Darice de CubaA weblog about everything

Since November 2007 that I applied for a government welfare payment because I’m not able to work full time due to my illness, I still haven’t gotten it. Here I live in a country of which I have the Dutch nationality, I pay taxes, I paid insurance for if I was ever not able to work full time, which has happened. And now they keep rejecting me due to mistaken information they got on file.

The government is having discussions every week about the big problem, young people not being able to work and living from welfare. This particularly welfare is called “Wajong”, ‘Law of Disability Provisions for the Young Handicapped’. According to the numbers too many people are getting Wajong while they are able to work. I’m super pissed off when I read that if someone has an IQ of 85 they are declared incapable of working and automatically get full Wajong for the rest of their lives, according to an article in Elsevier.

And I for one got incapable in July 2006 when I became a dialyse patient, since then I get tired very fast plus I became deaf so that really makes it hard to get a job or even function 100% in team work. Now I only work 4 hours a day. By law I’m entitled to 35% Wajong(this is according to the evaluation I went through), I was healthy and a college student at the time I became ill. I satisfy every requirement to get Wajong but they keep rejecting me for reasons like:

• “you were already incapable of work when you moved to Holland”
• “you became incapable of work in 2007, you have to be ill for 52 weeks before getting Wajong(I’m Ill since 2006)”

I issued a complain and they rectified it and continued the procedure, I was declared 35% incapacitated of working and then again rejected, reason?

• “you were already incapable of work when you moved to Holland”

Yes, again same mistaken reason I already had them rectify. Since then I have been waiting for a month for their reaction to my second complain. We called them about this, on the phone they said I had to be living here for 6 years to have a right to get Wajong. I don’t know where they got that as it isn’t stated anywhere in the Wajong law. Even so I have been living in the Netherlands for more then 6 years! So now they gave me an appointment for over one month to defend my case with the civil servant handling my case, which is always someone different.

I applied for Wajong beginning November 2007 it’s going to be 5 months now and still no progress. If the government is complaining how everyone who has some illness but are still capable of doing some kind of work still get full Wajong then why can’t I get the 35% I’m entitled to?

Meanwhile it’s highly stressful working everyday and not being able to work full time even if you want to. Last week I worked 25 hours instead of 20 to finish some deadlines. I was so tired that my whole week-end was ruined, I didn’t have any energy left to do something. And working part-time is no gold-mine either. And everyday I hope I wake up energized enough to head to work otherwise I have to force myself because I don’t want to call in sick a lot.

If I get Wajong I’m assured of a job/income. So if I’m unable to work say because I’m in the hospital, my employer can keep paying me and claim my salary with the government. This way I don’t have to worry about my job and bills when I’m in the hospital or sick at home.

In a country where we way pay taxes on every damn thing you don’t expect to be treated like this.

I’m adding relevant links(Dutch content) below and I’ll be linking to my own Dutch article on Wajong. It won’t help much but at least Google will know about this.

• Wie krijgt een Wajong uitkering?
• Hoe zit dat met de Wajong?
• Mijn ervaring met Wajong aanvraag procedure(coming soon)

After three years of using only the Nikon D70 and always having to plan if I take it out with me, considering big enough bag, which lenses, etc. I decided it would be a good idea to have a compact camera that I could easily carry around everywhere. Last year I looked at a few cameras but they where to big and I somehow wanted the ability to shoot RAW.

Then through Twitter and Flickr someone mentioned Ricoh GR2 and posted some photo taken with it. That’s when my interest for a compact arose again and I started doing some research on DP review. The camera looks great, good specs and reviews. But way to expensive for a second camera alongside my Nikon D70. Then I saw Ricoh GR Digital which was released in 2005. Now that version 2 is out the first one is cheaper. But most of them are sold out.

Panasonic has a camera comparable to the Ricoh GR, namely the Lumix LX 2 which has a Leica lens. This one is less expensive then a GR2 but more expensive then a GR. Both these camera are for the more advanced users, having a fixed 28mm lens with some digital zoom only, extensive manual settings, a good ISO range and RAW ability.

Considering how expensive these cameras are I decided to check one second handed. I never bought any gadget second handed, only cheap old film cameras. I used a dutch merchant website owned by e-bay. This site doesn’t work with profiles so it’s really at your own risk.

A search for Ricoh GR yielded one result only and for Lumix LX2 one result only. So I bid for both see which one I could get. Typically the Ricoh was posted online for days and nobody had bid but as soon as I bid people started overbidding me. There isn’t a time limit here, the seller decides which bid it will take. Really wanting the Ricoh I did a heavy bid and won it right away. Meanwhile the Lumix was being heavily bid one so I let it pass.

This Ricoh was advertised as new in box, never used being sold because the owner doesn’t use it. I got it for 10% less then the cost of the remaining GR being sold in stores.

I didn’t want to take the risk of being ripped off and because the seller lives 20 minutes by train from The Hague I setup a meeting for the exchange.

It turned out to be a nice man, the camera was a gift for his girlfriend but she didn’t have any use for the camera so they decided to sell it. The camera came brand new in the box with plastic still on the LCD. Complete with everything and the store recipe. So that was a really lucky purchase, the camera was bought just a month ago. I couldn’t be happier, worth every penny and I get a one year warranty.

The Ricoh GR doesn’t come with SD card, so the next day I got a SD Extreme 2GB which is more then enough. Still needed: a cool wrist strap like the blue one for Nintendo Wii remote and a camera pouch, a funky one.

Today I took the camera around city for a few try outs. It took and will take some getting used to it, after three years with an DSLR. There is no view finder so I have to use the LCD display. A very handy factor is that you can see the settings “live” on the display: if it is too dark or too bright, etc. But I hope after some use I’ll know the camera good enough to get great pictures.

You can see some of the photos taken with the Ricoh GR. I went with mostly B&W using ISO 400 to try get the grainy effect of a Kodak Black and White ISO400 film.

I’m looking forward to take more photos of different subjects and maybe a video just for fun to put on Flickr.