night and day projects

Stomach ache

Sun, 05 May 2013 20:40:44 +0200

I woke into silence. It was still raining outside and my face was in a puddle of drool. My body was heavy and immobilized, sunken into the matress that was gripping it like concrete.

In my dreams, the driver of the rollercoaster-shuttle gave me his keys. He had an urgent matter to attend and had decided that I will drive the shuttle to its end destination. I asked him where I had to go. When he replied, his words were completely incomprehensive. I could hear him say it but didn’t understand. I kept asking him over and over and he was repeating the directions and I didn’t catch not even one word until I was shouting: “But tell me where I have to go!” Finally, he smiled and handed me the keys. “You will know when you get there.”

Now I was awake and I had been sleeping a lot lately so it made no sense to feel so exhausted. I was incredibly bored of this town and had absolutely no strength to change anything to make it more interesting. I knew that every attempt to run away was futile because in another city which I would arrive to - if I took my bike and just drove and drove until I reach a place where people are actually living life, not just exist in their repetitive modes - I would eventually start feeling homesick and get the picture in my head of how beautiful and perfect everything was at home and how much I hate this town that I am in and that I am stupid to have left my friends and my job and my family.

But I still had a terrible grip in my stomach, telling me that I have to leave. It has happened before but had been sleeping inside me for the past few years. Lately, I had been getting more and more annoyed again and wanted to go out and about, asking people: “But why don’t you leave? Aren’t you bored here? Don’t you know that better places than this exist? Wouldn’t you be freer someplace else?” And I know they would just shake their heads and say: “I am perfectly fine here,” which would frustrate me and fill me with envy.

I decided to give it a shot. I pulled my suitcase from behind the curtain, the big, red, long-distance one. I stuffed it as fast and as quietly as I
could. My heart was thumping in my throat and while all other thoughts were buzzing in my head, one prevalent sound like the beating of the drum kept repeating: Get out. Get out. Get out.

The whole mission was built around the fact that I wanted to be left alone. The thought of it made me incredibly scared, but at the same time I needed to strip myself of everything that I like and throw myself in the open sea, where I would have no choice but to swim and where all things I love would sink to the bottom. I needed to rip myself open so that everything learned and consumed would fly out of me, all the strings that attached me to this place would finally be broken and I would be so cleansed and infinitely free.

The problem with my problem was that this never happened overnight. It took time and the bonds never ripped but just faded away slowly and bitter pieces of past would still flow up to the surface of memory from time to time; there was no way to avoid it. But I decided this was fine too, since I have a masochistic nature after all.

I was riding the train, headed who-knows-where, analyzing now the stupidity, now the brilliance of my actions when a thought popped into my mind: Omg, I didn’t even have a goodbye party! I laughed a short and bitter laugh, thinking how many people in the world right now are having a goodbye party and how it did not matter not even one bit. It only made me sadder because endings are always sad and I did not want to think about my passing to another place as an ending but as a continuation of my journey until I settle down. Which I knew I never will.
I took the phone out of my bag, wrote a message “Sorry I left :(” and sent it to everyone on my contacts list.

Food-inspired Haiku

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:31:44 +0200

Party with hambis,
raw on the inside.
I ate politely.

We start kissing
and I grimace.
Garlic, eewww.

Gallery opening.
I grab a panini
and run through the door.

You don’t drink coffee?
Then what do you do
for fun?

Inhale.Inbox: ØExhale.

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:11:32 +0200

Inhale.
Inbox: Ø
Exhale.

A monologue

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 01:22:00 +0100

Wow, everything is so dead.

Am I ill?

What is this place?

Why can’t I see you?

My right shoe is soaked with water.

Coming here was not a good idea.

It’s never a good time for anything except for a change.

God, do I hate happy endings.

It’s easier to be sad than to be happy.

Sometimes I read the internet and wonder where this world is going.

I can’t handle all this porn anymore.

I suddenly got the strangest feeling that I will die soon.

Dinner

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 01:49:48 +0100

We went for dinner.
They sat a bit further away from me than from each other, as if they knew I had been feeling a bit under the weather.
As time passed and our conversation grew duller and duller,
as we were running out of topics to talk about,
a glass wall started appearing between me and them,
muffling their words and the sounds coming from around me.
My eyes wandered off, contemplating the surroundings,
while my own words grew more difficult to pronounce.
Speaking made me immensely tired.
I look at my phone to see the time, forgetting what it was the second I look away.
*unlock* *swipe* *swipe* *lock*
The voices from outside are now muted. Those sitting next to me are just opening and closing their mouth like fish. Clattering of glasses and plates is not heard anymore.
My own thoughts grow louder and louder, buzzing around my head like annoying flies. The pressure in my ears is the same as the time when I was collecting seashells at the summer colony and dived a bit too deep.
Behind the glass wall time passes differently and one minute seems an hour long.
*puff*
The wall shatters and my body soaks up the warmth of the place.
Ah, the food is here!

We should have a special type of ringtone that you can use when...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:42:19 +0100

We should have a special type of ringtone that you can use when you are really down and really miss someone.

A ringtone that rings:

PLEASE! TALK TO ME! I MISS YOU SO MUCH! PLEASE! TALK TO ME! I MISS YOU SO MUCH! PLEASE!

It would never stop ringing and the other person wouldn’t be able to turn it off until they pick up.
Because when you miss someone that much and they are on the other side of the world and you can’t run over or take the bus or drive the car through a blizzard for a few hours to go see them,
they have to talk to you RIGHT AWAY
and nothing else helps.

My words are catapulted into the universe, syllables and sounds...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:52:47 +0100

My words are catapulted into the universe, syllables and sounds and all.
Endless scrolling, endless tabs, endless windows, millions of them…
So much to read, so much to process.
We are weary.
What does your brilliant young mind tell you?
Shut off, shut off, shut off.

They used to go on the road and travel.
This is now distorted. These stories of the past.
No, the past itself. The one I wasn’t in.

This is now. Fear of the unknown is the most elementary human feeling.
The only recognition I give is to collective consciousness.
All our minds are one. There’s nothing wrong with it.
Just relax.

An excerpt

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 20:45:00 +0100

Days go by as fast as the snap of a finger.
Everything is falling apart.
I feel like I’m on a train that is speeding through second-long nights and days, passing faces that are smudged spots, passing distorted bodies.
I am sinking into the seat, thinking that we will crash any minute.
Not even being afraid, just extremely nauseated, waiting for it to happen, feeling apathetic and indifferent, knowing that like all things, this too must come to an end.
All around me is this vast silence. Not the silence that falls on the forest at dusk. The over saturated silence that comes after a strong
explosion. And blinding light is breaking in through the windows, making everything as bright and sterile as an Apple store.

Haiku about solitude

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:42:00 +0100

in my “boys” folder
your photo is right next to
alexander skarsgård’s

the floor is sticky
someone was eating tangerines
probably me

6 a.m.everyone had leftthe smoke machine was still workingday afterin the corner of the roommy...

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 00:49:57 +0100

6 a.m.
everyone had left
the smoke machine was still working

day after
in the corner of the room
my clothes still smell like cigarettes

the moon was full
I took a knife
to scrape the glass out of my shoe

A series of haiku that starts and ends with the same word

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 19:36:17 +0100

Morning call.
I bury my face
in a stack of pillows.

Wanting content that doesn’t move
I buy newspaper.
It stays on my desk for weeks, unread.

That day I drank coffee
and favorited two tweets.
It was a good morning.

Half awake, with the curtains still down.

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 08:47:27 +0100

Half awake, with the curtains still down.

A poem

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 00:36:39 +0100

Beautiful things are always sad.

We became so different but I still love you.

Something strange will happen soon.

Please forgive the tweets I wrote out of drunkenness.

Please talk to me, I miss you so much.

My fringe does not stay how I want it to stay for the second day in a row.

Yell at fashion catalogs.

Matrix of all the bullshit posted by my friends.

What’s it like to live in a town that dies when it rains?

Why was I born here? Here of all places?

You’ll never live up to your parents expectations. YOU WILL NEVER BE SINCERELY HAPPY!

Real life becomes unnecessary, hard, obsolete.

I can read everything in your eyes.

My sincere vomits to you.

After I die, my family will get the link to my last.fm profile. So that they will finally really get to know me.

Happy not going so lucky

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 23:17:21 +0200

penile numbness
is not a laughing matter
ha ha

student coupon food
you are cheap
but gross

at the beach
she sat on my towel
what the fuck, lady

Mis amigos collected a number of very interesting works in a...

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:42:19 +0200

Mis amigos collected a number of very interesting works in a zine, ranging from illustrations to short stories on the topic “Me, Myself and I”.
This is how I convinced them to choose my Haiku series for their zine:

They are all connected to Me, Myself and I, emphasizing the painful averageness in an individual’s life and subjectivity of truth in our day-to-day. Being so gravely casual, they embed the spirit of our time which is saturated with useless information and memes, as well as they express cynical mockery to trivial things.

If you think you can handle so much awesomeness, you can get the zine here.

Longer haiku that is not so much haiku anymore and has punctuation marks sadface

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 00:11:00 +0200

took a shower
laptop ran out of battery.
I left it like that for the rest of the evening.

sitting on a 400€ chair at the office
back hurts no more.
they should have given me that money.

I can’t have coffee with him.
my first name
doesn’t fit his last.

Edit: copyright for the third one goes to Rok, besides everyone who has ever been in love as a child. Also, Rok, I presumed that we chat under CC BY-NC-SA license?

Momentary dwellings (Haiku)

Thu, 31 May 2012 01:03:12 +0200

flamingos on my bed
kind of queer
ikea sheets

crusty muffins
growing happily in the oven
I will nom soon

art fair next week
still time to apply
with porn

Huge, valuable things, plunging into darkness.

Mon, 28 May 2012 22:14:15 +0200

Huge, valuable things, plunging into darkness.

How my internship got screwed up by Google

Mon, 07 May 2012 21:33:00 +0200

A while ago, my mostly-virtual-friend asked me to blog about my internship. Why this would be interesting for anyone else besides me is because of what happened to the company while I was working there. In this blog post, I’ll explain what happened and maybe make someone realise how much is at stake when an online business is dependent on big players on the internetz. It could also help someone who is searching for or starting an internship through Erasmus programme to get a bigger picture on what he or she is getting herself into.

In my final year of studies I decided to do an Erasmus internship in another country for which I would get a stipend from my university. I decided for it mostly because I was bored of the system of student jobs in Slovenia, which is ran by student services and is very successful in diminishing young graduates’ opportunities of finding a regular job. Also, it is not a system that would allow students to get a great deal of experience in a short amount of time, which I believe is one of the goals of an internship in the first place.

Since I didn’t want to work somewhere where I will feel useless or be just a small piece of the puzzle, I decided to apply for a job in a small start-up company in the suburbs of Barcelona (for Erasmus, a student has to find an internship in a EU country by him/herself). The task description seemed interesting enough and I fitted the profile (my studies were social informatics and after that, strategic market communication). A good thing was that they also offered payment for interns, around 500€/month, plus I would get the stipend from University of Ljubljana, 400€/month for a minimum of three and maximum of four months. This amount is given regardless if your internship lasts longer than four months or if you go to Sweden or Czech Republic - implying the GDP difference and cost of living.

I started working in Barcelona in January this year. Let’s call this start-up company Pepe’s Discounts. We were four people working there, my two superiors – who were also the founders – one programmer and me. They had a small office where I worked on my laptop. Since it was a start-up company, they depended greatly on funding from investors, but they did make some money with their business model too.

So what does Pepe’s Discounts do? It’s an online service that collects discounts from online shops around the world. For example, if you search for »Nike shoes«, it will give you results for shops that deliver to your country, including the shops that have discounts on Nike. When I started working there, one was able to choose between a custom made webpage for 6 different countries: UK, US, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and Spain. Spain was doing best; there was a lot of traffic coming from Spain since Pepe’s Discounts had a lot of popular Spainsh shops in their base. The model was Cost Per Action, so whenever someone bought something at an online store, going through Pepe’s Discounts first to look for a discount code or an offer, Pepe would get a commission from that purchase.

There was also Pepe’s blog, Pepe’s Facebook page, a Twitter and Pinterest account among others, and managing them was my task. I also wrote contents for landing pages which were special subpages with offers related to different seasons or popular items (for example, I wrote a product page for Game of Thrones in Spanish, like where to find GoT posters with a discount and crap like that). This was fun, since a lot of research through Google Insights and following Google Analytics was involved (did I mention I like research? I like statistics too). This was done in order to figure out what are the trends in online shopping world and which are interesting searches on products. Finding that out, I wrote contents for landing pages, blog posts or posted on Facebook, and used specific keywords for search engine optimization.

You can imagine that most Pepe’s Discounts’ traffic was coming from Google. They were doing well in Spain, concerning page ranking. For example, there was a point when »Hunter discount Spain« search result in Google would give you Pepe’s Discounts website as the first result. Hunter is a famous brand for boots, so yes, this was a good thing.

Everything was going well, we had a Facebook prize game to boost the fan base, we planned other social media strategies for Easter sales, already got funding for that, and then something bad started to happen. The site »got banned« by Google (my boss used the word ban, but I think “punishment” would be more suitable). First, Pepe’s Discounts got punished in search results in Sweden, US and UK and later in Germany and Spain. All this in the time span of one month (or perhaps a bit more). This punishment meant much lower page ranking in search results and consequently, less traffic and less money. It was a blow since it was so unexpected, especially when it came to Spain which had the most traffic, and there was little that could be done about it at that point.

One of the reasons why this punishment happened is because of website’s content. Each shop had a shop description, but since there were so many shops from all around the world, there was an automatically generated description for most shops on the website. Simplifying, there was one common description for all shops in Clothing & Accessories category, which is bad for page ranking since it’s not custom made content. There was also a programme that searched for and published discounts from all those shops, most of it hasn’t been done manually. And more importantly, content for different countries that weren’t one of the six mentioned before – content seen from Slovenia or from Burkina Faso – was exactly the same. I was not in the meeting with SEO people so I am not sure if there were some other things contributing to this Google ban as well, but it’s just to give an idea what were the main reasons for a lower position in Google search result.

As a consequence, traffic decreased, in one month Pepe’s Discounts went from having an average of 8000 visitors per day to having 80 per day. No traffic also meant no money from investors. It was a dilemma for my superiors if they should even continue or close down, but finally they decided to try and get back into place as far as page ranking is concerned. That meant making a lot of changes, like keeping only three countries for custom made sites, writing a lot of store descriptions manually (done by freelancers and me), uploading discounts manually and a lot of programming work. In order to make their business survive, they cut down all unnecessary costs, which included my internship payment, cancelling the rent contract for the office and other changes. The only thing left to do was to resubmit the site, losing all links made by link building and to start over from the beginning. They resubmitted the site on May 2nd 2012.

Finally, I stayed in Barcelona, working for them for four months because the contract I had signed with my university was binding me to do so (or else I would have to give the stipend back). I also stayed because I wanted to see what will happen to the company and because I liked what I was doing. Even though I got paid less than half of what I was »promised«, it was a valuable experience and, of course, a valuable lesson.

First thing I learned is that Erasmus internship programme is very rigid and lacking a safety net in terms of guaranteeing that the company is stable or that they actually stick to what they offer. But since a student has to find a company by himself, it’s his own fault if he chooses a crappy company. How convenient. A student has absolutely no guarantee if the company is going to pay him/her or not, and is on the other hand bound to work for this particular company for the time period assigned, unless he wants to return the stipend to the university. As far as this programme is concerned, I can only advise students to be careful and determined when it comes to agreements on working conditions, but not in any way to be discouraged to take advantage of this opportunity. Of course changes should be made in conditions set up by the university as well: for example, allowing students to change companies during their internship period, which is not allowed at the moment.

Second, an important lesson learnt was how dependent all these online businesses - start-ups or not - are on Google. It has to be really tricky to have predispositions for coming up on the first page of search results and complying with these secret rules Google has for putting your website on the map. And once Google decides that your website doesn’t fit the criteria, well, there’s not much you can do. Is it even possible to have an online business and not to be dependent on Google?

That has also made me wonder about how much of this reality one calls Internet is actually constructed by Google itself. What do I have the power to find and what is »served« to me? Do I want to have my own custom search results, consisting of Google+ your world, things my friends like appearing on top of the list and other »social searches«? I think the answer is no. This realization has made me more careful about what I like and what I post and - scary but true - who my online friends are. I can proudly say that I am not friends with any brand on Facebook and I intend to keep it that way. Just to keep my search results less spammy.

All in all, it was a great experience. I am still a young girl and know nothing in the ways of SEO, but at least I started to discover what is under the surface. It’s becoming more visible how things are functioning and if I haven’t had this internship a lot threats and weaknesses of online business world - if I can call it like that - would remain hidden.

Google Analytics Now Shows You Who’s Linking To You (seroundtable.com)
Finally learned how to say ‘I don’t speak Dutch’ in Dutch. IRONY!! (glasgowuniversityabroad1112.wordpress.com)
My Placement at Drimlike (publishingdegree.co.uk)

a farewell train of thought

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:55:39 +0200

Another year, another city, another place to leave behind, another bed I slept in, another street that feels my street, another favorite place to run, people met, friends made, one night stands that became more than that, so many new places discovered, so many bars, great concerts, feelings of loneliness from time to time only to be overwhelmed again by the city and its people every time I step outside, many sleepless nights with parties until 8am, going to the beach by bike, dirty streets and shady people in Raval, touristy Ramblas and souvenir shops I want to avoid, parks with trees and concrete and those wooden benches you have everywhere, the smell of weed on every corner, Catalunyan nationalism, gay couples holding hands, dirty metro and the train to work through green national park, every time I set foot on the street, the smell, this special smell, a mixture of smog and trash and port and sand and people so open and so easy to talk to, just use more body language, they will always understand, struggles with Spanish and not understanding a word of Catalan, art on every corner, so much art, Barcelona will always stay here for me, gritty and friendly, Barcelona, me encanta.