and have the place to store private thoughts. Welcome to our world, my dairy.
Today, I’ve understood how hard to be an emancipated woman. The problem is my old car. To tell the truth, it’s the newest and finest car in the world for me. It took only 7 months of saving each dollar and ignoring holidays and life amenities to buy a 10-year-old small car. At last I got it. The later 7 months have been spent on repair-repair-repair. Today I’m fed up with this. I curse my dream that stole a year of my precious time and health.

Marketing writing tips

I hate  general tips lilke – “define your aim, define your audience, and write”.

How? What? Where to start? What is the template?

Personally, I am always interested in practical tips, steps to follow and get a result. Of course, be realistic, there is no single way to pave your way for perfect writing, but like in dancing right steps make a dance.

Interviewing Technical writer. How to survive?

I’m not a newbie technical writer. More than five years of writing-editing-translating are at my belt. I’ve just recovered from a recent job interview (it took a fortnight, actually!) I like talking with people, but hate job interviews. The truth is each new job comes with an interview or even several ones. What shall I do?

Writing experience vs self-control !

Company Texts and Hats

Recently I decided to replace my old winter hat and attacked the web. As a tuned-in girl, I was ready to spent an hour (actually 5 or more if required) to look through all that stuff found in the search results. It supposed to be something knitted, slightly decorated to distinguish me from the gray developers’ mass.

Before this moment,

10 funny tips to get fun at work

If you have cheerfully looked at this heading and a surprised look has appeared on your face, if you have no idea where more fun lives except your working place, well, do not close this page, but bookmark it for the further look.

Whether it seasonable or appearing at the second phase of the long-term project, can be quickly cured with an extra day off or requires drastic measures, sooner or later it comes to steal our fun at work and replace it with anything from a sad look and boredom to quick thoughts of suicide.

When the job sucks,

How to learn at work

Striving to gather the most amazing as well as  simple ways to get new knowledge, acquire new skills, and grow as a professional at the working place having  modest opportunities and a lack of time.

I’ll post the techniques used by those who succeeded soon.

To Read or to Write? That is my dilemma

What should I do if I have to write about data view peculiarities, but my soul is with the news in Life & Style section at Timesonline.co.uk? (To tell the truth, it’s with www.style.com too.) How to find five minutes to dive into a delightful,  catchy source of world news presented in the breathtaking smart style ot the Times.  Gosh, it’s worth reading it!

Should I keep the dainty for evening home absorption and sink my teeth into insipid data things for insipid people?

Tell me not to leave my job and go to some women’s monthlies. They have no space for my favourite harmonious phrases like “database project deployment connections”, “batch formatting”, “user-defined procedure debugging”, “custom object mapping” etc etc.

Fabulous divas vs real tech writer

Back to work today. Meet those three tens and five new of requests. The day was full of tests and quests, quick jokes and endless googling. But I can’t help loving my colleagues – those messy, pompous chauvinists. They have a ready answer for any stuff – from sql parsing details, repair prices to what makes good bubs… The latter is daily on the agenda.

Unfortunately, all the men even blindfolded database genii,

Disgraced press releases…

Today I feel unwell and will stay the whole day alone at home. Leaving three tens of change requests and bleak prospects to fix them  at office. Oh, requests are worthy of being the main hero of the series of articles. I have much to say about these quick notes of an overloaded developer or a tester exhausted from regression testing. But the best examples are fixation of our Boss who is skillful in fucking our brains.

How would you feel if you are constantly asked to trample on dignity of press releases?

Suppose you, being astonishingly initiative, have enunciated that regular writing of press releases will help to promote the company products and you can do that writing. You know that the value of press releases is not a secret since it turned 100-years-old. But this value should be proved to our boss.

Being astonishingly stubborn as well as initiative, you tried to stuff this idea to ears of your colleagues-writers, your team leader and even innocent people in corridors and lunchrooms. In several months, (oh, it took less than 1 year as was with placing testimonials on the company website)  the boss has asked you to explore the format and principles of writing press releases.

You dug the Internet to refresh the knowledge, read every news in competitors press rooms, go to the boss’s favourites web sites, do a collage of screenshots and quotations and …

send it to your BOSS along with your press release, rewritten based on best samples and reviewed with your project manager (experienced and smart guy, by the way) several times.

Ok, the press release doesn’t suit everybody, it’s not the boss’s cup of tea. After 5 revisions and long discussions at the boss’s table, your creation resembles a list of release notes with a header and About Company section containing a plucked company description.

No company location and citation of any company representatives or partners (the boss considers our company is not worth of declaring its thoughts and intentions in public), no adjectives to set our product apart from others (as there are others that are better than we are, according to our boss). . .

I hardly can add these press releases to my portfolio as I am ashamed to explain why my press releases tend to hide the company achievements (can we use this word referring to our company, Boss? ) from the public instead of highlight them…

c’est la vie – as my ex-colleague tech writer would say

By the way, I start missing my job and office being at home half a day already. No struggle, no discussions and no jokes of my colleagues.