Happiness, Joy, Contentment, and such matters

Is this internship at least paid?

Nope. Hey, it's Portugal. We're not as bad as, say, Spain or Greece, but we're still knee deep in the shitty austerity.

On the plus side, the minimum wage is likely to get raised to 500 euros, so, maybe I'll get something decent in the next 2 years. I got another possible internship (this one is a professional one) coming up next year, so, I'm slowly catching up with my former college friends (because they are starting to get paid).

edited 14th Sep '14 6:55:48 AM by Quag15

500 Euros per what? Minimum wage is per hour here, and I think the Euro is still stronger than the Dollar.

Per month.

Per month.

Minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour here, and there's a fight to put it at ten or above because you can't actually live on just minimum wage.

I was making $8.23 per hour when I left my store last month, and working around 20 hours per week, so my monthly take home was between $650 and $700. And I was only paying my parents $100 in monthly rent.

edited 14th Sep '14 7:27:28 AM by TParadox

Same reason here. Well that and raising consumption levels in order to improve the economy and stimulate growth.

100 in monthly rent? That's quite nice.

edited 14th Sep '14 7:29:25 AM by Quag15

And even that much was voluntary. If I hadn't offered once I got a job, they wouldn't have asked.

I have gotten some nagging about it since it was instituted, but it's very informal and I can give them the check whenever. Ideally it would be the top of the month, but there have been months where I've paid for the previous and current month very close to the end of the current month.

It's very gratifying, a great stroke to the poor ol' ego with people calling me up offering job interviews for some rather shiny positions. If nothing else, that really validated my CV writing skill.

So i'm crushing on a girl for the first time in exactly 4 years, which reminds me that it has indeed been that long since i've felt this way.

I'm trying to redress the mistakes i've made in the past (the past being the one girl, four years ago), which ended because i let my anxiety get the better of me and overplayed my hand too quickly, turning her off (either that or she just wasn't interested, though i still wonder), and the emotional backlash in my case led to me acting strangely (think Bartolomeo in One Piece. I didn't do anything skeevy, but i did start acting weird around her until our internship together ended and we went our separate ways).

This time i have a few benefits. We're both in grad school and i'm only a semester ahead of her, so there's much more time to play with, apparently we live quite close to each other (but not so close that i didn't encounter her until some students got together a party in another part of town, though just yesterday we had a chance encounter at the neighborhood grocery).

Trouble is that it could be quite irrational, since we've only spoken for maybe 15-20 minutes at the party, and she could be totally wrong for me, and I'm trying to seek a setting in which i can do more fact-finding without my intentions being obvious. Plus she could, as with so many girls i know, already be in a relationship (Facebook says nothing, but that simply says she is not definitely in a relationship, rather than that she definitely is not in one), although i'm quite willing to be shot down over that, i'm more worried about wasting my time and hers if we're obviously wrong for each other.

So i'm trying to resolve the mistakes of my past, moving forward with more confidence but simultaneously with greater emotional caution, which is entirely contradictory, and idly wondering how I can engineer a sort of "pre-date" before i figure out whether she's worth asking out beyond my initial infatuation.

Hate to ask rando-internet advice on the matter, but do folks have ideas? We have no classes together either, that's why it took until the party at the end of the third week of class to meet her (i was at new student orientation with her, even though i was a veteran student, i was helping out, but she obviously escaped my notice at the time)

Putting it here just because it also feels pretty good to feel this way again. Four years without meeting any special someone (even if this does end up a mere damp squib) is a long time, so it makes me feel hopeful that i'm becoming a more socially-able adult.

You'll get a bigger chance of getting a response in the Romance thread. Congrats on the new crush.

There's a romance thread? I thought that was kind of a joke thread, or is the troper dating service a separate thing?

The Romance thread is just titled "Romance".

Troper Shipping/Troper Dating Service was for playing around with shipping Tropers, but it's become the silliest general chat thread in Yack Fest.

This morning, I got back into a routine and did everything I set out to do.

I did it with no mental complaints and managed to work myself through it, knowing there won't be drawbacks, and knowing I'll one day be able to actually say I worked through it.

I need to work on it from here, but it started and this is just one step in it.

Rachel's in her Heaven. All's right with the world.

Good to know.

Downloaded Smash Bros. 4 Demo for my 3DS tonight.

WHEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Limited characters, but I can kick tail with mah boi, Link!

MUPPET WISH DAY

MOTHER OF GOD IT'S FINALLY RAINING.

yes, it is! holy crap I live near you. ish. I'm in Berkeley.

ugh, rain, yes please all the rain.

my cat was super cuddly last night. it kept me awake, but was worth it.

Yesterday, took a trip into Philly to meet up with a relation's anime club, and mostly because it was an opportunity to try real ramen (rather than the 10 cent stuff in a packet). So, I tried actual professional ramen for the first time, and it was delicious. Hung around, brought the nephew home, he brought his PS 3, let me start a file on his copy of Fallout: New Vegas... which has made me lose my general hatred for first-person games, because it seems to work better in first person for me, which amazed me.

Socializing, good food, good games.... has left me unusually upbeat. Like, I haven't been this "up" in a while. Hope I can keep that for a while, even if it might put a dent in my depressing writing.

Currently ecstatic about having a new computer myself! New technology is great sometimes.

I have a new laptop and my first voice-acting recording will happen on Friday.

firefighters save hamster family from fire

Whoo, I got a 92% on my math test!

nice!!