That uncertain future

So where I'm at now is that the old apartment has been handed back to the slumlord, with just the final bills and such to be settled. This means that other than some potential financial fallout the direct and immediate threat from that place should be over with.

That leaves me with the two other, more immediate issues. One is to get that financial stability, as I saw myself pushed into becoming freelancer after a year of unsuccessful job interviews. Not that being a freelancer is that horrible, mind you. It seems that at this point I'm mostly doing the writing of articles for websites such as Hackaday and soon Hackster.io, which provides me with some income.

In addition to this, there's also the pressing issue of finding a place to live. I still got about a month until I have to leave the current apartment where I'm temporarily staying. At this point I have abandoned the thought of renting a house in the Alsace region of France as the possibility of that working out was painted too optimistically. Now it's back to looking for apartments in that same region. Hopefully that will work out better.

What will be next for me? I'm not sure. I'll just have to keep trying and see what happens.


Maya

Punishment for being intersex: time to pay up

Five years ago I found myself lying naked and bruised in a police cell, missing a large gap in my memory beyond some vague and very traumatising impressions of metal biting into my wrists, my head being slammed into solid objects and people grasping at me and yelling at me.

Apparently after years of psychological torture by Dutch physicians and psychologists, and a complete lack of help or understanding for my intersex condition, it seems that the rude, unwelcoming behaviour by this one last general physician's office had finally pushed me over the edge.

While the damage to the hallway was covered by insurance and all charges - including attempted manslaughter, etc. - were dropped, unfortunately the statues of a local artist had also been destroyed. Worse, she had never bothered to insure them, so as punishment I was punished, but also not punished by being forced to pay for the damage. Not punished, because officially in Dutch law someone cannot be punished if they are not charged with a crime (like me), yet I still got punished.

In light of the years of recovery following this incident, including the glass wounds to my hand, the bruised bone in my right knee, the swelling and peripheral neuropathy (damaged nerves) in my right leg and arm, it seemed rather cruel to assign me this punishment, especially with my psychotherapist supporting me. I was not, could not be made responsible for my actions, due to the years of severe psychological pressure and trauma leading up to the incident.


Today I then finally got the final amount which has to be paid (slightly increased, because I apparently I did not receive the first letter...). This after years of fruitless legal cases, trying to get this punishment thrown out, to no avail, only resulting in hefty lawyer costs.

Here's a photo of the letter in question:






3,433.63 Euro. This in light of me having exactly zero Euro to my name in early 2013, only being able to sustain myself now thanks to getting a job shortly afterwards. In addition to it being a hefty chunk of the tiny bit of money I have managed to save up so far, it also seems hugely unfair to be punished like this for something I could not have prevented, other maybe than by giving up on physicians or escaping the Netherlands sooner.

Because of this unfairness I have set up a donation campaign to see how many people would be willing to pitch in and lower the financial and emotional burden on me. So far over one and a half thousand Euro have been donated, still about one-thousand and nine-hundred Euro short of the punishment amount: https://www.gofundme.com/zufd2yh8


I do not expect people to take pity on me, or feel that they have to donate out of some kind of obligation. I only desire for people to put themselves in my situation and consider what they themselves would have done. Right after the incident and right now, at the end of a losing streak of legal appeals.

At least after I pay this amount I should finally be free of the Netherlands and all of its unfair, corrupted systems. It'll be with bitterness that I will close this chapter in my life, but I will be free at last.


Thank you.


Maya

Still searching for a home

Yesterday's appointment with the psychotherapist was - as expected - no big deal at all. I felt quite positive afterwards, and I doubt that the next appointment will make me feel anywhere nearly as apprehensive as this first one. To be continued next month, I guess.

Today I just had a regular working day. Though I'm still kind of in-between projects at this point, it's still pleasant to have the regularity of a day job. It's still difficult to leave there and go home. Or what I'm forced to call my home at this point, that is.

It's a place which is too noisy, poorly maintained and rented at a ridiculous price by an owner who is more than okay with me and others in the building drinking and bathing in rusty, polluted water. This is not a home, yet with every week which passes I'm coming closer to admitting that there may not be an alternative. Not within my current means at least.

At this point I have multiple larger projects in progress, ranging from a new book to a new processor architecture, to a range of video games, the latter together with my best friend. The hope is to make money from these projects.

With enough money I should be able to fix the last issues in my life. Money is after all the most important thing in human society. It's the only way you can get that home you want, or need.


Maya

I guess this means that I have to find a new place really soon

Since I moved into my current apartment I have paid 80 Euros less than the original rent after discovering lots of issues initially. As many of them slowly got fixed (replaced broken fuses, wiring, outlets, switches, floor, doors, etc.) I kept finding more issues (increasingly serious rust issue in the tap water, very noisy heating system, holes in the walls straight to the outside, etc.).

Many serious issues like the rust and noise issues still haven't been resolved, despite me regularly asking them to do so. They sent people along a few times to 'look at installing a water filter' and such, but nothing has changed since the two years that I first told them about it. On the bright side last month they finally patched up some of the holes with some silicon so I don't have to use scotch tape any more.

Then today I received a letter from the landlady, warning me to immediately pay that 80 Euro times 22 months or face legal action. There was no previous warning of this. In total that means close to 2,000 Euro I'd have to pay up even though the owner of the place has made little effort to fix issues. Maybe they shower in rusty-brown water at home, too, and are happy sleeping with earplugs in to shut out noises like neighbours walking and peeing.

I am however not okay with such a situation. I do not feel that I should be paying this amount. German law to my knowledge sides with me on this. Yet regardless it means that my relationship with the owner of this apartment has soured to the point where the only sensible thing I can do is to move out of here as soon as humanly possible.

Fortunately I may have an option here. Unfortunately it means a lot of additional stress very suddenly while I'm also dealing with my medical situation. For the latter I have the next appointment on Thursday where I should hear whether there's news on a possible surgery and such. Combining a job, an angry landlady, the organisation of moving to a new place, medical appointments and a possible surgery, and possibly a fresh legal case is definitely more than I have energy to deal with at this point.

Suffice it to say that my PTSD is having a field day with this and I'm feeling incredibly threatened and suicidal.

I don't feel safe. I don't feel like I can trust people. I fear more pain and suffering. I have little hope for it working out okay.

I'm hoping that I can at least get a little bit of help with this situation :(


Maya

Dreams to highlight all that is wrong

For the past months I have had lots of dreams, usually without me being able to remember much more than just a few fragments or a sensation when I wake up. Those I do remember are vivid and stay with me for a while, such as the dream I had last night. As seems to be common, it was yet another nightmare.

In this particular nightmare I was being haunted and finally chased by these two men who somehow got me to sign some kind arrest warrant or confession document, which I then realised and tried to desperately escape. This all in the setting of the house where I grew up. By the time I woke up I was drenched in sweat and feeling rather uncomfortable.

After waking up like that, my thoughts continued pretty straight into a similar train of thought which has been playing in my mind over the past weeks or months, namely the temptation of not giving in to the humiliation of financial punishment by the Dutch state and instead continuing my decade-long resistance by just having them imprison me for a number of months.

It may sound stupid, but just thinking about paying up after more than four years and with it basically confessing that I was guilty of purposefully destroying those works of art which were on display at that doctor's office, even after years of physical and psychological torture, a suicide attempt, being diagnosed with PTSD and DID, and suffering a blackout while at said office. Things which the judges say they agree with and officially I wasn't punished. I just have to pay a large sum of money, thereby admitting my guilt and the wilful destruction of said items. It's a disgusting, back-handed way of hurting me even more through a so-called 'justice system'.

When I put up that crowdfunding campaign in order to allow others to pitch in and share the financial and with it the psychological burden, I knew I was setting myself up for judgement by the general public as well. Now that after weeks have passed and a handful of people have donated I do not feel better about things. Sure, it is great that a large sum has been donated, and I do draw comfort and strength from this fact. Those who wanted to donate, but lack the means have shared the campaign and provided kind words.

Yet the fact remains that I feel that an even larger group of people have chosen to either ignore said campaign because they do not care either way, or worse, feel that I was at fault and wilfully chose to vandalise said items, despite all of the circumstances and background. The latter is perhaps the worst feeling of all. Whether it's true or not I do not know, but it is one of the reasons which underlie this urge to just submit myself to even worse punishment than just to surrender a large part of my savings for no good reason aside from supporting a corrupt system and hateful people who do not care in the slightest about those who are unfortunate enough to be 'different'.

That I fled the Netherlands isn't just because of some disagreements and/or financial reasons. This last lawsuit is the third one. The first two were started by me, to sue the doctors at the first, Amsterdam hospital who mistreated my intersex case, and to address the discriminating behaviour of my insurance company towards intersex people with myself in particular. Both of those two cases were rejected or manipulated such that I stood no chance of winning. I lost. Intersex people in the Netherlands lost. Human rights in the Netherlands got dealt a big setback.

And nobody cared.

The feeling that all of this that I do to fight for my own rights and of everyone like me who isn't 'standard' and doesn't fit into these neat little boxes society likes to puzzle together, that all of this is for naught troubles me a lot. Why is it that we have the same ridiculous idiocy as with homosexuality and transsexuality, where one seeks to 'fix' something which isn't a problem? Why is the existence and acceptance of something that is perfectly natural and not harmful in the slightest treated as something shameful, to be 'fixed' with surgery and the medical files hidden or destroyed?

I spend a fair bit of my time on interviews on intersex with a wide variety of people, from journalists to students and even authors who wish to include intersex in an upcoming book. My website and blog with a wide variety of information on intersex is at the top of search results related to intersex. I like to think that what I do matters.

Maybe that's why I also feel so strongly about the lukewarm response I have received over the past four years since the event happened. I only had to suffer severe PTSD, DID, get beaten up by the Dutch police, suffer through one hateful, accusing court case after another, and feel utterly alone throughout the whole ordeal.

People have often said to me that they admire me for being such a strong person, but I am not. I already gave in once and tried to escape from this life. Hit the 'abort' button. The thought of ceasing my struggle, of just surrendering to the inevitability of doctors, psychologists, politicians and even regular people hating me, wanting people like me to cease existing through whatever means necessary. It's a tempting thought, indeed.

What has defined my life over the past decades is not wanting to find answers about my body. It has been about being regarded as a freak, as a disorder. As something that is wrong and cannot or should not be. As a result I have pretty much always been unhappy and alone. Never understanding, never feeling understood or cared for. Even as a child and teenager this feeling was ever-present. I am not alive today because I wish to be a human, or part of human society. I care nothing for either, because neither mean anything positive to me.

All that I receive is the judgement from others. I cannot simply be or exist. I cannot live my life. I cannot be not 'different'. I cannot ignore the reality of my situation. I cannot change things to simply be possible.

There is only the heaviness of the burden of being alive and the numbing pain of dissociation at the realisation of the preceding.

At this point in time I await this dreaded moment where I will have to pay up or face jail time. I also await further medical results which can make my life either very easy, or very difficult, or just add to the string of utter disappointments that has been the sum of my experiences with medical professionals so far. Suffice it to say that the resulting stress levels are high. Far too high to be healthy.

Yet I cannot do anything but wait. Just push it away. Just wait. Ignore it. Maybe it will be fine. Please wait. There's nothing else to be done.

Those moments when you realise that you would be so much happier trading one's body for an artificial one, because there is nothing to be gained by trying to live with a body which doesn't make one happy and will die and rot away before long anyway. Utter disappointment.


Maya

2015 retrospective: Why worry?

"Why worry, there should be laughter after the pain
There should be sunshine after rain
These things have always been the same
So why worry now"
(Dire Straits - Why Worry)

Looking back on the year 2015 and what it has meant to me, I can see that it is a year of great changes and hopefully the beginning of the end of decade-long problems.

After first offering me financial security and then a way out of the Netherlands, my currently employer offered me a permanent contract at the beginning of the year, removing many worries and motivating me. This marks the first time that I have had such certainty in life that I can support myself without having to rely on others.

I found a lot of joy and entertainment in the project I found myself working on throughout the year for my job, gaining a lot of confidence in my own skills and hopefully gaining some respect and understanding from my bosses and colleagues as well.

This year I also found out that I am incredibly lucky, after getting hit by a car without it being my fault, and surviving the accident with nary a scratch, just multiple weeks of intense muscle pain and some lingering issues and scars as a more permanent reminder. I haven't heard anyone remark about weird twitches or changes in my personality recently, so I am pretty confident that I didn't get bumped on the head too severely, either.

After starting working on a book on Android-based gaming development in 2014, I managed to finally complete it nearly a year later, making my editors at Packt Publishing feel very relieved, I imagine. It was a bit of a harrowing experience, to be honest, having to focus on writing a pretty complex and technical book against the background of my medical and connected psychological issues, as well as uncertainties about my job prospects until that got settled.

In September of 2015 I did however get it all finished along with the editing, reviewing and last-minute changes and it went on sale soon after. If you search for my name and/or the title of the book ('Mastering AndEngine Game Development') it's easy to find at the Packt store as well as at Amazon. I sent my mother a copy as well, just so that she can have a copy of the book her daughter wrote. It feels pretty darn good to be finally done with this first book. Here's to the next ones :)

Soon after finishing that book, I also got rapid updates on the final chapter in the four-year old lawsuit against me in the Netherlands, for the vandalism committed by me when I suffered a black-out due to the psychological weight of many years of physical and psychological uncertainty and outright torture as well as a suicide attempt finally breaking me. While the judges all declared that I could not be held responsible for my actions due to these circumstances, they did however force me to pay the nearly 4,000 Euro in damages for some uninsured art works which got damaged as well.

So in effect they did hold me responsible after all, they just won't throw me into jail unless I fail to cough up this amount in time. I will get the formal statement forcing me to pay early next year, after which my options are to pay up within a month, or go to jail after all. On the bright side, this is the last time that I'll ever have to deal with the Netherlands ever again.

I set up a crowd-funding campaign [1] for this payment in the hope that may some others might want to share the psychological burden with me, and also so that I won't have to burn through my meagre savings for something which is ultimately a shining example of injustice. So far this crowd-funding campaign has reached 33% of the total amount I will have to pay, but with no activity during the past two weeks.

The unpleasant thing about crowd-funding campaigns like this is that it basically asks the public to judge you and your proposal on merit. While to me it's a major issue which has made me feel terrible over the past years, and has contributed significantly to my psychological traumas and feelings of resentment towards the Netherlands, it's hard to convey such a feeling of importance to others, who may feel that it's just a cheap trick by me dodge the responsibility for something I did.

Yes, that means agreeing with those who feel I purposefully and wilfully destroyed other people's property and try to blame it on some imaginary 'black-out'. The thought that people truly think about me and this campaign like that hurts. It basically touches upon me feeling cursed with having a healthy and attractive looking body, as it is incredibly hard to get any kind of sympathy when outwards everything appears to be fine. I hope that more people can put aside their biases and look at the facts.

On a more positive note, despite having had little luck during 2015 with getting any help for my intersex condition and associated medical issues, with doctors putting me away as 'just a transsexual', or worse (all fans of calling intersex 'DSD' can go keel over for all I care...), it seems that at the end of 2015 my luck has turned.

After two appointments with a new endocrinologist I'm being taken seriously, along with my hermaphroditic intersex condition, with the first hormone level tests already showing interesting results, and the prospect of answers and even reconstructive surgery for my female side rapidly becoming a very real prospect for the new year.

It's been over twenty years since I first began to wonder about what in the world my body was doing and changing into when I got my first period and began to grow breasts despite being told I was a boy. Now it appears that those decades of confusion, trauma and frustration may finally come to a close next year. It's almost too much to take in such a wondrous idea, and yet my traumatised mind is rapidly running out of arguments to dismiss the current events as merely the quiet period before another traumatising rejection of help.

Why worry, indeed? How hard it may be to believe when you're in the midst of the chaos, noise and death, at some point things seem to indeed get better. Go figure.


Maya


[1] https://www.gofundme.com/zufd2yh8

Surviving vacations and making a crowdfunding campaign work

Today I have the end of the first week of my vacation in sight. It's been a harrowing week, with lots of managing, waiting and handling of orders. Today I finally got the last order in, however, and tomorrow I should be able to start copying data from my laptop onto this new system before turning it into my new main system.

I further had breakfast with a neighbour on Wednesday after she invited me, and also did groceries on Monday for this week. Those were the easy things, with my back today telling me that maybe I overdid it somewhat with the cleaning of my apartment and moving things around in the office as I made place for the new monitors and speaker stands. Hard physical labour which my pasty, nerdy and very scrawny body isn't used to, naturally.

Yesterday I also finally set up that crowdfunding campaign [1] I threatened with a while ago [2], so that when the bill comes in I maybe won't have to surrender much of my savings, or face jail time. Initially GoFundMe's automated system pulled my campaign due to the use of the word 'legal' in the description, but after a quick review by a staff member, the campaign was released again. As of writing this, 880 Euro of the 4,000 Euro goal has been reached already, which is pretty amazing after just one day.

Again, as I got some comments about this on Twitter yesterday, I am not asking for this money because it's an easy way out or something, or because I am trying to dodge responsibility. Over the past four years I have described many times what happened, that I cannot be blamed for any which happened and that both my psychotherapist and a whole range of judges agree with this notion.

That I still have to pay this large sum of money despite not being held responsible for my actions is simply due to a flaw in the Dutch justice system and the creative interpretation of the law which forbids exactly such a punishment. Finally there is also the issue of me not having many savings since starting 2013 with exactly zero Euros or any currency for that matter to my name.

I have sacrificed a lot the past decade and would prefer to draw the line here. I hope that others agree with this notion and don't mind tossing in a few bucks to lighten my load somewhat.

Of course this may seem somewhat odd when I proclaim proudly in the same post that I have just bought an amazing new computer system. This, much like buying thousands of Euros worth of furniture, was due to not having many possessions when I moved to Germany. For my hobbies, including some I would like to pursue a career in such as game development, I needed a proper system, not a 2013-era laptop performing at the limits of its capabilities.

At any rate I hope that it all makes some sense to someone out there at least. If there are any questions left after reading the crowdfunding campaign and the linked blog posts, feel free to ask them.


Maya


[1] https://www.gofundme.com/zufd2yh8
[2] http://mayaposch.blogspot.de/2015/11/how-not-being-punished-gets-one-into.html

How not being punished gets one into jail

It goes something like this:

• Be born intersex.
• Get psychologically and physically tortured for years, suffer severe traumas.
• Try to commit suicide and fail.
• End up in the national Bible Belt and try to find a new doctor.
• Get refused by first doctor for being intersex.
• Get accepted, then receive hostile attitude at other doctor.
• Try to ask for help anyway, get the run-around.
• Have one's dissociative identity disorder (DSD) triggered at said doctor, suffer a blackout.
• Wake up in a cell, naked, bruised, battered and with an extremely sore knee, courtesy of the police.
• Suffer through countless court-cases, have charges of attempted murder and such dropped.
• Enjoy many months of revalidation, permanent nerve damage and bruised bones.
• Be found guilty of vandalism, but not get any punishment due to the circumstances of the event.
• Be still forced to pay thousands of Euros because the uninsured art work of a local artist got damaged.
• Face the threat of paying up or spending 39 days in jail.

But I'm not being punished is the claim. Today my lawyer communicated me the final verdict in this case back in the Netherlands, and despite the very act being illegal according to Dutch law, I still have to pay this artist for being too lazy and/or stupid to insure the works she put up on public display where any child could have tipped them over.

To me the impact of all this is largely psychological. There's the injustice of having to pay, sure, but to me this last ruling seems to also have cut the last thread of hope I had that maybe my country of birth would maybe not have been quite so bad. With that hope shattered, and nothing else tying me to the Netherlands after I pay up this punishment, it feels like a chapter will have been closed.

For all I care the entirety of the Netherlands can go slide into the North Sea. All that I harbour towards this country as an institution and symbol is negative. It's a haven of corruption, of intolerance and bigotry. That I got my first name and official gender changed there was almost pure luck, the latter only thanks to German doctors providing the details and performing the procedures Dutch doctors refused to perform or where they felt had to lie about the results.

I will start a crowdfunding thing for this amount I will have to pay later this week, just in case anyone feels like lightening my burden somewhat - both financially and psychologically - since it's still a considerable chunk out of my meagre savings. I have only been able to save up for the past two years, after all, courtesy of having been robbed clean of money and possessions in 2013.

My general mood at this point is still one of mostly shock, as well as bitterness and disappointment. It is the last vile act by a country which I once saw as my home and where I felt at home. After more than a decade that feeling of safety and belonging has been stripped away, until only the barren reality remained. I cannot and will not ever return to the Netherlands. It's a part of my past that is so hideous and so repugnant that it benefits no one to linger any period of time on it, let alone within its borders.

Only way forward from the lowest point is up, right?


Maya

That horrible moment before judgement is rendered

Waiting for a possibly life-changing or at least very important moment in my life is something which I have gone through more than a hundred times in the past decade. From the thrilling adrenaline rush prior to a live TV appearance, to the nauseating, hyperventilation-inducing experience of doctor appointments, down to the absolute horror of hearing the results from a doctor or such.

Sometimes the latter can be positive, such as when I had my first MRI scan in Germany and the radiologist afterwards confirmed my intersex status. Usually it is negative, however. Most appointments with doctors ended up with them trying to make me 'see' that I had to start believing that I am not intersex, but transsexual. That everything I had been told by German doctors was a lie and nothing on the MRI scans showed that I could possibly be intersex, let alone a hermaphrodite.

Similarly soul-crushing is to wait to hear judgement rendered against you in a legal case where officially you haven't even received punishment, but you are still waiting to hear what your punishment will be. I assume that paying a very large sum of money is a form of punishment, at least.

This particular ruling will occur tomorrow, definitively ending a more than 4-year long journey from court case to court case through the Dutch justice system, which saw charge after charge against me dropped as my medical background and its resulting psychological traumas provided sufficient reason to explain and excuse my behaviour, leading to the previous verdict, dating back to a court case last year when I last appealed the verdict preceding it.

Here, too, is there the possibility of extreme joy or extreme psychological pain. Joy if the punishment is not upheld and I am free to go. Pain if I have to accept the punishment, for I will have to give up a large chunk of my savings, and I will feel even more bitter about a so-called justice system which violates even even its own rules under which it is not allowed to assign monetary punishment if no other punishment is assigned.

Two possible outcomes tomorrow. The end of too many years of agony and many psychological and physical scars and injuries. Hopefully the last I will have to do with the Netherlands in any form or shape. Hopefully another step towards me moving on with my life, instead of being held back by the past.

For now there's only tension, uncertainty and nausea.


Maya

Dutch justice: when punishing is not punishing

Today I received a message from my last remaining Dutch lawyer that the High Court will be deciding in the last remaining legal case I have currently running in the Netherlands. Early next month I'll know whether I'll receive punishment or not in this case against me. This despite the ruling that I will not receive any form of punishment remaining unchanged in any case.

Sounds confusing? That's because it is. It all started back in early 2011 when I had just moved back in at my mom's place after my suicide attempt earlier that year. That suicide attempt followed about six years of psychological and physical abuse by Dutch physicians, involving constant brainwashing attempts, trying to make me believe that I had to be transsexual, regardless of the German evidence and regardless of my own experiences with my body, not to mention my own thoughts and wishes.

Pushed to the edge, I ultimately decided to take my own life, end the pain and suffering. Unfortunately that failed and I found myself back at square one [1]. After a few months of recovering under my mom's care, I tried to re-establish medical contacts, starting with a local family doctor. Unfortunately the first family doctor saw fit to reject me as a patient due to my intersex condition not fitting well with her Christian conviction.

I had the misfortune this time of living in the Dutch Bible Belt at this point, ergo the second family doctor was just as Christian, only this one did accept me as a patient. They soon became less cooperative, however, delaying help, not keeping up their promises. As I began to suffer psychologically from this behaviour and mentioned it to them, they simply ignored it.

After months of this I suffered my first black-out while I was with my mother at the doctor's office. When the receptionist dismissed them not keeping up a promise yet again with a dismissive gesture, something snapped inside of me. I remember only bits and pieces of what happened next, but my mother and the police report have filled in the gaps [2].

Apparently I went into a rage, smashing a vase or two, ripped a few banners off the walls and smashed a glass case holding a model. The police arrived shortly after, ignoring my mother and I as I was sitting there with hands torn up by glass, bleeding all over the place. Sitting there alone, I then sprung up, tore a glass display case to the ground and walked outside.

There I got consequently beaten up by the police, who kicked me to the ground, smashing my right knee hard enough on the stones to bruise the bone. They put cuffs on my wrists, so tight that they tore into my skin and caused me incredible amounts of pain. This part I remember most distinctly, from being dragged by unfriendly people, having my head bashed into a car door, people sitting on me, stripping me forcefully, being pushed into another car, more head-bashing, yelling and pain tearing into my wrists.

Then finally I was lying virtually naked in an empty cell and began to fully come to my senses. The enormity of all that had happened then hit me. I had never lost my temper. Never once in my life. Especially not so bad that I had one into a complete black-out rage. I had always taken my pain and frustration out of myself, through self-mutilation and ultimately that suicide attempt.

In the end I spent one night in that cell. Definitely by far the worst night of my life. I barely slept more than a few minutes, staying up all night tearing the sole roll of toilet paper into tiny shreds to give me something to do, while watching the programs on the small television screen built into the wall. The next day it took many hours of uncertainty and waiting before I was released. The guards refused to give me my medication (hormones) as well.

Only after getting released did I learn that my mother had visited the place where I was locked up, with a bag of goodies including books and other comforts. They had told her that they'd give it to me, but they never did. Before I was allowed to leave the place they had me clean up my cell as well, using my bare hands.

That was not the end of things, however. That was when the Dutch state started prosecuting me, for vandalism and initially also threatening with bodily harm, a claim by the family doctor but soon withdrawn when they couldn't substantiate it. This case has lasted for over four years now and costed me a lot of time and lawyer fees.

So far the charges of threatening with bodily harm got dropped, the doctor got all damages covered by the insurance and two judges so far have ruled that I am not to receive punishment, due to the circumstances. Specifically the intense psychological stress I was placed under due to being intersex and receiving no medical help whatsoever, but instead quite the opposite.

Only sticking point is that the big display case which also got pulled over contained some items not owned by the medical center this doctor belonged to, but instead to a local artist who had left expensive and fully uninsured objects there in a public space. Two judges so far have ruled that I have to reimburse this artist.

Interestingly enough, this used to be a legal practice in the Netherlands, until early 2014: then the law changed and enforcing a monetary punishment was no longer a valid option when the judge decided to not formally punish the person being prosecuted. I'm currently on my last appeal trying to get this ruling undone.

My lawyer has put almost everything on this changed law in this last appeal. The prosecutor has commented that while, yes, it's the law, one shouldn't take the law quite so, you know, literally. Pointing out some vaguely related cases, he insisted that the judge should use highly creative interpreting when applying this law.

There are two possible outcomes with this upcoming ruling. One sees this monetary punishment dismissed and I can say farewell to a legal case which has haunted me for years, not to mention reminds me constantly of such unpleasant events.

The other outcome sees me forced to pay many thousands of Euros, since these uninsured pieces of 'art' were apparently worth that much, plus the collected interest after these years. To that I can only say that back in 2013 I lost all of my money and possessions due to other, also very unfortunate circumstances. I had the luck that I got a well-paying job soon after, but rebuilding a life from scratch is expensive.

I see very little use in paying for the stupidity of an artist to not insure their displayed pieces, especially when the judge has already ruled that I was not responsible for my actions and have suffered enough already by what I have gone through before the event happened.

That then doesn't really fit with punishing me by coughing up what amounts to a significant part of my still meagre savings. That's not justice, that's just saying that you won't punish and then punishing anyway.

I'm not sure what I'll do if this ruling does not end up in my favour. I know this may sound small and selfish, but I may consider accepting donations if the judge wants me to bleed after all. I feel that I have accepted enough punishment already, just looking at everything that transpired directly after the event, not to mention my slow physical recovery afterwards including the resulting nerve damage from the beatings.

Just a few more weeks and I'll know, I guess. After that I can at least wave the Netherlands a not very fond farewell...


Maya


[1] http://mayaposch.blogspot.de/2011/01/joy-in-life.html
[2] http://mayaposch.blogspot.de/2011/05/taking-nightmare-notch-further.html

Why Ikea Germany Should Get A Customer Service

This year I have placed two orders with the German branch of Ikea via their website in order to furnish my apartment. The first order was the biggest one, of a few thousand Euro, allowing me to just have the basic necessities, such as a bed, a table and something to organize my meagre belongings. The second order was to fill this out some, with a drawer set and storage rack for my office, poster frames and some other small items which I still needed.

With both orders I had opted to pay using 'EC-Karte', i.e. by giving Ikea a one-time permission to withdraw the amount owned from my bank account. The first time this worked without problems, yet the second time something strange occurred. It all started when a short while after the second delivery I got a bill delivered by mail from Ikea for this second order. Naturally this was kinda puzzling, especially because there was no further explanation or details provided with the bill. Upon attempting to contact the service department at Ikea Germany by email, I got an automated response informing me that they were 'very busy' and that it could take a month or more for them to respond.

Worse was that I had also found out that the drawer set and one of the poster frames have been severely damaged during transport, with the former practically destroyed. I didn't even have to open the box for it, as the box had been ripped open and many of the parts inside had been destroyed along with it. I contacted Ikea Germany's service department about this (now about two months ago) and I merely got an automated response saying that (again) they were very busy and that it could take a long time. I should just go to my nearest Ikea location and exchange it there, it said. Not easy to do when you're practically working two full-time jobs, though.

The past months I received a reminder from Ikea about the bill after which I tried to contact their customer service again, again without a response, though this time the auto-respond message said that they'd reply in a few days. Not that this happened, though. This week I got the expected letter from a debt collection agency as apparently that's one 'customer service' thing which does work at Ikea. I sent this agency copies of the delivery sheet and filled-in form which gave Ikea permission to withdraw the amount from my bank account.

Then things got interesting. The debt collector claimed that Ikea had contacted me by phone during which it was agreed by Ikea and me that because the bank info on the form was incorrectly filled in, they'd send me a bill by mail. I responded by expressing severe confusion as I had no recollection of this occurring. I even checked my phone's call history to make sure that I had not received a call on the date they mentioned. My call history for that day was empty, so I wasn't losing my mind after all.

Later that day I got the final plot twist, as the next email from the debt collector confessed that they had interpreted the writing from Ikea improperly and that Ikea had tried to call me, but that the phone number was apparently incorrect. After that they had sent the bill to me. Because at this point it was overwhelmingly clear that I had acted properly and that Ikea had been severely negligent, I got offered to just transfer the original amount for the order to their account so that the case could be closed. I was more than happy to comply with this offer.

Even though I had been on the right side of contract law during this entire (months-long) ordeal, it was still quite harrowing. The accusations made against me by Ikea (directly and indirectly) were most unpleasant, suggesting that I was essentially a thief and contract-breaker. I'm glad that in the end it worked out and that it didn't cost me more than severe frustration and some time on my side. Maybe that this experience will teach Ikea Germany something as well, something about proper procedure to follow when one wishes to change the content of a formal purchase agreement, such as the payment method.

The main problem with Ikea Germany appears to be their absence of any kind of customer service, however. Even with the payment issue now hopefully fully resolved, I am still stuck with two broken products which they still have to replace, especially now that the purchase has been finalized. This will be the next step, though I'm not sure that I'll have any other option but to head to an Ikea myself to exchange it. Considering that I also got a gift card from Ikea for my first purchase which I can only use in a physical store, I'll probably just have to bite that bullet. I'm hoping to hitch a ride with others when they head to an Ikea within the coming time.

File this one under 'I wish there was an Ikea alternative in Germany', I guess.


Maya

Back Into The Job Hunt

To quickly recap the work-related events of this and last year: I got hired as a freelancer early last year by the German company I currently work for, as a mobile (iOS/Android) developer. At the start of this year I got offered a fixed contract. After a short while I got asked to 'temporarily' work on a Java project as the iOS project I was working on was a bit overstaffed at that point. That's when things got funny, as suddenly instead of getting more mobile projects, all mobile projects we had been eyeing got handed to other parties and only Java projects remained.

In short, despite having no Java experience beyond the Android-related programming, I have been trying to struggle along in one Java servlet-based project after another. To say that this didn't go well is putting it mildly and led to some sad faces during the last feedback meetings with my employers. After the last meeting it was clear that things weren't going to work out, but I got put on a relatively new C/C++ project which was kinda drifting around at the time. I got to work for about three weeks on this new project before the final meeting, earlier this week.

The difference between working on something you have roughly fifteen years experience with (C/C++ and related) and something you have virtually no experience and very little interest in (Java projects) is like night and day. In just three weeks time I managed to completely retool and improve the Makefile-based build system of the new project and get a cross-compiling setup on Linux and Windows hosts working to Linux and QNX targets across two CPU architectures, despite some fierce resistance from the antiquated toolchain and external libraries which hadn't been designed with a QNX on ARM target in mind. I had and still have a lot of joy in working on such projects, to be honest.

During the meeting this week with my employers this became apparent as well, where sadly the conclusion was that they'd love to keep me on as developer as my performance on the current project had been very satisfactory so far, but that they just don't have more of such projects for me. As a result I'll get a new contract which ties me to my currently assigned project until it's done/its budget runs out, which will be early next year regardless. This will give me the time I need to find a new job hopefully here in Karlsruhe as well which is more befitting to a senior C/C++ developer like yours truly. While it's sad that we have to part ways like this, I'm at least glad it was possible to arrange things in such an amicable way.

Hopefully I'll be able to find a new job by March next year so that I can transition to it without any gaps in my employment and thus income. In case anyone is interested, I still have my Curriculum Vitae (resume, for some :) ) up on my personal site here: http://www.mayaposch.com/cv.php

The coming time I'll be updating this CV as it doesn't even list my employment in the Netherlands or my current employment here in Germany. I reckon I can also add 'German' to my list of 'spoken languages' by now.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some more draft chapters to finish of this Android game development book I'm still writing for Packt Publishing. Call it my other full-time job (which isn't paying yet ;) ).


Maya

The Stresses From Earning A Wage

Part of my move to Germany is a change from a freelancer contract for the company I work for to a regular contract. The freelancer contract was a good option earlier this year because a regular contract for an employee which does not live in the same country as the company he or she works for is a near-impossibility. This is one area where the European Union still needs to break down a lot of barriers. Switching to a regular contract has a few advantages for me, including automatically being part of the Krankenkasse, the universal social healthcare system for everyone who lives and works in Germany and of course having a fixed, infinite duration contract. For me it does bring with it a lot of stress too, though, mostly due to previous experiences.

At my previous job - in the Netherlands - the first disappointing thing was that although the job was specified as having a pre-taxes wage of 3,200 I'd only be getting 2,900 with no indication of when this might change. I started off with an initial 1-month contract as well during which time I had to prove myself. This left me with nearly 2,000 Euro a month after taxes, with which I had to pay for the apartment I was renting plus utilities for a cool 1,000 a month, leaving me with another thousand to feed myself and pay for anything else. Salient detail was also that I started with almost no money to my name, forcing me to borrow money from friends and acquaintances just so that I could work.

Even ignoring the stresses of living in the same apartment with a mentally unstable person, it wasn't a very pleasant time. It showed me just how much influence an employer can have over an employee, especially when the latter does not have any significant savings. Saying 'no' to anything means jeopardizing your job and thus risking having a place to live. That I decided to say 'no' to the year contract they unexpectedly wished to offer me at the end, after months of telling me that I needed to improve myself - even though I was severely struggling with everything life was throwing at me - was mostly due to longing for the freedom I felt I had lost.

Getting up while it's still dark outside, travelling to the office and only travelling back when it's already dark outside, feeling your life slipping away. Having to fight and struggle to schedule something resembling a life next to the #1 priority of work. It made me wonder whether I was working so that I could live, or that I was living so that I could work. I managed to make ends meet somehow every month, but could build up no savings. When I started at my current job at Synyx I had a negative balance on my primary bank account and with all of my meagre savings I had built up as a teenager already vaporized. I'm not sure how things would have gone if I had not gotten this job. In a sense it's saved my life.

And yet there's nothing I loathe more than to be dependent on someone else just to exist. In switching contract types such as now it galls me to have to negotiate the height of my wage, as I quite recall how it feels to negotiate from a position of no power. Accept what we offer you, or face the consequences, basically. Not that I'm saying that this is what will happen here, but as my mind works such that it will always consider and analyze every single possibility this all does cause me undue stress. It's why any form of uncertainty takes such a heavy toll on me.

Though I do not like 'certainty' in a job either. What I like about software engineering is the large amounts of creativity involved which naturally lead to irregular and hard to predict work schedules and outcomes. I thrive on engineering solutions to fundamental problems. R&D is something I have always been very interested in. Sadly R&D is generally also quite expensive. My FPGA hobby, for example, just isn't working out so far, as any decent FPGA kit is a few thousand Euro and building your own kit from scratch (PCB, FPGA and other components) together with all the required equipment (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, etc.) isn't cheap either. Then there's the 'time' component. R&D rarely makes you money, and neither does a hobby, even if it does learn one valuable skills.

It's one reason why I intend to keep doing freelance work as well, as the projects I keep getting via that way often contain interesting challenges, such as one app I'm working on for a client which has to perform audio analysis using a Fourier Transform algorithm and the VST plug-ins for PC software which also do various types of DSP. The more challenging the work, the greater my motivation, you could say. Even as a child I could never be happy with doing anything small: where others built a small, leaky hut, I built a large shed with properly functioning windows, wind-proof and insulated where someone could comfortably live in. These days I'm aiming to develop a better-than-human artificial intelligence after first tackling speech synthesis and related subjects. I have many other big projects like that, all of which I'd love to work on.

It really makes me wonder whether it's actually possible in these times to combine the apparent need to make a living with the drive to be an inventor. In how far can boundless creativity sustain a person, or is it just a liability, dooming a person to feel forever unhappy? What I do know if there's one company where I can both earn a good wage and still be free to develop myself as a person, it's at a place such as Synyx; businesses which realize that employees are living, breathing beings with their own dreams and goals instead of mere cogs to be slotted into the machine. Here's to me getting over the bad job experiences I suffered so far in the Netherlands.


Maya

Discrimination Case Against Unive Not At An End Yet

Yesterday I had the hearing at the College voor de Rechten van de Mens (Human Rights Institute) in Utrecht against my health insurance company Unive for discrimination against intersex individuals. Not too much can be said about the hearing other than that after I summarized the essence of the matter, we just kept spinning in circles as the guy representing Unive could not say why they wouldn't fully cover this hair-removal therapy for an intersex person while they do so for transsexuals. In the end it all came down to that their medical adviser had initially said that it should be like this, then CVZ (the organization representing all Dutch health insurance companies) had released their view on the matter, also limiting coverage to transsexuals.

As the members of the institute who were represented at the hearing correctly mentioned neither Unive nor CVZ ever explained their reasoning behind the exclusion of intersex. With the situation being virtually identical from a legal and medical perspective, it'd be hard to argue for such an exclusion anyway. Both concern the transition from a male to a female role and both involve a higher-than-female level of testosterone which resulted in beard growth (which never goes away on its own) prior to a medical procedure which removed the source of the excess testosterone. The presence of this beard growth is thus regarded by the relevant Dutch healthcare law (2.4) as a 'verminking' (disfiguration) and full coverage to have it removed by a professional is provided.

This matter will now be taken to a higher level as the institute will query CVZ for their reasoning behind this decision to limit this law to just transgenders despite it being an open law. Depending on the response another hearing may be schedule at a later date. At any rate this matter can't be put to rest just yet. It is conceivable that even the Dutch Minister of Health (Edith Schippers) may have to justify or clarify certain matters here. At this point it seems that the claim of discrimination based on gender is well and truly justified here and thus a direct violation of the very first article in the Dutch constitution.

For me it would definitely help to get this discrimination acknowledged and possibly be reimbursed for the money I should have received back from Unive. This too was a question during the hearing, namely how much money I had spent beyond the 200-300/year Unive had covered from the extended insurance. This amount came down to over 6,000 Euro in about 6 years time, or over a thousand Euro a year.

I do hope that this Human Rights Institute can provide some measure of justice here, so that I can at least regain some of my trust in the Dutch justice system after my case against the VUmc gender team got thrown out by the medical disciplinary commission earlier this month.


Maya

Tomorrow's Hearing Against Unive For Discrimination

Tomorrow, November the 25th, I'll be part of a hearing against my health insurance company, Unive [1], at the College voor de Rechten van de Mens (Human Rights Institute) [2] in Utrecht, the Netherlands. It'll be the last attempt I'll be making at any kind of justice in the Netherlands after finding that the psychological and physical torture by the Amsterdam VUmc gender team are deemed to be perfectly fine, according to the medical disciplinary commission. As this is a public hearing, anyone is welcome to attend it. The hearing will start at 13.00 hours.

This particular case involves the discrimination of Unive against me through its refusal to fully cover the hair-removal therapy I'm forced to undergo after my transition from a male to a female role due to my intersex condition, and the need to remove facial hair as a logical implication of this. As Dutch law has nothing explicitly pertaining intersex individuals, the relevant part which would necessitate full coverage would be found in the specified conditions, which among others involves facial hair-removal and its full coverage for male to female transsexuals.

Unive's position is a bit unclear. They seem to hold multiple positions, including that a) they won't cover it because I'm not transgender, and b) it's not proven that I'm intersex (referring to the Dutch hospitals' conclusions). SKGZ previously concluded in 2012 already that there is no specific clause on intersex individuals in Dutch law when it comes to healthcare coverage, and thus a comparable situation should be sought. My lawyer in this case, Yme Drost, has also concluded at this concerns discrimination by Unive.

Personally I'd be very interested in seeing how Unive wishes to weasel itself out of the above comparison I made between a transgender and intersex transition whereby facial hair-removal is a necessity to fit into the new role. For me at stake are recognition of this discrimination by Unive as well as over 6,000 Euro of unpaid costs which should have been covered. Unfortunately it'll take this institute about half a year to finalize their conclusion and they can not force Unive to accept their ruling. It would however make it very hard for Unive to ignore justice in this case.


Maya


[1] http://www.unive.nl/
[2] http://www.mensenrechten.nl/

Story Of My Life

The past few days I have been thinking about many things to write about on my blog. Today as well. There are so many things and thoughts which pop up or trouble me either constantly or when they get triggered by something. I'm not sure that kind of reactive writing is what I need, or what is most useful to you, my dear reader. Hence I figured that maybe a more meta kind of post might be more appropriate.

One item I wanted to write about today was a post I would have titled something dramatic involving how I do not feel that I really have a body. How my experiencing of the world around me is quite surreal. How when I was a child I'd look forward to growing up, yet that this would not happen. That I looked forward to puberty, but that it turned into a both disappointing and extremely confusing and painful experience. That thanks to the extreme brainwashing by Dutch specialists I further lost grip on any kind of self-image and connection with my physical body.

That I have experienced the pleasures of connecting with someone I truly cared about, when I could feel what my body feels, but that those moments were rare and that I feel that I'll never experience such a thing again due to the damage suffered the past time. How absolutely and outrageously frustrated, disappointed and angry I feel at the fact that I will never be able to experience a relationship with a loved one. The depth of my jealousy at those who have such a relationship, and how the intense pain of it makes me want to run away and bury myself. Kill all feelings.

It would have been an intense post for sure. Heavy writing and large amounts of drama, all trying to perhaps futily allow others experience the depths of my mental agony. To gain understanding for the torturous choice between cutting myself literally off from sexuality in every form, or to continue to allow its existence despite everything pointing towards it only being there to cause me agony. I don't think that I could ever bring across my thoughts and feelings there to someone who has never experienced anything alike.

Thus I won't write about it. All you get is the bare summary above. Does it mean anything to you? Probably not. To me it resonates with what I feel inside. To those not like me it just leads to tired advice and equally tired expressions of keeping up hope.

What I did do today was work. Working on this iOS application project for my new employer. I'm beginning to like the work more and more. Just having a solid source of income is more than welcome, it strengthens me to take on everything else which comes along. Such as handling a communication from one of my lawyers regarding the situation surrounding my apartment. Which seems to be proceeding quite well now, by the way.

Much of what I do outside of my work these days feels odd due to that same matter. Not having access to my home and most of my possessions means a lot of improvising and buying stuff anew. It's kind of like camping out in the wilds, only without a set date on when one will be returning home.

Still, today I managed to acquire a new supply of my medication for the hormone therapy I'm undergoing for the rest of my life. It's good to have that settled for a while again. I'm also relieved that yesterday my awesome friend Trevor came back online after having been gone for a few days. Turns out that the part of Canada he lives in suffered a major ice storm, causing power lines to fail. I imagine it must be very... quiet to be without power for a few days straight.

I'm getting more and more enthusiastic every day about making Trevor and my company Nyanko into a success. This means bringing out video games and applications this year. Establish a name and get enough revenue going to make the two of us feel like our efforts were worth it. For me there is not too much I can do yet at this point, as I am still stuck with this old laptop from 2007 which has trouble running even basic applications, let alone 3D modelling and image editing programs such as 3DS Max and Photoshop.

My new laptop should be arriving early next week now. Its specs are quite a match for the desktop system I have at home, with an Intel 3630QM quad-core processor at 2.4 GHz base, 3.4 GHz Turbo speed, 8 GB base RAM and an nVidia GTX660M video card. The display is a 17" full-HD TN LCD (matte), which should be sufficient to do real work on, even if I still miss my two 24" IPS LCDs.

At the very least it should be much faster to compile large projects on the new laptop than on this old one. A regular release build of my WildFox browser takes about ten minutes currently. On the new CPU it should be less than a minute. That's what you get when you go from a slow AMD TK-53 (Athlon X2) dual-core CPU at ~1.7 GHz to a quad-core, modern CPU at 2.4+ GHz. More cores, higher per-core speeds and higher IPC (Instructions Per Cycle).

So yeah, I'm absolutely a geek. No lying about that. The past weeks I feel the energy and motivation returning to work on various software, hardware, AI and robotics projects again. Now that I also have money to spend freely there's nothing really holding me back to undertake at least some of them the coming time. Others will have to wait until I have a home again.

And thus life continues like a dream tinged at the edges with the deep black and red of a frightful nightmare. I wonder which one I will wake up from first.


Maya

I Am Just A Human As Well

Today I spent most of the time working for the German company I started doing work for last month. I'm currently working on an iPhone application for the cultural department of the German city of Karlsruhe, updating the old codebase. It's my first major iOS application I'm working on and so far I'm learning quickly. I hope that my work is satisfactory to the boss of the company, as well as to my colleagues.

I'm feeling a tad uncertain about it because I haven't received the money yet for the hours I worked last month. My financial reserves are extremely low again, which makes me feel quite depressed. Not that I expect that I will not get any money, just that I have lived so long on the edge of bankruptcy, it's an all too familiar frightening feeling. There's also that I have suffered so much betrayal, that it's hard not let the memories overtake me. Some of you may remember how uncertain I felt before the surgery I had in Germany in 2011. It's hard for me to trust anyone or anything.

Anyway, I think that this will all be resolved soon. I can then use the money to buy a new laptop to replace the current one I'm using. This old laptop is a Packard Bell from 2007. AMD TK-53 1.7 GHz dual-core, ATi X1200 GPU. It was quite fine six years ago, but it's really long in the tooth by now. It can not run any new graphical applications, its memory of 2 GB is very restrictive, and the HDD is very small. As I won't have access to my dual-display, quad-core system back at home any time soon yet it's pretty much a requirement for me to get a good laptop.

As far as the apartment goes, I reckon I'd be okay with moving to a new place as well, although I'd need to prove somehow that I am earning sufficiently. That's likely the deal breaker the coming months assuming that I can earn sufficiently the coming time. So plan A is still to get the place back. Hopefully this month things will work out. I'm kinda sick of having to deal with such an unnecessary source of stress in addition to everything.

Regarding money... my lawyer Yme Drost recently sent a friendly letter to my insurance company Unive, regarding their refusal to fully cover the hair-removal therapy I am forced to undergo due to my intersex condition. They insist that my situation is not comparable to that of transsexuals who also need to have facial hair removed after switching gender roles. My lawyer and I both agree that this is false and that this matter falls under discrimination.

Unive has until early next week to respond. Failure to comply to the request to pay will result in further legal steps to be taken. At stake is many thousands of Euros I should be getting back from Unive. Money I could really use the coming time.

Getting out of all this madness, I'll be visiting a photography event in the city of Hengelo on Monday, to meet up with an acquainted photographer. It'll be good to be away from things for a bit.

In the end I'm only a human being. Between working almost every day for 7-8 hours, having to fight to regain my home, worrying about money and the future as well as dealing with all that my country and the people in it have done to me over the past years, there's precious little rest I get. I feel desperate at times when I wonder whether I'll ever be able to just... live.

I find some solace in projects I work on in my spare time, such as my WildFox browser project. It feels good to be working on something I enjoy and which others appreciate as well. I secretly hope that it'll grow into a big, successful project.

This year should see many issues resolved, but it'll once again wear me down to the bone in the process. Just got to hold on for a bit longer...


Maya

Let's Try This Again; Starting Anew

Last year I made the big decision to finally focus on getting a full-time job to help myself proceed in life. Having plenty of money is a wonderful thing after all. Fortunately my favourite pastime from a very young age on, namely computers and software development, turned out to be a very useful asset. It immediately catapulted me into senior developer status for my first job. So much for those who denounced me as someone who would amount to little since I didn't express much interest in studying at school and university.

At any rate I then ended up at a Dutch public broadcaster, doing backend maintenance and development on their websites. It wasn't the most exciting work, but paid alright. What ultimately made me quit there was that the place had a very top-down hierarchy, in which the people doing the actual work had virtually zero input in the whole process. This led to the developers being treated in a sense as children by management, who themselves naturally knew less of the technical details since they never made it into developers.

For over two months I just did some freelance work on random paid projects which didn't really make me a lot of money, so that I had to ask around on the social networks I frequent for more paid projects. This led to among other things someone referring me to the owner of this German software development company to ask whether he could use my services. The answer, as it turned out, was a resounding 'yes'.

Long story short, this week I spent in Southern Germany, working at the office of this company. This way we both could see whether I'd be able to work alright with the team I would be placed in as iOS developer and whether my work results were satisfactory. That I'm now sitting here back in the Netherlands with a new iPod and almost-current model Macbook Pro provided by said company would suggest a positive result there :)

I'm far happier with this switch to a new job and do not regret leaving my previous place of employment. I now work from home or anywhere I want, in a freelance fashion, meaning that I can work flexible hours without getting into problems with my contract. I'm also earning significantly more than before, which means that now I should finally be able to start saving up some money for the future which will include moving away from the Netherlands.

On one hand it's somewhat scary to start such a new job in this fashion, also because I'm at this point pretty much a beginning iOS developer, though my C/C++ background helps a lot there. There's a lot of responsibility resting upon my shoulders. Fortunately I'm feeling confident enough that I can do this. My experiences at the office this week also proved that. To a good developer the development environment and language should be of no real concern, as the underlying concepts do not change. The whims of the API developers and technical writers form the only major roadblock.

The only thing I still have to take care of at this point is a place of my own where I can live, but then I should be set for a while.


Maya

Something More Mundane; Happiness And Sadness In Small Things

About a month ago my Android smartphone died and I tried to return it to T-Mobile Germany to have it repaired under warranty. Unfortunately T-Mobile showed that they utterly disregard their customers and I'm still stuck with a broken smartphone and useless warranty on it. I have contacted the European Customer Center (ECC) about this who will try to mediate in this case between T-Mobile Germany and me. Hopefully things will work out there. On a happier note, my girlfriend gave me her used phone: a Galaxy Nexus. As she just upgraded to a new phone due to extending her phone plan (yay for European carriers), this was most welcome. She had only owned it for a month herself as she got it as a brand-new replacement for the previous phone which had an unfortunate accident.

In the bus earlier today an old man sat down near us and started talking enthusiastically about this new tablet was that he got, how he was able to stay in contact with his daughter in South-America and others every single day so easily. For someone who must have been around 80 years old he seemed quite eager to use new technology. I thought it was a very positive thing. Definitely worth a few smiles.

My girlfriend and I went to go exchange a halogen light transformer for a working version at a DIY store. As the transformer's packaging had clearly been opened before we knew that the damage inside the unit had been caused by the previous owner, despite it being sold as 'new'. Exchanging it was no problem, just that we had to go pick it up at another location as the one we visited didn't have it in stock. Thus we traveled by bus to said next location and got it there no trouble. On the way back to the bus stop we saw a cat pawing wildly at a bird which was fluttering around on the snow near a hedge. Without a second thought my girlfriend jumped into the fray, chased the cat away and cradled the bird to her chest.

It was clear that the bird had been injured at its leg, with blood visible there on the lighter feathers in that area. We surmised that it'd probably be alright, so we decided to take it home. During the trip home which was by bus and foot the bird seems to calm down at first, but by the time we arrived at the apartment and took the elevator up we noticed that the bird had become very quiet. My girlfriend exclaimed worried that she thought it had breathed its last breath just then and there. Upon taking the bird into our place and putting it down we had to sadly conclude that it had indeed died. We are now waiting to bury it.

It's odd how quickly things can change like that. First we were happy we thought we could save this bird and already could see it fly off again to join other birds. Then gradually it became clear that the bird would not make it, until we had to accept this as a fact. Even though we didn't know this bird for longer than minutes its passing still had an impact on us. Even though we could not have done anything. Upon closer inspection it turned out that the bird had been mauled by the cat and likely sustained internal trauma due to this. Also one of its eyes had been damaged. The shock from the event combined with the stress kept it alive for a bit longer until its injuries became fatal.

We both watch quite a few of those animal cop shows on TV where they save injured and maltreated animals and we have a lot of respect for these people. No doubt they see a lot of animals die every day or week despite all of the care given to them.

Moving on, amidst all of the happenings (both sad and happy) there does seem to be a steady course towards calmer, happier weather. This and next month are still going to be a bit tough for both my girlfriend and I as many things either happen legally or hopefully will work out financially. My girlfriend should have her first name(s) changed to further complete the breaking with her former family, and I have the disciplinary hearing against one gender team which has made my life a living hell the past eight years and counting. Hopefully for both of us this will mean calmer times.

Regarding the hearing next month, I'm currently working on notifying media channels and bloggers around the world about it and the general case so that they will hopefully start carrying news about this matter as well. It's about time us intersex individuals can stop being forced to distinguish us and can finally blend into the wide variety of shapes and colours offered by humanity. There's so much more than black and white.

I'll be publishing a press release on the hearing soon and will continue to do so over the coming months as the case proceeds.


Maya

Hearing Against Unive: Discrimination Against Intersex

Tomorrow I'll be attending the first hearing against my insurance company Unive. The SKGZ organization will be presiding over the hearing, as they prepare to lay down a ruling in this case. At stake is whether or not Unive should fully cover the electrolysis therapy I'm undergoing in order to remove excess facial hair growth. As I pursue a female role in daily life I feel very uncomfortable with this hair growth. Now that I'm officially registered as a female, and the cause of the excess hair growth is medically proven to be due to my intersex condition, i.e. hormonal, I fall under regulations for both transsexuals and regular women with hormonal issues.

So far Unive has declined to give a reason for why they refuse to fully cover electrolysis in my case, merely saying that their medical advisers say that intersex doesn't qualify because it's 'very different'. It's going to be interesting to see and hear how they'll respond now. I'm very curious about who else will be present at the hearing, whether it's from SKGZ or from Unive. I'd like to see the latter try and say to my face that I do not qualify for full coverage because my case is so different from transsexuals and regular women. The suspicion of discrimination is hard to suppress.

I just hope that SKGZ will rule that Unive has to fully cover the therapy so that I can get back the nearly 6,000 Euro I have spent on it so far over the past years. It'd be money I could really use, both for myself and for the intersex cause.


Maya