Anyway, not narcissism, not egotism... just a mix of inexperience, naivete, and optimism/idealism. I've been in full time employment for just shy of 4 years. So far I've been made redundant twice and I am yet to receive a single pay rise in line with promises made (i.e. you achieve all of X tasks and you shall receive Y). Both times made redundant due the lying and incompetence of the senior management who failed to listen to those saying things will not work and have to be changed. My dad who has been working for just shy of 38 years has been made redundant 4 times in the last 15 years and in those 15 years is yet to receive a single pay rise in line with promises made (i.e. you achieve all of X tasks and you shall receive Y). I am not sure of the details of his redundancies. From all that I have seen I do not trust management. My dad is actually concerned that in my 4 short years I have the built up more vile and bitterness towards those above me the office structure of shirking of responsibility, than he has in the last 38. I have had the optimism stamped out of me by lying, inept and deceitful people and so too will all the other graduates.

The converse can also be said. Out of the four jobs that I have had since graduating only one I have not been head hunted for (the second oddly). This was mostly because who work at the new company knew me, my character and ability. I hope that people will actually look at my linkedin profile as this is just an internet based extension of this.

On the other side of the argument thinking that people will not search for you during periods of employment is also a bit naïve. At job number two I was working closely with a social inept network admin, I was supposed to present to senior management internet monitoring data for him. It turns out that one of my colleagues was a model in a former life and one of the company's owners would regularly look for photos of her on his work computer. It wasn't included in the report and it was not nice a thing to have to carry round with me.

My books and newspapers don't run out of battery power, or have to be plugged in as such it has 100% uptime. Also I don't have to pay to recharge them.

I live in the UK. When my house was built there where only 31 states in the USA. I wouldn't consider this unusual for my neighborhood. During my visit to the states, Massachusetts, buildings that where considered "really old" over here would be considered "well I suppose its old really if you think about it, but not in comparison to the local pub". You get the jist. Where my Grandparents live; houses that have been up for 30-50 years are being torn down and rebuilt. As such they live in a street where most houses have been built in the last 15 years. The difference between my area and my grandparents area is they had the shit blown out of it during WWII and my area didn't. As a consequence the area in which they live was rebuilt rather hastily in the 50s and 60s. Poor planning, building techniques, materials and added social change has meant that these areas where awful to live in. As such these areas are being regenerated. I have no idea what things are like in Japan, but I would imagine this could be a possible explanation for "houses being built to last 30 years at most". Maybe they where built to last, but it's time to change and move on.

I did a great project on shape memory alloys (SMA). We made a rather crude finger made out of lego and SMA, which was controlable by passing a current through each "muscle". However that was about 9 years ago, I am sure the technology has moved along a lot since then and you could possibly do more intresting things now. G

and "Oh, Merde!".

was at about age 12 in high school with a program where you created a flow diagram in a graphical editor. This would interact with an external device, which might be a lift or traffic lights etc. You could physically interact with the device like pressing the button to call the lift to a certain floor. You'd then see in real time the flow diagram showing which stage the program was at. Maybe some of that Lego mindstorm or whatever its called might be the best thing, assuming you can program that stuff (I don't know for sure). Something where he can actually see what he is programming and how it interacts with the outside world. Reggie