Posts Tagged ‘money’
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
Sometimes, blogging is about getting things off your chest. I might even say this blog is my therapist. (Note: this word can also be read as the rapist). So, in summary, sometimes blogging provides you with therapy, and sometimes it rapes you.
Remember how I used to live in a shed? Remember? Well, after we moved out of the shed, we rented it to a little man. The man agreed to give me $90 a week in exchange for sitting in the shed and smoking cigarettes or whatever he does in there. This agreement worked quite well for a few years, until the little man stopped giving me $90 a week.
So now I have a headache, and a little man that owes me money, in fact, quite a bit of money. If he doesn’t pay me by Monday we’re going to serve him an eviction notice. Ouch!
Stupid non rent-paying tenant! Why must you torment me?!!!!1
Tags: house, money
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
Yeah, the financial crisis is hitting pretty hard. This morning I only had 3 Weet-Bix instead of 4 and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to cancel my pedicure appointment tomorrow.
Apparently, our Prime Minister is going to give a wad-load of cash to pensioners and first home buyers around Christmas-time. I’m neither of those things, so I’m feeling left out. I guess I’ll just have to cheat on my taxes.
As a small business owner I guess it’s possible that I might find myself running short of work as a result. Don’t people always need websites though? Wouldn’t everything be alright if everyone just relaxed and carried on as usual? Stupid panicky stockmarket investors! Stop panicking! STOP IT!!!
Anyhoo, I’ve run out of work just now so I’m going to stare at the wall for a bit. Actually that feels kind of good. I guess if the world went to shit I’d still have a wall to stare at. Or at least somebody else’s wall.
Tags: meaningless possessions, money
Posted in General | 5 Comments »
Monday, August 25th, 2008
Hi, there. Time for an update on my major life experiment, which is starting my own full-time freelance business. Despite the fact that I am an insanely busy freelance web monkey, I still find time to keep you abreast of all the latest developments. Isn’t that nice? Isn’t it?
Business is going fairly well. When I started, I didn’t know what to expect, and I was right. Freelancing is a strange creature - the best thing is the flexibility (I’ve never had a job before where I can take the dog for a walk when I feel like it), and the worst thing is not knowing if you’re quite going to bill enough to pay your wage for the week. The thing that amazes me is that I can work for a full day and only bill five hours sometimes.
After a few (anticipated) weeks of low earnings, things are starting to pick up. I’ve made several extremely useful contacts in the web industry who are throwing me a fair bit of sub-contracting work to supplement my ‘public’ business. In fact, I’m starting to wonder whether I might prefer to sub-contract full time. Dealing with clients, by all accounts, sucks the big one, and I quite enjoy being presented with regular work which I can concentrate on without visiting / calling / smelling / hearing the public. My approach to the business is extremely flexible, so I’m just going to go with the flow for the moment. Of course, there’s better money in real live clients, so I’ll still keep accepting work and see what happens.
In order to keep some semblance of order, I decided early on to pay myself a ‘wage’ from the business rather than just dip in when I need money, which could get messy. The wage is comparatively low (just over 40k) but I’ll be looking to give myself a raise before too long. I also pay myself superannuation, holidays, and sick pay to keep myself sane. There’s no point burning out, I always say.
Speaking of holidays, I’ll be taking one next week. We’re driving down to NSW to visit family as the wife’s brother has recently had a baby boy. Road trip!
Tags: designing the internets, money
Posted in General | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
I have had an interesting week. How about you? Hmm, interesting. Let me tell you more about my week.
First of all, we received GIANT tax returns which was extremely helpful. After returning from England, a ‘magical fairyland’ where we always had money, we discovered that money was in fact, extremely difficult to acquire once we were back in Australia. We made lots of silly decisions but I regret nothing. Anyway, so the tax returns were awesome to the tune of $7,000, which means we are now debt-free (apart from our mortgage).
Being a romantic bastard, I decided to surprise the wife, and whisk her away for a ’surprise’ dinner at a fancy restaurant. She was extremely pleased to hear that we were no longer paupers, and we proceeded to clink our glasses in ecstacy. But there is more to this story! Once back in the car I instructed the wife to open our glove box, where she discovered a Wii Controller. The Wii Controller conveniently connects to the new Wii which sits in our lounge room. My materialistic brand of romance knows no bounds!
Then we went and bought some clothes and frying pans and stuff and the money was gone. End of story.
Tags: meaningless possessions, money
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
Friday, March 30th, 2007
I just noticed a charge on my credit card for £9.20 issued by “Balls Brothers”, and I swear I have no idea what it’s all about. I’m also afraid to ask too many questions. Some dogs are better left sleeping.
Tags: money, shit that is weird
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Sunday, February 4th, 2007
Um yeah, OK so we have a total of £3 left. By my calculations that should last us about 0.000027 seconds in London. Well, actually I’m just sensationalising things (journalism training coming in handy), we’re just waiting for a money transfer from Australia. I really shouldn’t have left it so late to transfer some money. Fortunately we have food in the fridge, a warm bed, a weekly tube ticket, and SKY TV to keep us occupied ’til the money drops in our account, which should happen tonight. Hooray.
We like London. Part of the appeal is being able to walk for miles and miles and see something new on every street. Then after you get lost, you can just jump on the tube and figure out your way home from there. The pure scale of things here architecturally is quite amazing, and I’m glad I still have naive eyes to appreciate it since I’m sure it all becomes old hat after a while. Although I’ve been to Europe and the UK before (as a child) I can truly appreciate it as an adult.
When we first arrived, we stayed in the shitty Smart Hyde Park Inn (you get what you pay for, I suppose, at £8 a night), which I probably wouldn’t recommend, apart from the price. After four times enjoying their free and peerless “Continental Breakfast“, consisting of toast and cornflakes, which I would much rather refer to as “Continental Breakfast My Arse“, we have now moved to our sweet little house in Tooting. Pictures and more information shall be forthcoming as soon as we are finished talking about MY BIRTHDAY.
I turned 28 on Thursday. I was a good and fun birthday, starting with a trip to the bank to talk about bank accounts! My favourite thing in the whole world!
I get kisses on my birthday. I’m not sure who this lady is, but she took a liking to me while I was sitting on a park bench.
The crapness of going to the bank on my birthday was redeemed by the fact that we went and bought me a laptop shortly after. That’s right! I’ve wanted one for ages and my dream has finally come true, in the form of a snazzy looking Toshiba. Joy! Trish was patient enough to trudge the streets of London with me, and also turn the screws big-time on the salesman. That’s my kind of woman! Double satisfaction in the fact that I could use my earnings from Blackbird Solutions to pay for it. Blackbird is my sugar daddy.
Then we went to the British Museum! It was awesome. They have lots of old crap there.
This ancient winged dude used to guard the entry to the Assyrian roller-drome. The Assyrians were known as such because of their sublime asses. The Assyrian ass was renowned in ancient circles, and the jealousy from their neighbours precluded the Great Ass Wars of 610BC. The Medes eventually penetrated Assyria in 612BC.
The Corinthian style helmet worn by Napoleon when he discovered America in 1492.
This fabulous Mexican skull, embedded with Onyx and Turquoise, and featuring polished Obsidian mirrors for eyes, resembles your mother. Our starting bid today will be £3 million.
It’s the mummy of Cleopatra. No, seriously. Her toe tasted like beef jerky.
More mummies. Those things grow on trees in the British museum.
This old security guard wouldn’t answer my questions about the exhibit.
The magnificent Great Court at the British Museum was opened in 2000 to commemorate the devastation wreaked on the world by the Y2K bug. In the foyer stands a marble statue representing the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, Bill Gates.
That concludes my tour of the British Museum! After that we went to a pub and I finally got to have a beer. It cost me four hundred Australian dollars. I also had meat pie with chips, gravy, and mushy peas. I wasn’t hungry so I just rubbed it all over myself to keep warm.
The next day we went on a very cool tour of London. We got to see lots of stuff, even including stuff I didn’t know was there. I love surprises, especially surprising ones!
This is Big Ben. The clock is nowhere near as big as I thought it would be.
I waited all day outside Buckingham palace for the changing of the guards but all I got was frostbite.
I was trying to take a picture of the sky but this stupid tower got in the way.
THE END. That brings me to our brand new house. We are sharing with a South African girl named Hazel. I met her for five minutes last night, then she caught a plane to Brazil for a month. There are other people that rent rooms here, but they’re never home, so we pretty much have the place to ourselves. Sweet! We have a giant room which is also very cool. Here is our street.
Tags: london, money, pictures, touristy crap
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, August 1st, 2006
Hooray! I just finished my tax return! It’s amazing how much fun one can have whilst juggling figures and transferring funds to the Caribbean. Now I can get that left handed yo-yo I’ve always dreamed about.
We had our housewarming and it was great. But why believe me? I’ll show you some pictures:
Why is blogger taking so long to upload pictures? Blogger is naughty with a capital N.
Ah, shit, I can’t upload any pictures right now. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
Screw you blogger, for you mess with my credibility!! Screw you in the ass!
Woohoo! Here it goes, it’s working.
There was a fire.
There were some people.
And some more people.
A good party, no? OK I have to go now. Tonight I play music with some crazy boys. Wish me luck.
Tags: let's party, money
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
Sunday, November 13th, 2005
Last night I strummed my guitar for about twenty minutes in front of a small crowd of young people at a community centre on the Gold Coast, and at the end, they gave us money.
Actual money. You can actually get paid for doing this shit? Shouldn’t this be illegal? I feel like I should be paying them for indulging my musical noodlings. I sit at home and do the same thing for free every day.
Now, making music for a living. Wouldn’t that be a gas?
Tags: band, money, my uncertain future
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Hello, I'm Afe.
