The Rawpinions Weblog

Current Mood: Bored

A few months ago when I offered to re-write 3 articles for a price of $1 per 100 words, I only realized how idiotic that was right in the middle of my first article. After 3 hours of pondering & playing with words to perfect an already awesome article, I realized I wasn’t working for money but was being charitable instead.

I found a pretty cool article (canadianmags.blogspot.com/2006/12/billable-hours-in-freelancers-life.html) where this blogger analysed the math of freelance writers’ earnings. It’s worth reading!

The other day I offered a low price of $0.03 per word for five 600-word articles to a guy looking for writers. He was surprised and told me that a “professional” offered him $9 per 500 words. I didn’t challenge him by offering a more competitive price. Rather, I let it go knowing the math of such earnings.

To be realistic, it would have taken me about 3-5 hours to compose a 600-word, keyword-stuffed (for SEO) article in his niche. So 5 articles would have taken me all weekend to complete. We’re talking about perfect grammar, perfect spelling and on top of that, handing him exclusive rights (i.e. I won’t have rights to publish it and he gets to resell it if he wants to…with his name on it).

Selling your article with exclusive rights is selling a piece of art that someone else gets to claim as theirs. I’m nowhere near being a professional, so there’s no way I respect my writing more than any professional writer. That said, there is no way the writer offering $9 for 500 words is a “professional”. He’s obviously a freelance writer and only a self-proclaimed “professional”.

The way I see it, he’s just someone with lots of time in his hands, who’s not really good at math. Kudos to him for being charitable though. His customer testimonials will go well in his CV. But in all honesty, I feel you can’t possibly be successful in life if you’re overly generous. Ultimately, you have to be realistic. You can’t spend a 10-hour work day writing 4-5 articles (under exam conditions, i.e not practical) and only get $40-$50 for such hard work.

After doing some online reading, I found out that many “professional” writers get $0.50 to $1 per word or even a whole lot more. Some are paid by the hour.

Current Mood: Confused

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Career test at similarminds.com

Extroversion ||||||||||||||||||||| 66%
Emotional Stability ||||||||||||||| 43%
Orderliness ||||||||| 26%
Altruism ||||||||||||||| 43%
Inquisitiveness |||||||||||| 36%

You are a Promoter, possible professions include - real estate broker , chef, land developer, physical therapist, stock broker, news reporter, fire fighter, promoter, entrepreneur, pilot, budget analyst, insurance agent, management consultant, franchise owner, electrical engineer, aircraft mechanic, technical trainer, EEG technologist, radiological technician, emergency medical tech., corrections officer, flight attendant.

Current Mood: Cool

I’ve posted this video quite a while back, but the quality was terrible. So here’s a better quality video. Courtesy of SMG (Shanghai Media Group). Their message: “和谐城市·心灵乐章” (something along the lines of: ‘Promoting an Harmonious City’).

Bored one day (in 1999) so I came up with this within 5 mins LOL. Reading it right now, it doesn’t quite make sense…=/

What Happened?

Time rushes by
New friends are known
Influences run high
Disturbances are shown

Age in time increases
Dedication of diligence fade
Strength from within decreases
Careless decisions are made

“This revelation is pathetic”
One willingly points out
“Our used-to-be majestic,
Has nothing to boast about!”

What happened to our spirit
What happened to our core
What happened to our merit
We so longingly worked for?

I was 15 when I wrote this…if it doesn’t make sense to you, that’s not my problem.

Tribute to Career’s Week: My Career My Pride (1998)   I attend an ordinary school To open the book of significance I use this book as a tool To exemplify a sign of importance Leading all difficulties to the rear Enables me to see what’s bright I conquer my potential with no fear Ignorance and discrimination: I’ll fight! Idle-rumours shall never exist I know I can succeed For my daily confidence will persist And my determination might exceed I slowly turn the meaningful pages Of all the works undone I’ll swiftly do them for simple wages Or maybe: just for fun! My career continues as expected So I close the book with a smile With a delusion of pride, I devoted I place the book on a pile © 1998 www.rawpinions.com

Current Mood: Alarmed

The other day, I was feeling lazy so I thought about microwaving water. It’s not something I’ve ever done before, and I’ve never drank any in my life (not to my knowledge anyway). I was already thinking about how cool it would be to have steaming tea within 1 minute when it hit me: why don’t I read a bit about it online first?

So I came across an experiment conducted on a plant. According to snopes.com, the results of the experiment was false. http://www.snopes.com/science/microwave/plants.asp

I was then sent a youtube link, about exploding microwave water if I were to superheat it…and after watching a few more videos I came across another plant experiment done by NutritionMum. After watching her videos, I came to my own conclusions and I’ll give you this: I’d rather boil water, even if I can’t have my tea within a minute.

And if that’s not strange to you, watch the next video!

A few weeks ago I sent Div a few of the pics I composed for my Layout Design homework. I had to compose a whole bunch of pics in a short amount of time. The teacher said we could take pics of the internet to create the layout, and the one criteria we’ll be graded on is: layout.
So I had to think fast. Concert = the Ally McBeal (I was watching season 2-3 at the time) = Barry White. I didn’t have a lot of time to compose the layout but I had to improvise. I think Purple really suits him, definitely his colour. RIP to the man. Here’s a few of my works, I think it was best to keep to the same layout theme.
1 - Concert Poster

2 - Concert Coupon (I’ve never heard of this but I THINK that’s what the teacher wanted)

3 - Concert Ticket

4 - CD

Started with Maya this week. Apparently, there’s no Chinese version of the software so we’re using the English version (hooray for me). I also heard that the teacher spent 5 years in Canada, so she seems to prefer using English to teach Maya. I don’t mean to sound harsh but I feel it’s a good way for my Chinese classmates to experience a bit of what I go through in class, i.e. learning a software full of Chinese characters. The teacher uses Chinese to explain as well but because the software is in English, so she wants us all to try our best to learn everything the way things are rather than trying to translate everything every minute.

I’ve downloaded a whole bunch of free video tutorials online. Here’s the site: www.simplymaya.com

I did have an exam last week. It was for the Visual Language module. Funny, we spent 2 weeks watching English movies and English commercials, but took notes in Chinese. So last week before lunch, the teacher said “ok, so this afternoon we’ll be having an exam. You will watch a film and write an essay about it & its relations to visual language”.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I didn’t have time to understand the notes, it was full of new vocabulary! That afternoon, I entered the class only to find a bloody bitch had “stolen” my seat (at the back) so I was forced to sit right at the front. The movie started to play and I couldn’t bloody hear a thing, and I was just so pissed off.

The movie was in English though - with no Chinese subtitles. This girl shouted “teacher, there’s no Chinese subtitles we can’t understand” and the teacher said “the movie is in English and listen to it attentively so you’ll be able to understand”. This made me happy. So these nerds sat at the back where the speakers were and I don’t really know why ‘coz the sound was as useless to them as playing the movie in mute.

We watched “Citizen Kane”, a black and white film.

After the movie I went up to the teacher and asked him if I could write my essay (of supposedly 1000 characters) in English. At first, he said “my English is really bad” so I said “oh, alright” and I went back to my seat. A few minutes later he approached me and said, “my oral is terrible but I can understand English especially where reading is concerned so you can write the essay in English.”

In my opinion, it’s more easier for the Chinese to come up with 1000 characters, than for me to come up with 1000 words in a given amount of time, e.g. if I were to say “I am Chinese” it would take me 3 words but in their case 我是中国人 would already be 5 characters.