Still looking for my new neighbourhood here in Sofia, which is taking up quite a bit of time. It’s not as easy as 1.5 year ago, since the city got remarkably more expensive. I’m not worried though, patience and perseverance are the key to the keys of a great flat, in a great neighbourhood. If you know something good however, not more than 10-15 minutes by public transportation from the center, you can email me at 
I do, and that’s the reason why I haven’t been blogging so much (and dropping, for the EC readers). It’s a waiter job and on Friday, Saturday and Sunday I make 12 hour days. Never did that before and it’s really tough since you’re standing all the time and since it’s a touristy restaurant it gets extremely busy, guaranteed! Here are some (clickable) pictures of my work:
The job’s quite fun. I get to speak many different languages. Today I’ve spoken Turkish, English, French, German, Dutch, and a little Bulgarian! 🙂
The pay’s not so great though. It’s 50-80 lira per day (about 30 euros) for 12 hours of work. You can do the math and calculate my hourly wage. It’s very hard work and I don’t think most of the visitors realize how hard the staff actually works for what kind of money. I wouldn’t expect it at least. Now that I know, I’ll be a little bit more considerate when tipping in touristy places. Also, some of the visitors thinks that “service costs” means that the tip’s included. Wrong. I don’t get an hourly wage, I get a “commission”, which comes from the service costs (10% of the total check). So next time you see “service” on your bill, TIP!
It’s great to be working in a bar/restaurant again and it’s a nice experience for now. Hard work, but it makes you sleep well at night… and wake up with an aching body the next day. 😉
Off to bed. Gotta get up early tomorrow for another 12 hour day.
I’m off to see my girlfriend in Bulgaria. Which means I’ll be writing a bit about Bulgaria over the next week. If you want to know what it’s like there, just head over to my Picasa albums and have a look at the lower half of the page.
Speaking of Picasaweb… I took some pictures yesterday of a more or less typical day of me in Istanbul. Go check them out now.
Also some great news… I got a freelance writing opportunity passed down from the international office from my university. Turkish Daily News, a Turkish newspaper in English, sent them a message that they’re looking for international students because they could offer an interesting perspective on Istanbul. This is very exciting and I hope to get a nice chance to show my take on Istanbul on a bigger scale, as well as increase my journalistic experiences after having worked with the Bulgarian National Radio before.
My life’s developing at lightspeed! I can feel the rush! (and the stress, but enough about that already!)
I’ll write soon, from Bulgaria!
Edit – Oh, and I’ve been included in a blog carnival called Carnival of Cities, covering many interesting posts about many interesting cities around the world. Go check it out! And Foxnomad was so kind as to make a summary of it and include my post 🙂
Hey, figured it’s about time I give a small overview of what’s up with me. A couple of things.
That’s about it. If you think you can help me out with any of this. Please contact me.
Recently I received an email about some marketing research being done into people who buy stuff at the shops at trainstations. Being a commuter, I decided to reply and filled in a short survey. Later they contacted me and asked me if I would be free to be interviewed face-to-face.
Long story short, I just walked into a conference room at a hotel here in Utrecht, was asked a bunch of questions and was made to think about my consumptions at the train stations and 40 minutes later I walked out 30 euro’s richer. Woo-hah! 😀
Sign me up for more! 😈
Just had a conversation with my academic placement supervisor and it looks like I’ll be getting a very good evaluation for the work placement I did with the Bulgarian National Radio. These are the main things I discussed with him:
1. what did you learn that you didn’t expect to learn?
One of the things I really learned was to be flexible. First of all, this was because of working in an institution instead of doing my projects within an academic and theoretical environment. There were a lot of barriers between me and my goals and I had to figure out how to get around that. Another reason why I had to be flexible is because of the organisation being Bulgarian. Meaning that things were often rather rigid and bureaucratic and I had to constantly adapt to the situation and expect to have to adapt and be flexible.
2. what did you not learn that you had hoped to?
There was one particular research project I was doing amongst listeners which I would have loved to start sooner, so that I could have executed it on a larger scale and would have learned more about research in the process. I can not go into detail about that on this blog, but planning and looking ahead is the key here!
3. what would you change about your placement?
Not much, except I would secure it earlier and prepare more coordination. Have more people who can help me out and secure a part of their time so that they can help me out if it’s necessary. Besides that I would do the research project I mentioned juts now earlier and I would love to do an evaluation of the internal communication of the radio. That is, if there are influential people within the radio who are willing to listen to my findings and are ready to make some changes or do further research based on those results.
4. what advice would you give to a student going on placement in order to help him/her ave a better experience?
– Be flexible: expect the best and prepare for the worst!
– Be proactive: don’t sit around waiting to get tasks handed out to you. Create your own job! This will make things A LOT more interesting for you as well as for your employer.
– Be valuable: make yourself an asset to the company. Be of value to the company, so that when you leave, the company loses something valuable that they would like to keep or get back. No matter what your plans are, do this! Even if you don’t plan on coming back or are actually planning to never come back; do it!
– Be original: don’t go and don’t do what everyone else is doing. Pick an original company or organisation for your placement. Pick an original destination. This will make you learn so much more, will make you have so much more fun, will make life so much more interesting for you. Besides that, it will impress your host organisation, your professors, your social environment, as well as potential future employers when they see this on your CV! However, if you are not willing to be flexible and proactive then forget it. Go do what everyone else is doing or you will not make it. If you don’t feel like having to make the best out of situations, but prefer to be passive, then you are not fit for the exceptional.
I hope this helps you out, whether you’re a student looking for a placement or currently on a placement or just someone interested in career strategy. Make sure to come back for more!
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When I came back from Bulgaria, I got drowned in school work, so the only thing I’ve really done besides that is set up this website as a continuation of the former one. Although not officially, yet. The course I’m doing is about the evaluation of internal communication processes and what’s most exciting is the lecturers involved; Dr. Guido Wolf, from the conex. Institute, and Dr. Nina Schuppener, from Hering Schuppener. It almost feels like it’s the first time I’m actually learning something in my university, or at least motivated to learn something.
Anyway… I just spent four days in Germany, meeting students from the University of Duisburg/Essen, and setting up a way to start working together to analyze the internal communications of one out of four selected companies. The group I’m in was assigned to carry out a rather specific research with a big, German energy company. Very exciting!
This Sunday I’m playing a couple of DJ sets at the DUPLO Festival in dB’s, Utrecht. There will be six bands performing between 3 in the afternoon until 10 in the evening… Between the performances, I’m taking care of the music and I have a set of an hour at the end (unless everyone leaves of course). To check out some of my work, go here.
I should also be writing an article for Rethos.com, a website with articles dealing with activist and ideological topics, which will probably be about an organisation an acquaintance of mine has set up, called Live-Build. Keep a close eye on my Twitter updates if you’re interested.
But for now…
Two days before I finish my work here, I decided to calculate how much I actually make per day. I work full-time in a decent paying job, I’m around the national average.
Make a guess in your mind.
Any guess.
Don’t read on until you have made a guess.
Okay, ready? How about less than sixteen per day, but that’s in the Bulgarian currency… Converted to euro’s that’s less than eight. Is it more or less than what you guessed?
I’m so happy I didn’t look at it this way earlier 🙂
Okay, it’s been a while. Actually, it’s been three weeks. The longer I waited with posting, the more I had to tell, the less I felt like making time to tell all of it. This kept looping and looping, until now. I present to you…
Okay, so what else?
Expect updates to be more regular from now on. I’ll be busy here though since it’s my last weeks in Bulgaria and I mostly want to spend time with the people I’ve met here.
when I come back. I need your peer pressure to make this happen 😉
