Cover letters and servility

A friend of mine used to proofread all my cover letters. Gradually he started replacing words and phrases and eventually he started completely remodeling my cover letters to entirely fit his writing style. I'm not going to lie and I'll admit I might've induced that behavior by not wanting to deal with my cover letters but that's not the point. The point is - after I while I realized that his letters sound servile. Behind the pompous phrases and complicated sentences was hiding a style revealing insecurity. He was kissing the ass of my potential employers in each cover letter.

Then I thought - if someone *does* ask me for an interview, it'll be someone who likes that cover letter. That means I'll eventually end up working for someone who *likes* to have their ass kissed, and this is the last kind of employer I'd ever want to work for.

So, bottom line, I believe that writing *your* cover letters in *your* style is the best thing you can do for your long-run professional well being. Let your cover letter portrait true confidence and not artificially inflated one. Whoever likes you for who you are is the boss you would most like to work for.

More on how useless cover letters really are - another time.

...they LOVE to travel...

We all know those people who boast with "I LOVE to travel!" and beat themselves in the chest for how worldly and well-traveled and blah blah blah they are. Well, I think that phrase is flawed. Here is the thing:

I HATE to travel.

I LOVE to spend time in new places and explore new places. But I don't like spending long chunks of time on a plane or a bus or in a car getting there. Trains are bearable to an extent but that's about it.

After all, if you spend 20 hours getting to Prague and you spend half an hour there before your next flight, you can't really say you've been to the Czech Republic, or even to Prague for that matter, can you?

Memories

I've been discovering my hometown the way I've been discovering a lot of new cities in the past seven years. Except that this is familiar but forgotten. Some things are new but most things carry forgotten memories and unlock buried moments. You can still see the occasional red Opel Vectra on the streets. I sat next to someone I loved ten years ago in one of those cars. I sat on the passenger’s seat and ate tangerines. Later I waited for him to go pee outside, where he drew bunnies in the snow with his pee. Another time I watched him drive off in his car as he waved at me in his rearview mirror. When these memories caught up with me today, I was sitting in a warm comfortable bus, looking out the window at the old and new buildings, the cars passing by, some of them red. Buses were rarely warm and comfortable ten years ago. Then I reached for my cell phone in my pocket and decided to see if I still remember his phone number. I did. I typed it in; if I had just hit the green button I could be speaking to him in a few seconds. I smiled a sad smile, then deleted it.

Maybe a part of me did secretly hold some kind of romantic hope for something undefined but beautiful. But then I imagined how we would get bored of each other and grow apart, after years, no, decades of eventful adventures, desperate lies and the comfortable silence of memories and longing.

I shouldn't go there. Not on my computer, not on my phone, not on my mind.

An awesome Banitza (fillo dough and feta cheese pastry) recipe

And here is a traditional Bulgarian meal - banitza. Bulgarians make this for Christmas, for New Year's, and for any other occasion and mostly without occasion. It's the BEST! So, you're gonna need:

- a pack of fillo (also spelled phyllo, phillo, and God knows what other ways) dough
- 1 cup feta cheese (less or more is fine)
- 5 eggs
- 1 stick butter (more is fine)
- 1/2 cup yogurt (it can work without it)
- salt

Grease a baking dish, about 14 X 12 inches or larger. Mix together in a separate bowl 4 of the eggs, the feta cheese, the yogurt and salt to taste. Melt the butter. Spread a sheet of fillo in the baking dish, sprinkle with butter, put one more sheet, sprinkle with butter, and so on until you spread half of the sheets. Pour in the mixture from the bowl and spread it evenly. Continue spreading the sheets of fillo with butter in between until they're over. Cut loosely into pieces about 5 X 5 inches each. If you have any butter left, pour it in the cracks and around the edges. Remove the white from 1 egg and coat the whole surface with the yolk. At this point your oven should be preheated to 375F (figure out on your own when to turn it on). Put it in and bake for 20 to 40 min (this depends on your oven) or until the banitza is golden brown and smells oh so deliciously you just can't take it anymore!


You can have it with the drink called ayryan which is simply 2 parts yogurt with 1 part water stirred well.

Bon appetit!

Blogging, knitting and selling computers

Yesterday Mom and I were talking about Dad and his mom (my grandma) who died long ago. Mom resentfully noted:

"Your grandma used to knit three pieces a year and she called that having a job, and your dad sold five computers a year and he called that having a job."

That comment made me shrink when I thought about this blog I just started. I felt discouraged on the precipice of my third post. Neither Dad nor Grandma were obviously too successful in their self-acquired businesses. Both of them are/were hypochondriacs who stayed home for the better part of their days. I just imagined what the continuation of Mom's line would be five years down the road:

"...and you write one paragraph once every few days, on some website that nobody reads, and you call that having a job."

The thing is that my Mom is the most amazing person in the world. If I had the power to make her a saint, I would. But she wouldn't understand blogging. She is a hard worker and a highly respected professional in her field and I feel like a loser staying home with Dad these days while I'm supposedly looking for a job. Which is one of the reasons I should get a real job with a steady paycheck even if that makes me a corporate slave.

Cabbage doesn't have to be boring

Cabbage is the cheapest "leafy green" on the North American market. While lettuce and spinach vary between $2 and $5, $1 if they're on sale in the poor end of your city, cabbage always has its spot reserved in the end of the grocery isle with a neglectable price tag of 40 cents.

For 4 people:

- 1/2 cabbage
- 2 medium carrots
- 2 roma tomatoes
- salt
- balsamic vinegar
- olive oil

Obviously, cut the cabbage finely. Grate the carrots. Cut the tomatoes in medium pieces. Add salt to taste, sprinkle with balsamic vinegar, and pour a thin stream of olive oil in a spiral over the cut vegetables. Mix well. It's good with white wine. If you're a lover of the stronger alcoholic taste, have it with grape brandy.

Okay, I don't like making this on my own, but when my Mom makes it it's the best!

Parkinson's Disease and Exercise

Dad was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease - something that, if I think about in hindsight - has been there for almost 5 years. I compared pictures from the summer of 2004 and the spring of 2005, and I can see the difference. He's a healthy middle aged man with a tall standing posture and head held high in 2004. In 2005 there are the first signs of a hunch, holding his hands a little awkwardly in front of his abdomen, and his facial expression a little more goggley than the year before. The transition between being healthy and being sick must've happened that winter - 2004/2005 but nobody noticed, labeling his signs and behavior generally as "getting older". Today, in the winter of 2009, my Dad is an old man at the age of 60. I've been reading a lot of articles about PD and this one strikes me as one that everyone can benefit from. It explains how the regular practicing of sports slows down the process of the disease and can even prevent it before the disease picks up speed. It is yet another proof how important movement and regular exercise is. Of course my dad hasn't exercised much (if at all) throughout his life so I embraced this research thinking "This is it! This is it!" Of course this is not the only "it"; there are many other factors, about which I'll write some other time, but regardless, now when someone tells me "I haven't exercised in 40 years and I feel the same" I'd tell them to take a good and honest look at themselves, and then decide whether the above statement is a sincere reason to brag.