Thursday, August 24, 2006

No, not this Berlin















This one!















Bears!













My old roommate Leah works at a PR firm in Chicago, and passed along this gig she found out through the grapevine. A Korean PR firm needed bloggers to cover the IFA in Berlin, and she urged me to apply. I sent in some materials last minute. Entries from a LiveJournal which I don't really use (I may migrate that stuff over to blogger), and some memo I wrote for a tech writing class. A few days later, Ilda (the Korean dude who I thought was a woman at first) asked if I could be a part of it.

His english wasn't great. It wasn't the worst I've heard from working at Motorola, but it was in the "all your base are belong to us" camp. I was sketched out by it since all I had was this guy's Hotmail account and didn't even know who he worked for. Keep in mind, I had just started this temp gig at Jenner & Block, and was pretty hesitant to leave that gig because it took me all summer to get one and I'd have to give it up for this trip: That's right, I was seriously considering not doing this... for a temp gig. Good thing I have friends to tell me when I'm being stoopid.

I talked to Leah who made it plain what my decision should be, and assured me I wouldn't be sold into the sex slave trade. Seriously, I wasn't the only one of her friends who questioned this guy.

So I'm writing a blog for Samsung to be shown on a part of their site specifically made for exhibitions. It's actually a pretty sweet lookin' site. I don't have the URL yet, I'm not even sure it's even up to tell you the truth, Seoul is 14 hours ahead and there are big gaps in communication. The blog itself is pretty tricky, because there's clearly a bias, and I'm not sure blogging is a prolific in Asia or Europe as it is here, because the thing is very very structured. I have a certain number of posts to make on certain topics, and the length they want is really long. Maybe it's their first time running a blog. So I apoligize if it's super super forced, because I'm rambling on paragraph after paragraph about how great some TV is. It's pretty insane.

On the flip side, I'm given a venue to express my inner Enginerd, who I've slowly let mingle with the outside world since leaving Motorola. It's ok to like computers... it's ok to have three computers... it's ok. Hey, I got a sweet new MacBook!

Here is a picture of me on my sweet new MacBook:
















I'm very happy with it, and I'll be happier when I comes home safely from Euroville. It's super slow though, even running something simple like NeoOffice (a ripoff of OpenOffice (a ripoff of MS Office (a ripoff))). Anything else and the thing bogs down. So I need another stick of RAM, but overall the thing is solid.

Ok, back to Doichtenland. I leave this Monday the 28 and I'll be there for about ten days checking out the IFA, which is big consumer electronics fair. Sort of like a car show, but for gadgets. Then I'm rolling over to Amsterdam for two days to visit Brian Jack and Boom Chicago. Then I'm a-flyin' home.

I bought a German Phrasebook today, here is today's German Phrase:

Do you mind if I open/close the window?
Dar ich das Fenster öffnen/schließen?

Isn't that some crazy shit? Those words are gonna come out of my mouth, people!

2 comments:

Leah in Chicago said...

The Shalvster? The SHALVSTER?

It kind of makes you sound like you should be Scott Baio's buddy.

Or a guy going to Berlin to blog in a highly geeky way.

Congrats!

Natasha said...

I got a new macbook too!!! I lurve it. The photobooth is dangerous.