Wednesday, April 14, 2010

make money money money

One of the many perks of studying in Denmark is that I don't really need a job. After serving almost a 3 year sentence at H&M, I finally have my freedom from the repressive world of retail. The only problem is that everything in Copenhagen is expensive and I spent too much money in Italy. So while I don't need a job it would sure be nice to have one.

Instead I have to be a little resourceful with how to make money. Since prostitutes need to pay taxes here that's out the window. Since selling my body is not an option, I will sell my dignity in its place.

I write articles on occasion for an English language newspaper in Copenhagen. The pay is decent, the articles are not required to be too long, and I occasionally get free stuff. A few weeks ago I took a friend to see an opera that was absolutely terrible. So I have that going for me.

Tomorrow I am going to some sort of economics conference. I think I may get some free food out of it and I only have to write a 500 word article. I also get extra money because this is going in the real part of the newspaper not the weekly entertainment guide I usually write for.

In another effort to earn some money last week I participated in an economic experiment. It was simple game theory. Essentially you get 20 points at the start of each round and you have a choice to invest some in the group pot or to hoard some in your private account. You get to keep whatever you put in your private account but everything in the group account has a multiplier that splits between the 5 people in your group. That means if all 5 people put 20 points in the group pot then everyone gets 40 points. If everyone keeps there own you only keep your 20, and of course you can put any varying amount that in turn reflects how much you keep and how much everyone else gains. There were different rules for each round but that was the essence of the experiment.

John Nash would have said some anti-Semitic shit if he saw this experiment. Anyone that is a near functional-retard can tell that if you put all of your points in the pot and everyone else does too then you make a lot of money. Every 5 points are worth 1kr, and 5kr is about 1 dollar. Assuming everyone played the smart way you would end up with about 45 dollars. NOPE!

I should had known there were going to be problems when it started. The experiment is suppose to last 2 hours. At the beginning of the 1st round you have to answer some basic math questions to show you understand how the experiment works. These were 4th grade level problems. And yet it took about 15 minutes for all 25 people to answer them before the experiment could begin. Then after the 1st round concluded we had to answer 10 more questions because they added two new types of rules. Another 20 minute wait. At the end of the experiment which had already run long by about 20 minutes (i.e. they accounted for how stupid people could be by making the experiment longer than necessary AND THE IDIOTS STILL TOOK TOO LONG) they asked us some more really easy math questions.

1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
2. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?


I am pretty sure the people that designed the experiment just copied/pasted these from the same website I just google'd it from.

I ended up earning a little less than 30 dollars. I spent that money on beer and cigarettes.

While I haven't done so yet due to a nagging cold, I am also planning on participating in a medical experiment. They take some blood, give you a vaccine for something, and then you just have to come back a few weeks later and give some more blood. It's worth 50 dollars to them which is better than what the Red Cross gives me for twice as much blood (who wants free ice cream over 50 dollars?)

Except for the money that I spend on alcohol the rest of these earnings are being saved so I can afford to travel. Just through my newspaper gig alone I've earned enough to cover the cost of airfare for my eastern European excursion. The best part is all of this is 100% better than any single day I have ever worked at H&M, Best Buy, Office Depot or Albertsons because I have not had to deal with one single fucking customer.

Monday, April 5, 2010

failing hard in italy

I've been meaning to write down what I did for the second part of my trip to Italy but I was sidetracked by my laziness. Going to school for one day a week for only 4 hours leaves you with a lot of free time. When you then have a week off from school due to Easter it becomes a challenge to even get out of bed. Going from having little responsibilities to absolutely none is tough to bounce back from. Tomorrow I have to go to class again and at some point I have to start writing my final papers. There is a good chance that I won't start for another month.

So back to my awesome journey of self-discovery while I backpacked through Italia (you see this is how the locals call it so I'm better than you for using it). After Missy and I left Bologna we decided to take a day trip through Florence. Normally this would be awesome because Florence is a not that big of a place so we can see all the awesome shit in one day. Except on Mondays, because the Uffize is closed that day and the botanical garden is also closed on the first Monday of every month. Guess which day we went?

While the two places we most wanted to go were closed, there were still a lot of other cool things to check out. The Basilica di Santa Croce was pretty rad and the weather was nice for the first half of the day. After awhile though the weather took a turn for the worse and walking around became much less enjoyable.

Towards the end of our stay there we sat outside the Basilica on the steps listening to music, waiting for the time to come to leave for the train station, when all the sudden a police van came out of nowhere. Off in the distance we heard shouting and chanting and decided to take a look. It turns out it was a protest (non-violent and therefore lame) about foreign workers rights. Not as cool as I would have hoped for and unfortunately nowhere close to being a riot. My dream to partake in a riot will have to wait for another day.

Once that settled down we decided to book it to Siena. We took an earlier train and hoped that we would be able to find Missy's friend without having her number or an address. While we were on the train one of the people sitting not too far from us received a ticket for something, probably not having a ticket. I couldn't understand what she was saying but she was pretty pissed about it and the meter maid had to get backup. Sadly for the second time in the day the riot I wished for was not meant to be.

Eventually we were able to meet up with Missy's friend and settle down. The next 2 1/2 days were spent mostly relaxing. Who knew that going on vacation could be so tiring? Thankfully Siena is not that big of a city if you stay inside the walls so I was able to do some exploring while Missy stayed in bed trying to overcome her cold.

That night, sadly, did not end well for me. I came to Denmark with the goal of not making an red shirted ass of myself. That lasted maybe a week at best. In Italy? Day 6. We decided to go to a club that night and before hand had a small pre-party at the apartment. This led to drinking games in which I re-learned a valuable lesson: do not play drinking games with half a bottle of Jamison.

I should have known it was a bad sign for me when my reflexes were so slow that a car slowly ran over my heel as we waited outside the entrance but I persevered for some odd, idiotic reason. Within what seemed like 5 minutes I had ruined someone's jacket with my weak stomach and left. Covered in my own filth and unable to locate anyone that I came with, I decided to leave and find my way back to the apartment. I had no idea where I was, no idea how I was going to get inside, and no way of knowing when anyone would come and let me in. I drunkenly stumbled until I found the Piazza del Campo and used that as my navigational point to orientate myself. Due to some sort of miracle I also was able to run into Theresa's roommate who was also heading home from the club.

I threw my clothes in the washing machine, cleaned up and passed out on the couch. So much for dignity and self-respect.

The rest of the trip in Siena was less eventful and less embarrassing save for my poor navigational abilities. I can find an apartment that I've only been to twice in the dark while drunk yet I can't find a giant park with a map and directions. Siena is a city that exists only to pinpoint all my failings as a person.

Rome was much better. At first I was worried because everything on the way to our hostel was dirty and covered in shitty graffiti but once we settled in and got out of the bad parts of the city it was great. The Colosseum was quite the spectacle. The best part might have been the guys standing around outside dressed up in crappy Halloween costumes to look like Roman soldiers. They stood around chain smoking and asking, nay, yelling at all the tourists to take a picture with them for money. I declined.


Once again my terrible luck came into play when the weather decided to piss all over my travels by raining. We made it back to the hostel and took it somewhat easy because we wanted to get up early and go to the Vatican before there was a super long line to get in.

Except for the part where I was molested and the Pope covered it up, everything about Vatican City was amazing. Also I lied, the molestation wasn't too bad either (low hanging fruit is my favorite). St. Peter's Basilica was easily the most impressive of the churches we went to. I have no idea how something like that could have been built without today's technology. I'm going to assume slave labor and human rights abuses made it a lot easier.

The Vatican Museum was overwhelming with regards to how much impressive art work is jammed in there. I could have spent an hour just looking at the ceilings of the first hallway and walked away awestruck. However since I'm not an art history major or a sentimental loser, that situation did not occur. Out of everything that we saw in there my favorite was easily the School of Athens. That painting has been in so many different textbooks that I've had to read that seeing it in person was kind of cool.


The Sistine Chapel on the other hand was a tad disappointing. It isn't a lot of fun craning your neck to look at the ceiling while the guards yell 'No photo!' 5 times a minute. Since I am the original bad ass though I went ahead and took really crappy photos all stealth like. They turned out horrible but that's besides the point.

To continue a familiar theme, it began to rain again. At this point Missy and I went our separate ways because she was getting sick of me. I can't say I blame her either. While she went off exploring one part of the city I did my own thing. We eventually met back up at the hostel, ate dinner and went around exploring some more with some people we met.

The next day the weather was perfect, the sun was shining, and I was on an airplane back to Copenhagen to meet up with my friend from back home. If you believe the saying that people make there own luck then I am the worst luck maker in the world. I couldn't fabricate a good time to save my life.