As someone entirely new to the world of finance (apart from the theory of course), I get a lot of beginner tasks to do. One of these, I found, has had a dramatic effect on my writing (in the positive sense), and basically consists of transcribing a 40-page legal document from (tree-)paper to Word.

This simple repetitive action of typing I don’t know how many words per minute for several hours a day, along with the entire (for lack of a better word) boringness of the subject-matter, means that, pretty soon, your fingers-muscles become as strong as Arnie in his hay day (picture), allowing you to write up your thoughts that much faster. I imagine a similar effect arises from coding and would think that the coders on this blog would find more time to write.. but hey.

The greater point to all of this is that there are no short-cuts to getting better in any craft, apart from more and more and more practice. There are plenty of books on grammar and how to write a novel, which are probably useful to read in regards to the structure of sentences and longer texts. But in the end, the most pleasurable thing of it all is to not have to spend too much time thinking about where the keys are located on your keyboard and instead be able to focus on the greater point of your writing: what you are trying to say!

Vincent

P.S. One negative thing to add: I don’t particularly think that typing all day is very good for the fingers. Can anyone suggest an RSI-preventative keyboard or is any extensive physical finger-labour bound to end up in walking around with the claw all day?

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I feel like I’ve already complained enough about the state of mobile telephone on this blog, particularly where it relates to roaming across countries, which just plain sucks. It’s not just mobile telephony, of course, it’s also public transport, where you have to get special discount cards per country, while we live in a so-called united Europe.

You don’t notice this so much within large countries, like France, Germany, and the US, but you definitely notice it living in the tiny Duchy of Luxembourg.  It is therefore an absolute must to a. negotiate higher wages when you start here, to compensate for those costs, and b. the lower taxes compared to the more socialist Netherlands are a nice bonus.

That said, THINGS MUST CHANGE !!! I feel, I cannot say this enough, but there is something very wrong if you go from an all-you-can-eat mobile internet contract for €27 – €50 per month, to paying something like €1 – €5 per MB of data as soon as you move 2 metres (6 feet) across the border!

I’m as against big corporations and government as the next guy, but in this case I favour more consolidation amongst mobile operators and public transport companies (even so, just because I have a T-mobile account in the Netherlands, doesn’t mean that I pay any decreased roaming fees in T-Mobile’s birth-country, Germany, no sir!).

Rather than consolidation, I am even more in favour of large networks infrastructures that are rented out at the same price to companies in different countries, which in turn act as nothing but a language interface for those services (at a minor surcharge). I think this is actually already happening, but the minor surcharge is really abused to the max. in most cases.

Whatever the case, Business-travel in Europe sucks (even more so globally, of course), and I feel that the only way to get around it now is to make more money (as if travelling was a luxury!?) or never travel at all, both of which are, to say the least, inefficient solutions to what should be a simple problem to solve. … as long as, of course, people of all nations get their heads out of their respective a##es (That’s right, I said a## on Tech IT Easy).

End rant,

Vincent
(Apologies for all the swearing. That’s really not like me.)

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