da tomāto

Phew! Submitted the transcript in the nick of time. I just hope I had a couple of hours more to edit it. Take note, I submitted it without proofreading it! YIKES! Man, I haven't felt this kind of cramp in my hands and back since... college! At least I know that my limits in transcription are: 1. I need at least five hours to transcribe a difficult 10-minute audio (editing included). 2. I need at least 20 minutes to try figuring out the words until I can confidently move on and type "inaudible" in brackets. 3. I got to remember to move my bum every now and then or else, it'll get numb! That's about it. I haven't taken on much [yet] to actually add on to this list or improve on my transcription skills. But we'll see...

A few weeks ago, I joined an organization that has a team of home-based freelance transcribers. After submitting my CV, passing their tests and completing the training, I can say that I'm part of that team now. Freelance general transcriber - that's the job description. And as of now, I'm starting my first paid project. The deadline's tomorrow so I got to get cracking. Well, I've neither a rant nor a rave about this yet. Of course, that depends if I actually receive my pay or not. We'll see... FYI, I'm working on three freelance WAH jobs right now - accounting, web content writing, and transcription. I guess that would count as "working three times as hard"? Yeah?

When I get asked what I do, I always say, "WAH!" Yup, that's work-at-home for us lay folks. I've been doing office work (at home!) with pen and paper since 2003. A very good family friend of ours found me competent and trustworthy enough to handle their business' in-house accounting records. And I couldn't be thankful enough for that. It was a few years ago that I dared to earn money using the Internet. My first attempt was with a huge online organization that required a "one-time registration fee". Mind the quotation marks because it's common knowledge that we should NEVER pay to get work. True that! But being curious and all, I found out that there was a bunch of Pinoys who have been earning from it for quite a while. So, I joined through a local franchisee and after six months, I got my first check. However, it was through that organization that I got to find out first-hand why we must NEVER pay to get work -- a lot of members' assignments