Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

In times gone by saying that you were involved in a “cottage industry” meant that you were doing something like making quilts at home or perhaps making cute little craft items. Essentially, working with your hands by and large.

These days a cottage industry is quite a different beast.

Yes, there are still many people around making those quilts and craft items but you’ll see them sold online these days. In fact, that aspect gives you more contact with the original maker of such items than most people would have had in the hay-day of the cottage industry. In the past, they’d have sold most of their items via buyers whereas now they can sell them to you directly.

However, these days there is a whole new class of cottage industry. It’s not uncommon to come across an ebay seller in the most unusual places. I’ve bought several items from a place based in the Shetland Islands myself which is about as far from “civilisation” as you can be. Likewise, there’s a number of places based in Point Roberts, the little bit of land forgoten about when the treaty definining the border between Canada and America was signed.

Similarly there are the likes of myself making something of a living from writing. There have, of course, been writers pottering away for a long time but the Internet has made that much more of an occupation open to everyone than it ever was in the past. After all, realistically I’d never have had a hope of getting 35,000 readers a week for my writing yet that’s the number I’ve had in the last week for this blog.

Some might say that these Internet based efforts aren’t a cottage industry. How could they be with so much technology? Yet, that craft item you bought also used technology, it’s just that the technology used to produce it was older.

Don’t know why, but today is turning out to be the best day for income from the blog ever and by a long way too.

If I’m quick enough, it looks like I might be able to double my previous record at a stroke.

Still, no doubt tomorrow will be pretty dry in comparison as indeed was the weekend.

In times gone by people met at work or on holiday or whatever but these days everyone is so busy with their life that they’ve very little time to allocate to the search for that perfect partner.

With so much of your life being online already it seems only natural to begin your search for “the one” online too. It’s easy enough to fit in the time to run up a profile for yourself even in the busiest of schedules and before you know it you could find that you have more offers than you know what to do with.

Years ago it was taken as read that only losers ran to dating agencies but with the hectic lifestyle that we all lead these days that image has long since gone out of the window. With the online dating sites chances are that you’ll find quite a selection of professional people looking for someone just like you. Moreover there are many people online who you’d just never come across by chance and yet one of those could well be your ideal match.

Quite important is the number of people signing up for the site. It’s probably not much use to sign up for a site with few people already there as it could take a very long time for it to build up a sensible membership and in the meantime nothing’s really happening for you. That also applies to many sites that concentrate on, say, America if you live in Europe or vice versa. That’s where a truly global site like Date.com comes in as it has quite a large membership in most countries therefore chances are you’ll have a good selection of people locally to you.

These sites are very much like real-life dating in that the more you put into them, the more you’ll get out of them. Whilst this might make the initial signing up something of a challenge, you’ll usually find that they work best when you write loads of stuff about yourself and complete all the tick-boxes after you’ve thought out just what the right answer is for you (which I find isn’t always quite so simple!). Then, of course, there’s that all-important photo. Get a good one taken if you can manage to as the photo is going to be what people will see first: nobody really reads through all that stuff that you wrote initially (although, if they’re serious, they will do in due course) but they will make a quick yes/no decision about you based on that photo. Yes, I know, that’s very superficial but it’s the reality.

Anyway, give it a go. You might be surprised at who you will find there!

As part of my pre-course preparation for the English Literature course, I’ve just finished A Doll’s House which was a whole lot easier going than I had expected it to be.

Next up on the list is The Color Purple which I’ve just started today and, so far, is quite an easy read.

The strange thing about these “English” literature books is that most of them aren’t actually written by English (or even British) people which does seem a little odd for an english literature course I think. Still, I suppose it reflects the fact that english is an international language so I guess you’d expect there to be a number of non-english writers in amongst any collection of english literature.

Although the French people themselves are very polite and welcoming, French companies are quite different and use all the anti-consumer laws that they have at their disposal in France even when they aren’t obliged to.

Take for example the car insurance industry. Everywhere else in the world it’s common practice for car owners to wait for their renewal premium to arrive then to shop around for cheaper insurance. In France, that’s illegal!

Yes, you read that correctly. It is actually illegal to shop around after your insurance renewal arrives because by that time you are already legally committed to paying it (regardless of the cost!). If you DO shop around, you’ll find that the previous insurance company will go as far as taking you to court to recover their money from you.

As most insurance companies are international businesses, its interesting to look at how differently some of them operate outside France. Even the French-owned companies seem to be able to provide customer service everywhere else except in France. Having said that, it’s perhaps instructive to observe that French-owned AXA doesn’t mention anything about the customer in its strategy “Attain leadership in every one of our markets through operational excellence.”; I’ll certainly attest to its operational excellence in operation in France as it was very quick in issuing the court summons to me when I had the temerity to attempt to cancel a policy because the price had doubled between me accepting it and them issuing the invoice.

Interestingly, the set of laws that permit them to do this run completely contrary to the equivalent European laws (which apply in France). The insurance companies know this, of course, and therefore if you are cancelling it’s useful to remind them that it will be European law that you’ll be using against them rather than their nice cozy anti-customer French law which tends to stop the court action rather quickly. They clearly can’t afford to lose such a case in court as it would open up competition in the insurance market in France rather more than they seem comfortable with.