In June 2023, I was approached by two of my distant cousins — one Australian born and one Croatian born. The first one still lives in South Australia, and the other has moved to Dublin, Ireland. The initial reaching out to me was initiated by the Australian cousin. The reason…

A deep-feeling aristocrat, a talented poet, an emotional eccentric and an avid traveller, Lord Byron have been misinterpreted and misrepresented on quite a few occasions, both during his life time and centuries after. Considering his personality and the way he expressed it, such misinterpretations are not a coincidence but a…

In November 2021 I purchased my first autosomal DNA test on a leading online DNA platform, My Heritage, founded in 2003 with its headquarters in Or Yehuda, Israel. A month later, right before Christmas I was informed by an email that my sample had been processed and analysed and the…

My seventh job was balancing between being an employee and employer, and was the last one working for someone else. I acquired the job through personal initiative by approaching one of the business contacts of the Director of my previous work place. …

My six job was the first on the list of start-ups that I had worked for. The company that I landed at, rather unexpectedly, was called Rising Star. I did not look for it, they found me through a recruiting agency located on Piccadilly Circus, London. The brief the agency…

Comparing to the previous four, my fifth job was the most rewarding in self-development sense. I got to cover a maternity leave for Marketing Manager at the non-for-profit organisation — Embroiderers’ Guild, the office of which at the time was located in the Hampton Court Palace. The Guild’s team consisted…

My fourth job was a result of using one of my connections. It was my classmate’s husband whom I contacted and asked whether he would like to hire me as an assistant to his office located on Bond Street, London. He was in antique jewellery business. The business was owned…

My third job was very similar to the second one but in a completely different environment and setting. Having moved from Helsinki to London, I decided to explore the travel market by apply to different travel agencies. Little did I know that London travel agencies were a far cry from…

My second job was with a Finnish travel agency Norvista that in 1997 used to have its office in the Astoria hotel right opposite the Isaac’s Cathedral, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. This was a summer job, part of the practical training that everyone who studied the hospitality management in the…