|
TheTome /
LothedInArchivesJuneYou are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. 30 June 2004 - 14h38 (For someone with as much experience (I can only assume from reading your blogs) with Murphy's Law, it amazes me that you take this job-search thing so seriously. If you relax a bit, it should more or less come to you. And those cover-letters: people like concise ones. That's about all of the Geek's wisdom for today.) - GeekDotNeo People at the Tram occasionally ask me if I'm a student (and then are flabbergasted at some point to here that I'm about 4 year older than they'd ever have guessed, blah blah.) When I say "no", the usual comment is then, "Oh, so do you work here full-time?" My reply is usually a, "Well, sort of, I work five shifts a week". From there the next line diverges, but sooner or late comes round to a "Then what do you do with the rest of your time?" With a certain ammount of humorous embarrassment I answer, "Look for a real job." It's truely horrifying how much time spend in front of this computer on a daily basis getting almost nothing done. I can spend hours researching speculative career paths to no effect. When you get right down to it, I'm not certain how I manage to lose so much time from each day for so little gain. I guess it's a question of focus, and at the moment I have very little. I haven't even bothered to get round to applying for any design jobs this week, between working myself up over that blasted interview and wallowing in self-pity for a day over being ill - and now, today, just plain procrastinating, I've managed to kill the three work days this week that I've had an effective opportunity to do something with myself. Tomorrow and Friday I'm working at the dear old Tram and over the weekends it's impossible to get at this computer, and I've never been comfortable with lap-tops so I do nothing more on them than check my email briefly. To show for today I have a list of some Office recruitment agencies that I need to phone to make appointments with. That's it so far. All I've really got done. I haven't even really emailed anyone, or played computer games, or written a cover letter, nothing! It's tragic, but I'm just not as upset by it as I should be. Hmmm... guess it's the joys of being truely lazy. 29 June 2004 - 13h08 Got a polite rejection email this morning. Sucks to be me. Also got that cold. Double sucks to be me. One of the issues with working behind a bar in London is the sheer number of accents you have to deal with on a daily basis. It's no small wonder that the biggest requirement in 'front of house' service industry positions is to be able to speak decent English. For instance, there is a particular South London accent that manages to leave out the 'r' in 'three' making the word sound like a mangled pronounciation of 'tea', which of course, I interpret to mean 'two'. Generally, I have to resort a lot to pointing and holding up fingers since other words with get mangled are 'pint', 'bottle' and for some reason 'Stella'. Then you get the Paki's, the Eastern Europeans and the Carribeans, many of whom have a loose grasp of English to begin with... To get around this my mind builds up a sort of list of words that I'm likely to be hearing and then searches for something that sounds like them in the garbled flow of speach coming out of a customer's mouth. This means that when someone asks for a more unusual sort of drink the first thing my brain does is to report back that it's failed to find any the items on the list in the customer's vocalisations and that I need to get them to repeat themselves since they're clearly incapable of speaking English correctly. I once landed up pouring an orange juice and cider, since I missinterpreted 'soda' as 'cider'. When I get an odd sounding order I always check it, but sometimes other people aren't clear on my accent either, I guess. I've been trying of late to put the 'r' back into 'thirty', but it just sounds wrong in a sort of American fashion and doesn't flow properly anymore. I have however given up on trying to make 'whatever' contain a 't' and I now say "yeah" a lot unless I've been around South Africans for more than half an hour. I have always said "bollocks". 28 June 2004 - 14h43 Well, I got lucky. (No, not in that way!) I had an interview this morning for a freelance position for a week or two. It all went well, but I was the first person that the interviewer had seen. I'm now sitting here with my cellphone in front of me waiting to hear whether I've got the position or not. Seeing as he said he'd phone this afternoon, sometime after 13h30, with every minute that goes I'm getting further and further from my happy place. On Friday night we, Silvia, Claire and I, found a bar that specialises in vodka. A horrifyingly large sum of money later we'd consumed quite a bit of the stuff and had had a pretty decent time of things. We landed up after that going to this horribly cheesy club that played 80's downstairs and pop/hip-hop upstairs, called Infernos. Not wold shatteringly exciting, although we did have fun telling everyone who was trying to guess our accents (After I got accused of being swedish? Me, swedish?) that we were from 'Catmando'. Upon being asked "Where in Catmando", I was quick to chirp, "South Catmando". Evil stuff vodka. Oh, and yesterday, as well as being role-playing, was my month'a'versary. I've now been here 2 months. I can't really tell whether the time's gone quickly or slowly. Bit of both I guess, my last three months have been such turmoil that it's hard to see my nice ordered life back in Joburg from this perspective, which makes it seem like a while, but at the same time it's hard to believe that I've already been here two months. What's also scary is the rate at which my 25th is creeping up on me... 24 June 2004 - 15h34 Hmm... it's been exactly nine days since I last posted. That's quite a while. Guess it's just that I've had nothing much to say. The good points of this last week were; going out partying on Friday night, discovering that compared to Blackthorn and Strongbow cider, Scrumpy Jack is actually pretty drinkable and booking tickets for Kait and I to go see Blink 182 in December. (Blink! Whoot!) I've also re-designed my CV (found a spelling mistake in it that I'd missed too) and altered the tone of my covering letters to certain types of jobs. This fills me with hope. Probably misplaced hope, but hope none-the-less. I'm also trying to wrangle up the gumption to start applying for reception jobs, since I know the programs (Office) and I've got a typing speed of about 40wpm. Maybe next week. Still hate lots of things, just trying to keep quiet about it. :) And tragically luck seems to be still non-existent to crap. 15 June 2004 - 15h38 This morning, for breakfast, I broke a window. Well, actually I still had coco-pops for breakfast later - but it was pretty much the first thing I did this morning after hauling myself out of bed and saying 'hi' to my housemate. I was trying to open the windows in the lounge, see. Now, while they have no burglar-bars, they do have allen-key locks on them, so opening them is a little more of a chore than 'lift handle and push'. To make this easier for myself I'd climbed on top of the large cabinet that sits in front of the window. Anyway, I managed to knock, with my elbow, a rather heavey lava lamp into the window, which shattered instantly. Turns out there's a good reason that they don't fit windows with 2mm thick glass anymore... It's going to cost me a small fortune to replace. And the odd thing is that I'm less upset about this than I'd expect. In a way it, bar waiting hours for busses (which don't count, since that's just part of life in this city), it's the first thing that's gone wrong since I've got here. It's the first time I can point and say "Gee, that was bad luck." I don't think I've mentioned it in this incarnation of my blog, but I've been recently amazed how much I rely in sheer luck to get me though life. In a way I have a complex half-acknowledged myth structure (read supersitions) of my own which contains a lot of beliefs on luck, how it effects people and my whole good luck vs bad luck vs no luck (I think it has a lot to do with being around dice too much). Of late, I've simply had no luck. Not bad luck, just an absence of any luck. It's been disturbing me. So the reason I'm kinda happy is that at least this morning shows I've got some luck back. It's not good luck, but at least it's luck. And somehow that counts for a lot. Call me crazy - you won't be the first to do so. :) (Someone up to showing me the good side of London sounds great. What would also be great is know who's volunteering the service?) "Audaces fortuna iuvat" - Guess I just need to figure our how to be bold. to be bold add double underscores around text ;) - d@vid June 15 2004
14 June 2004 - 16h35 Managed to avoid drinking wine quite as quickly as I did on Saturday, so my Sunday was substantially less fuzzy than my Saturday... Generally the only thing of significance I managed yesterday was manage to convince Silvia that she needs to have a real party night out for her 25th (which is this coming friday and my weekend night off at the Tram). Not that there's anything wrong with that accomplishment (although Silvia does seem to change her mind a lot - I'm not certain if it wasn't a waste of time in the end), but arg. I accomplish so little these days it feels kinda pathetic. Sigh. Yeah, anyway. I'll cut the whinge short - probably shouldn't have started it. You know, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything (but I just wouldn't make a good 'silent type'). I hate being dependent on my legs and public transport. I hate having to walk home with 5 kilo's of groceries. I hate the blisters I have on my feet from standing behind a bar. I hate sitting at home alone during the day waiting to go to work, struggling with my own apathy. Grr...
13 June 2004 - 01h42 Umm... Let me start with a "damn, I'm trashed". Sainsbury's medium SA white whine may be (comparatively) cheap, but one bottle later and I'm well drunk. I hate busses in London. I love complete strangers who have a better idea on how you need to get home then you do. The last 493 drove past me with a standard bus-like whooshing noice - bastards, without stoppiong. So I caught something else. I'll remember it next time. It had a really helpful girl on it. I landed up at Clapham junction catching a bus from which it took me less than 5 mins walking to get home. In fact, I'm only on the computer since I needed to get my housemates number since, I'd said I'd stop in at the Tramshed before I went home to get a lift with them, but well... I'm here. And now, they know that too. So all is peachy. No. Worries. Mate. And the scariest thing is that I am, while feeling so buggered that lying down pretending to stare at the ceiling whizzing by is all I want to do right now, none-the-less typing and edit-checking everything I've written! (although apparently not with total success I notice now; 'white whine '...) Tomorrow, we burn meat ('braai'; 'bar-be-que') and drink more wine (red this time, and I bought two bottles, not one. Arg) I fail to get to see the F1 Gran Prix since France vs England at football (Euro 2004 cup) and generally life will go on. Hope everyone else has a weekend which does not include vast quantaties of 'sin tax'. Bandwidth was indeed the issues and if you think I complain too much about this damn place, why don't you volunteer to show me the "shweeeet" side? So. There. 09 June 2004 - 13h13 I hate it when the wiki stuffs up. Grr. I had this whole long post on why listening to the badly digitised steaming audio version of 5fm was somehow better than Ian's mp3 collection of local British radio - which has a lot to do with the fact that they put on much more adverts more often and they're all awful and annoying. That and I'm a bit suspect over the Brits taste in music. Well, it's gone. I also then went on to mention the stupid weather that forms an excuse for an English summer based around the fact that Monday was 26 degrees, yesterday was 31 and today is 24 with showers expected this afternoon. But I've lost that too. Bloody unpredictable bollocks, it's worse than Cape Town. Other than that I'm only suffering a bit of a dilemma on what the hell I'm going to do with myself for this year if I don't get back into design. I've bounced through ideas ranging from designing my own T-shirt label (which I've mentioned), studying marketing courses, becoming a hairdresser (people will always have hair, well, some people will always have hair - I don't know, it's just got to be better than typesetting - except you have to study for two years!!! How can it take two years to learn that crap?) and studying some course on Wine and Spirits with the intention of working in wine sales or something. I don't know, I'm grasping at straws here in an attempt to give myself some direction. I think the first task I need to accomplish however is find a better job than being a barmaid since there is no way I can survive and pay rent on ?100 per week! After that, I'll see how much spare cash I've got to play with. Now if this doesn't save this time I'm going to be really pissed off! (It didnt, but thats what MS Words for.) Are you sure it's not a bandwidth issue? Streaming audio does take up a lot of b/w, although you British wankers seem to have more than enough of it to throw away :P Also, does the 'back' button on your broswer not restore the contents of your text area? (Thinking about it, I seem to remember that while text boxes and other "smaller" inputs are saved, the potentially huge text area is not :/ I think) I remember using Ananzi mail from home on a crap connection and it kept bombing, I ended up having to save every mail I wrote to Notepad so that I could re-enter it after it (invariably) lost everything. — SynKronos (Carefully clicks the "Minor Change" box)
07 June 2004 - 16h41 Well, a quick glance will remind everyone that I am a huge HP movie fan. Huge. So imagine my annoyance when, as the movie starts, I discover that there is a somewhat 'gay-esque' voice behind me loudly explaining character's in the movie and the differences between what was appearing on screen and what was supposed to occur in the book to his apparently ignorant friend. After tolerating this for about 15 minutes, I gave up hoping one of his mates would tell him to quiten down. I turned around and told him, loudly to "Shut the f*** up". The reply I got was a very peevish, "I'm not in the mood for this." His friend contributed a "Why don't we spit on her" (What is it with the English and spitting? Eugh) He then tried lunging forward in threatening manner to try and get me to stop my Unshakable Glare of Death. It was around this moment that I was well into the "the world has gone red and I hunger for pain, death and mutilation" phase of things and I was wondering how jacked cinema security was, how bad English prison's were and how long it would take for Alex and Reg to pull me off this guy's corpse. Headlines like "Harry Potter rage, girl kills man!", "Satanic Harry Potter Murder" and "Voldermort made me do it!" (Alex's contribution) flashed through my mind. I was on the verge of complete frenzy, if that guy had done one more thing in that moment to annoy me I was ready to launch myself off my chair and lay into him like there was no tomorrow (and my nails are looking pretty long and hard at the moment). Fortunately for him (and me), he shut up. Wanker. However, I looved the movie. No surprises there. They diverged a bit more than in the prior ones from the book - buy well, the movies stay the same length and the books are just getting longer so that's no big surprise either. I'm tempted to go and watch it again sans annoying idiots - although the problem is that it's about seven pounds to watch a movie. So, then again, maybe not. Next one up is Shrek 2 (happy happy joy joy). YanKa?: When I was watching Kill Bill Vol 1 Several black gentelmen would not stop and I qoute "Eish that Chinese bitch is fine." this went on till I told 'em "Would you please shut the fark up." they did but I swear I heard a mumbled "White assed cracker". There should be disintegrator ass blasters in each seat that takes out irratating louts. Umm... Yanka, <grin> the sympathy for my complain - and the comment - are appreciated however, pretty please, good comment ettiquette on the wiki is that you tick the 'minor change' box when posting a comment. I know I blasted d@vid over this a while back (and others). Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine. "blasted" indeed - I was reduced to tears... couldn't use the wiki for hours... sniff - d@vid June 08 2004 Ag sorry man, sally weer geberri (I won't happen again). Don't I feel like a right tit. - Yancke "doh" van Tonder 02 June 2004 - 11h55 I'm sitting here listening to the faint strains of piano music which the next door neighbour's kid is practicing. Normally this is only a weekend phenomenon, however I've got the impression that it's a school break/holiday at the moment and so the little blighter is home during the day. Fortunately it's the faint strains of piano music - since the person, while getting better, is still not that good. Tonight I'm going to watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Now, I have a terrible thing to confess; I like the movies better than the books. I watched the first movie before I'd read the books and fell so completely in love with it, that the books just don't have a chance. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the books, but they're not a patch on the movies. Every time I watch those movies they give me this sense of child-like glee and wonder. Watching them takes me back to the days when I first watched Labyrinth on a crowded floor in a hushed music room as a part of a special treat to us at the end of a term, to when I first saw Neverending Story and Mum and Dad took my brother and I to the cinema (possibly my first time in a cinema) to watch Willow. It takes me back there, but you know what, they're even better than those movies! I could froth on for hours and still not fully convey my love of 'arry Potter movies. Alex has had to deal with 'the smile no man can wipe from my face' and the literal squirmings of glee that I perform every time the trailer comes on. (I giggle and bounce a little for Shrek 2, but it's not quite the same thing) I can only consider myself fortunate that I'm not easily obsessed (quite the opposite in fact), as a result don't own tonnes of merchandise or rewatch the movies religiously every month. Although, I will probably buy all the DVD's. At some point. When they're on special. (Which they are... on play.com. arg) Go back to LothrielPixie or to LothedInTransition |