Riina kogemised

eh, I was reading digg.com this morning, just in the need for some new motivating, inspiring ideas from life itself. Well, it was quite interesting. Found couple of links from each page that I looked into further and altogether about 7-8 pages. Anywho, just some moments ago, several hours later, I decided to take a look at my del.icio.us account and while being at it, thought of checking out the most popular links as well. And guess what? The first page that opened up with the links – well, many of the links there, I had already visited (you know how they are of different colour when visited) and then some others I recognised from the titles that I already saw those earlier. Well, I guess with some of the most popular sites this can easily happen. The only thing being that if I should like to use both of them, how could I save my own time and see the things I’m really interested in, rather than seeing same things at different sites?

The good thing here is that I actually make it to read only del.icio.us every once in a while. Digg.com is the thing I might check out maybe once in 3-4 months. Just haven’t found that much interesting stuff there yet, I guess ;)

boy, I’m in the roll today :D Well, just with one single breath I’ll write shortly about some more stuff that’s been happening lately. First of all, I have no idea why I’m blogging in English today. I had no intention to, but somehow I feel that today it’s easier to blog in English ;)

Anyways, since last Saturday I’ve been conducting interviews with the newies of our local. That has been quite tough as the interviews don’t usually start with the person walking in the room. It starts much earlier with working out the process, how they will be done, what’s the purpose, goals, etc. Which questions to ask so that it would be most effective for us and for them. Whew, for this year, it has been all worked out and the interviews done.

It was really awesome to see all those motivated newies. I mean, they are so great and smart and ready move the world. I love to see that kind of people around me and I would be so proud to have them work with me until June. Together we can achieve so much more.

But then the interviews are really stressful as well. I didn’t really understand it until I got home afterwards. I felt empty – almost like squeezed lemon, nothing left to say or do. However, coming home and seeing that O is still here, smiling, talking, trying to get on with his things – this is the unimaginable support that everyone should have. I know at times I find the AIESEC stuff to be so cool, so interesting, that I forget myself, but in the end, it’s myself whom I’m trying to educate here. It’s the kind of learning that I can get nowhere else. Sometimes I feel like sharing this with the world, but mostly I just think to myself that it is so cool what I do. Maybe I should just let others know of what I’m up to a bit more. That should ease my path, shouldn’t it?

Now it’s time to pack some stuff, cause O really hates the sound of packing. So I must be quick to get everything done before he gets here from school :P And if I’m lucky, I’ll be in Viljandi by the end of today ;)

Take care and enjoy the weekend!!!

today has been sort of day for some new stuff. First I tried that wordpress thingy out, then I decided to upgrade to FireFox 2.0

The funny thing is, that I always think that I don’t really need all those fancy-schmancy stuff in my computer, but I still get it. Like it was with IE7. I still don’t like it at all, but I use it every once in a while. Just because I need it and I’m not so motivated to set up the Firefox to do the things I use IE 7 for. I mean, it’s really not that hard to install ID card software so it would work with FF, but I haven’t done it.

Also, another funny thing happened – I had some trouble with upgrading my Opera. Well, guess what? :D Now I don’t have Opera at all in my computer. I mean, I still like it the best, but I feel sick and tired that I have so much trouble with all the backups all the time. That’s just not my thing. Although, it’s more likely the case of what we, Estonians, call “Kättevõtmise asi”.

Anyways, what really got me thinking about this entry was that just like it was with WP that I really wanted to get some plugins and see how it’ll work out. The very first thing I did for the FF was to find some plugins. The worst thing being that I hate this – I hate getting everything worked out so great, all plugins work like clockwork, everything the way I like it. And then all of a sudden there’s this upgrade and everything’s gone. So this time I’ll try to keep myself a bit more back from making my copy of FF one of the kind made specifically for me. I’ll just backup my bookmarks every once in a while.

Let’s see where that takes me :P

within the past few hours i have been amusing myself with installing Wordpress. It’s just another blog engine that allows me to post to my blog real easy and also lets me to have my whole website right there. No extra fuss about the “me” and “school” pages.

However, few things are still what bother me greatly. The main thing being that there are no permalinks like there are in MT. It doesn’t know how to generate them on the run and that really disturbs me. I tried several options available out there, but still – no luck. I mean, even blogger.com knows how to make pretty links and now such trouble with Wordpress.

Anyways, I’ll see how I feel about migrating my site to WP. If I feel like it in some time. I remember the migration from blogger.com to MT – that was pretty funny too ;) But I must say, the installation of WP has been done so easy for the user that I was really amazed. I mean, it did take me just about 5 mins as they promised in the WP site. Yeah, I know what you mean – how come it’s been taking me few hours to get it to run the way i’d like it? Well, i have never liked the things the easy way. I want them to be MY way. Meaning that I want to check it out, see how it fits my worldview, add some extra stuff, some plugins, see how that works out. Then I will leave it some time to settle and after some time, when I’m ready, i’ll find it again and deal with it. Then I will either accept it for good or just throw it away just like some garbage.

Tough life, huh?

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ‘97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Read more

Have you ever been to a 2-day seminar?
Have you ever organised a 2-day seminar?
Have you ever facilitated a 2-day training seminar?

Well, guess what? :D I have done it all now ;) And I managed to get all this only from one seminar – AIESEC Tallinn training seminar.

It’s really cool how the preparation of a seminar will form into a real thing. In the beginning, there’s really nothing – just some motivated people with a purpose. Then one of them will start guiding the formation of seminar agenda. Then some more people join in and the agenda really starts to take form. Writing down some big goals, some smaller goals, then finding out how to reach them – all in the hands of few.

And this is not even all – after making sure that all different agenda points make sense and they do help us towards the goals, the session preparation starts. Everyone in the team making their own session, but still keeping in mind that it must make overall sense to the audience. It’s a tough task, but not impossible to manage.

When the preparation is finished, the only thing left to do is to deliver it to the people who are eager to listen to what you have to say. The feeling is awesome when you manage to get people talking, sharing their ideas, understanding what must be reached with the session. Even if you’ve had the worst headache since last night, you manage to pull yourself together, smile at people (and run out of the room quietly and fast if bathroom is needed) and show the best side of you to everyone. These are the moments that are so worth all the trouble and time spent.

And whew, after finding some of your own “Ahhaa” moments, some headache medicine and some more preparation, dancing until wee hours of the morning, still be able to deliver the sessions next day with the best emotions possible – it is just unbelievable experience. It makes it really worth all difficulties that were seen before.

Ofcourse the best thing is yet to come. It’s one thing to prepare the seminar, another thing to deliver your sessions, but a whole different issue when you get back home and start to think about what REALLY happened there. What did I LEARN during all that time since first meeting until the participants went off by bus. I mean, really, just unbelievable experience and feelings!

To tell you the truth, it’s not that easy to put all that emotion into few paragraphs of text. If you wish to know more, you just have to find me in person and let me talk. But I must warn you, I can go on and on and on about this and still tell you the greatest things from my perspective. I’m already waiting for my next challenges ;)

Täna sai ametlikult üks aeg läbi. Nimelt logisin ennast ühele oma meilikontole ja oma suureks üllatuseks leidsin, et pean konto uuesti aktiveerima, sest ma pole viimase 30 päeva jooksul sinna sisse loginud. See oli e-mail mida kasutasin usinasti aasta tagasi suvel oma Kölni IW sõpradega suhtluseks ja sinna olid ka kõik meilid talletatud. Kahjuks või õnneks pole neist enam aga ühtegi järel. Ja ongi parem, sest mis silmist, see südamest ja mida kirjas kuskil pole, seda võib-olla polegi olnud, kes teab.

well, only one week left here since today. 20 more hours and my job here is done. I feel absolutely excellent about this all, about being here, about quitting. It’s time to move on towards the biggest goal of this schoolyear – graduating in June! I have learned so much in this company, it has given me a lot to think about, I’ve had chances to grow, to develop myself and others – just awesome.

I’ve always sort of feared starting to work for some specific company within my field. I was afraid that I will really like it and I would rather commit to the work than school. Well, there you have it, so it happens that I started with this really weird company with one of the worst supervisors ever and now it ended up being really cool team with very patient, understanding, flexible, knowledgeable and awesome team leader who can really make things happen and supports growth of team members. I really didn’t like it here at first, I especially hated those Fridays when the worst e-mails came and I felt like shit when going home. Now it’s all the other way around – the busiest day is usually Wednesday, which is also the first day of my work week, then after lunch quickly to school, then back to work again. Thursdays are pretty much the same and Fridays – well, they are chill days. Not so many e-mails, time to think about them, time to mind my own things too and prepare for the coming week. Well, it’s all pretty cool now.

Only about a week later…

Yesterday was my last day. Finally. At one point I felt like it’s not coming. At another time it seemed to come much too quickly, meaning that I felt like I had so much more to contribute and tell the others in the office. But now it’s all over and I can move on. Concentrate on my studies and so on.

Still, there are so many things I’ll miss. Mostly the crowd. It was just soooo cool ;) I loved complaining about traffic in the morning and comparing who had the worst experience that morning and where the coolest traffic jams were :D I guess nobody has topped Kadri’s (our teamleader) morning last week when she basically came to work 1 hour 5 mins when usually it takes about 15 mins to get from one end of city centre to the other end of city centre. I think my worst was about 45-50 mins, don’t remember what was the reason though.

I will also miss communicating with so many people every day. I mean, I do have that communication in AIESEC as well, but not so much. There’s no stability in AIESEC life, each day is different. I will also miss the routine of getting up at 6.45 to get to work by 8. I mean, I could wake up now as well, but it’s not the same. I don’t have cool people waiting for me at 8 in a nice office with much light, big computer screens and sun peaking through the window in the afternoons.

I guess in the end they must’ve been happy that someone left. Not so sure if they wanted me to be the one though. Cause lately it’s been pretty boring during the last days of the week in the sense that there’s no work and we just wait and sit there and “wait for work”. It’s still nice they let me go so easily. Each day since I spoke with Kadri about leaving, every time I had to talk about it at work, I felt tears in my throat. Ahh, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

I will let bygones be bygones and look happily to the future. I think I’m not so finished with THAT company yet ;) But we’ll see it soon. Perhaps even sooner that any of you might expect :D (not before March though ;)

Take care you all, I’ll miss you greatly and I hope to meet every one of you again one day!

First conference of the year ahead for everyone who needs some starting up. I wasn’t actually thinking about it long, I guess I always knew I’m going there. The last one was in May, in Pärnu. This one, however, near Tartu. Ohh, it was pretty cool how we planned the transportation and stuff. I already knew I don’t want to drive, so I managed to make a deal with Siim, our president. As usual, I had splitting headache the first day, luckily by the end of the second day it was all gone.

What I like most about these gatherings is that all those people are so much fun. They are so outgoing, ready to move the world and always talk about different interesting things. I really enjoy that. Later on I’ll try to have some highlights of the whole event uploaded as well as it was pretty cool, especially the parties.

But anyways, it was a nice ending for the summer period, looking over the things accomplished so far and pimping our plans for the upcoming year.

Ma ei saa aru, mis toimub. Või noh, tglt saan ka natuke. Ma olen ennast sidunud millegi suure ja põneva, väljakutsuva ja inspireeriva, laheda ja õpetlikuga. Neid omadussõnu võib siia ritta lükkida küll ja veel ning ikkagi poleks seda piisavalt, et edasi anda kogu seda emotsiooni, mis mind iga päev valdab.

Selleks, et viimaste aegade toimetused paremini kirja saaks, tuleb nad siiski eraldi postitustena teha. Ma ei usu, et keegi vabatahtlikult ühe korraga loeks läbi 3 lehekülge pika jutu, mis räägib kõigest korraga ja segamini ;)

Muidugi siinkohal on oht, et ma alustan küll suure hurraaga, aga sellest ei pruugi palju välja tulla, sest asi jääb pooleli, aga annan endast parima :D