I finally have a few minutes to sit down and write some posts for this site. I’m hoping regular readers will forgive the lack of text-heavy posts recently, but now we are mostly settled into life in Clydach. In around nine days’ time, there is likely to be another temporary blip in output levels. Tweets will continue where possible, but this family will be very busy around then, so please don’t be insulted if I take a while once again to reply to IMs/e-mails. See facebook for a visual clue as to what I’m skirting around right now.
Anyway, I’ve some interesting articles bookmarked about what is happening in Astana right now, so today or tomorrow I’ll start drafting some posts on that. For now, I have been thinking about how to try and earn more money when back in Kazakhstan. I could take on more pupils, as there are never enough English native speakers in Astana with the time to teach. This however obviously means being away from Anna & Irina more often. The pay isn’t bad (especially compared to some other jobs), but this one definitely requires a careful balancing act.
Although I’m fairly certain I can predict what Irina’s reaction to the idea would be, I do sometimes wonder about schemes that involve information analysis, investing (or gambling) and then waiting to see if your predictions came right. Something like Fantasy Football but with real money to be made (or lost obviously). People who understand sports well dabble with spread betting, but I’m not too hot on following teams.
As with sports, Financial Spread Betting Online doesn’t reward a gambler/investor for simply choosing a binary result (a team wins or loses), but rather on how much they won or lost by. For example, with sports you might predict that your local rugby team will win, and be prepared to spread bet £5 per point. IF your team wins 37-12, you would gain £125 (£5 per point above a draw), HOWEVER, if your team lost 9-74, then you would lose £325. The same applies to the financial/stock market based schemes. Rather than winning or losing a match though, share prices can obviously rise or fall.
However, before looking at trying out this form of financial pattern detection, I obviously need to have some money to gamble/invest. Other than teaching English, I also work as an IT consultant sometimes, with a wide remit covering technical support for faulty hardware/software, constructing custom-built PCs, training people, designing websites and servicing slow computers. Whilst I definitely enjoy fixing computers and helping people, the taking the money side of the matter has always been a slight fly in the ointment for me at least. This is why I often work in conjunction with a local company who sort all the invoicing and paperwork – I just assess the hardware/software/wetware, fix or build what I can, and then leave still happy!
Over the past five or so years, my final income stream has occasionally included doing some media work for a government department in Kazakhstan. This was mainly suggesting re-writes for the English version of the script as well as providing the actual voice over material. This sort of work was probably the easiest, however they haven’t made contact in a while.