Even as an unemployed bum* Monday's suck something dreadful.

Last Friday was Interview #2 with (yet another) recruiter who was happy with me and was forwarding my resume on to her client but (!) could not give me a job description, role requirements or any idea what precisely it is I would have been doing if I got the job (or the next stage of interviewing). C'est la vie. No matter the country recruiters are odd ones. Chalk it up to severe waste of my time, her time and my (sparkly sparkly**) suit.

As of Monday I have
- Received 1 rejection letter (not exactly unexpected as it was for "Job I Am Not Qualified To Do" - also known as "WTFAREYOUDOINGAPPLYINGFORTHIS" or WTF?THIS for short)
- Applied for 1 (more) government role that only avoids falling into the WTF?THIS category because I intentionally applied for a level below what I should probably be at. So really it's more like a WTF?LESSMONEYTHIS (but somehow that's less pithy and harder to type).
- Applied for 1 job in the private sector
- Realised that I still have 12 more job applications for government roles that have as yet to reject me (which is both a good thing and - AUGH HURRY UP AND DO IT ALREADY SO I CAN STOP WAITING!)

On the other hand, in the past five minutes, my mother wandered back into my room with my mobile phone (which she had absconded with to play Bubble Breaker) to say that somebody had called me but she didn't know who as she didn't pick it up). Hopefully whoever it was is leaving me a voice mail message or sending me an email.

Edit to add: Turns out the missed phone call was my sister. D'oh.


* Is there a manual for how to be an effective unemployed bum? I mean I perpetually shift between not getting up till past ten to being up before 7. Surely there must be some sort of equilibrium.

** Not actually sparkly (sadly).

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The count for the day stands at:

1 => job applied for (possibility of getting job offer or interview fairly low however)
3 => phone calls made to find out status of job applications (pending, 'we haven't gotten to that stage of the process yet' and recruiter unavailable)
1 => phone number incorrectly listed in resume that has been sent out to most of the jobs applied for (headdesk). However had two numbers listed, one of which was my mobile, so... [sighs]

Mostly I'm wondering at the strange wording made by the recruiter who responded 'we haven't gotten to that stage'. It seems vaguely ominous. I keep imagining this large circle on their calendar labelled "Tell the smucks who failed to interest us that they're losers". However I keep telling myself that paranoia is mostly useless when they're not actually out to get you so much as completely uninterested in you as prey.

Edit: And Recruiter 3 (the one I met last Friday) has come back to say:
1) The client is interested but will want to meet face to face
2) The client is being pressured to take an internal applicant.
3) The client has another role that is similar that they want to hire an external applicant for.
4) It's going to be a few more days.

... And now I wish I had known this PRIOR to waking up so I could have spent the entire day doing something else rather than on the phone.


* Mostly arbitrary number. Except I think I've been back in Australia six weeks, so theoretically that would be 7 days x 6 weeks - (2 day weekends x 6 weeks)... And I have just given more thought to this than I should have.

So... What can I say about my interview with the recruiter?

- administrative staff evidently get a maximum hourly rate of $13.50. At least from this recruitment firm.
- warm room + sweets = TR sugar high + crash. I could see it all in my head.
- ever seen rain as it falls down and moves across the horizon? Try seeing it from the 39th floor. Wow. Wish I had brought my camera (probably a bad idea to bring it to an interview though)
- signs that you're getting older: the recruiter is younger than you
- that ANZ building on Queens Street towards Bourke has 70s styled gothic arches. Who would have thought?

In my mind I label first interviews as "things to fuck up and hate - much like Mondays and tax time". If I don't stammer I fidget, if I don't fidget I am incoherent and on the best days, I am all of those plus inappropriate business wear.

Yesterday:
- I crashed my printer (wtf) and thence took three hours to print four pieces of paper,
- lost my passport (and nearly had a panic attack complete with tears),
- had to buy a suitable top to wear inside my suit (and evidently the only work tops they're selling these days are shiny, made of satin or lace and come in two sizes: small and extra small)
- and the piece de la resistance: my car died just before I turned onto a major road.

On the positive side:
- the printer crashed early so at least I could fix it and finish printing my CV before midday rather than midnight
- found my passport (in the printer <== two for one on that yesterday)
- found a rather nice top at Just Jeans AND a suitable top (that didn't look cheap, stodgy or too shiny/silky/lacey/satin-y) at Suzanne Grae (unexpected that)
- the car broke down BEFORE I got onto the major road rather than on the major road with on-coming traffic or in the middle of an intersection or anything like that.

Given all of this, I fully expected that today I would drop something wet, bright and embarrasingly coloured on myself, fall into a pond (even though we don't live near any large bodies of water), end up stranded somewhere, be four hours late to my interview AND be completely incoherent and insane during the interview.

So it was a bit of a surprise to find myself chatting like a completely normal person to the recruiter.

Then again, a mark of insanity is the inability to see insanity in self. So really the smiling recruiter might have been trying to escape the glint of madness in my eye.

On the other hand, I kept the expressive hand waving and fidgeting to note taking and occasional gesturing.

The only thing that was out of the usual was that he asked me about my academic achievements AND my grades. I was so thrown I told him that although I was fairly sure it had been a distinction, it had been five years since I'd last really thought about it.

... Surely academic grades shouldn't be the first thing you ask in an interview when it isn't a graduate role?

Or should I really start hunting down my academic transcripts and brushing up on the things I did in university and high school?

(because really, as much as I was rather proud at the time, it's amazing how - not important most of those achievements are five years after you leave!)

Well, the interview seemed to go well, and I have now passed the 'first interview' benchmark. From here on in, it'll only get more familiar (and worse).

And on the positive side I got to wear my sparkly* pin-striped suit.

Sadly, not my pretty black and white butterfly handbag, but I did get to wear my awesome black work heels** (they have a strap and are very shiny).

*not really sparkly, but inside my head it did
** something tells me I'm really not suited to work in a stodgy work place. Not when most of my working wardrobe was bought under this sort of adjectives.

Interview with recruiter Friday.

Three weeks of answering selection criteria for government roles, today I pick up the phone at 4:45 and thirty minutes later I have a request for an interview.

Hey - does anybody out there know what anime is being screened at Manifest? Couldn't find it at their website.

I guess this is proof that anime and Manifest has gone mainstream (to my family at least - to the rest of the world, this probably happened several years ago). After years and years and years of them 'indulging' my interest in anime, one of my sisters wants to go to Manifest - and did so without actually knowing I use to help run it.

Oh LOL.

I wish that the various defence departments in Australia would stop recruiting* when I'm looking for work. Others might say "Hey look, a sign that you should try and become a more valuable member of society!". I, on the other hand, take a look at the graduates they recruit, or the standard of intellect. Or the puzzles they use to winnow out the unintelligent. Or all of the above.

And I realise that not only am I unqualified but I am really, really, really rather stupid**.

Also it's depressing.



*for civilian roles, not for the army, navy and air force that is.

**which is why I get annoyed at people being stupid, because if I get it with my not-good-enough-to-serve-my-country intellect, why can't they?

Found while looking at a web designer/developer role out in the Mornington Peninsula:

Workload:
- Regular tasks = 37.5 hours per week
- Regular tasks + Major web or publishing project (eg. Book)
= approx. 70 hours per week


Regular tasks by themselves already take up the 7.5 hour work day (over five days) that organisations generally use (and which most commercial organisations supplement with unpaid overtime from their workers).
The inclusion of project work would see this increase to a minimum of 14 hours per five day week OR 10 hours over a seven day work week.

Is that even legal? How much are they actually paying to make a seven day work week worth it?

Perhaps it's just because male patriarchy, rape and sexuality is on my mind recently. But was on twitter and found this RT (which, from what I can gather stands for 're-tweet' and means he's copying what somebody else said):

unzip; strip; finger; mount; fsck; umount; sleep #geekpickuplines

Is it just me or is this rather - well, sexist.

I know it's a joke - based on commands from Unix shell scripting. But even so - the implications behind it just seem rather... Well.

Anyway, am I over-reacting? Maybe it's just context - as in what I've been reading today giving this the wrong context.

Found while surfing job boards:

Under limited guidance and direction, either individually or as part of a small team undertake laboratory measurements and provide support funtions within the Ultraviolet Radiation Group of the Non Ionising Radiation Branch

And a part of me immediately thought: if you ever want to gain superpowers from radiation here's your chance!

(The rest of me noted that I was completely unqualified and also we have a "Radiation Group" and a "Non Ionising Radiation Branch")

So I've been back in Australia for two weeks, five days and twenty hours. But who's counting.

In between babysitting for my elder sister and driving my third sister around (she's pregnant with her second child) and cooking, cleaning, running four different dinner parties and catching up on paperwork (the not-fun sort), more paperwork (the money-eating-sort), unpacking (kill me please) and grabbing the three hours after midnight to break through the new archive software code bugs, I've been looking for work.

And by "looking" I mean "not applying but knowing in a round-about fashion of its existence". Today was the day I set to start applying. I had even, theoretically, thought that I'd send out a few responses to job advertisements. Maybe even speak to recruiters if they called.

Except, of course, I forgot that government roles always include selection criteria - and request that you "address" them. By which they mean three pages of short, encapsulated essays.

Which wouldn't be so bad (on a scale between "cleaning toilets" and "end of the world" it lands somewhere between "stepped in what turned out to dog poo" and "End of the world and the person screaming next to me is a fundamentalist") except none of the jobs enthuse me.

I've forgotten what it's like to be excited and intrigued by a potential role and what challenges it can bring me. It just all seems so - futile. Get a job, pay taxes, hate the government, buy a house that is vastly overpriced, spend the majority of my working life paying off the house - eventually retire at age 80 and die shortly thereafter.

... I hope that this is just the result of a day's worth of answering selection criteria questions because if it isn't the next sixty odd years look to be rather bad.

PS. What the hell does "person of diverse cultural background" actually mean? Is it somebody who can't claim Anglo descent? Somebody who can claim four different races in their background? Somebody who can speak eight languages and only eats pine nuts every third Saturday after the full moon? Are you diversely cultural if you can swear in more than one language? Or have pink hair? Is it a bit like the pink elephant? If you claim to be diversely cultural you aren't really?

Am back in Australia, jet lagged, overloaded with baggage and still trying to work out how I closed my eyes at eleven in the morning and only managed to open them again when the sun went down.

I wonder if vampires get jet lag?

Am on holiday for the next week. Will be completely unable to access internet for 90% of time. Please to not be crashing internet or planning world domination till back k thnx!

The boxes are packed, the house is an explosion in slow motion, the movers are due from 7 AM onwards (which means that I'm sitting waiting to call and find out what time precisely at 8:01AM when their offices open), the carpet cleaners are due at 4pm and I have an appointment with the chiropractor at 11 AM because I didn't throw my back out (again) when I moved the heavy boxes... But it feels like I might be on the way to throwing it out.

Tomorrow we fly to Greece. I just need to not have that nervous breakdown for another thirty-two hours and then I can do it on a nice, peaceful ship.

Today is the last day of work for the foreseeable future.

Having given the past three and a half years of my life to the conglomerate and the account I find myself at a loss for what to say.

I won't miss the account, I won't miss the conglomerate and its wacky, wacky shenanigans. I will miss the people but not in that soul-wrenching, gut-twisting way.

It's 8:07 AM., this time tomorrow, I'll be unemployed and on vacation. Hopefully the movers will have arrived.

This is me, moving to the next step of my life.

Is there anything more sad or pathetic than finding, whilst you're packing, an expired mostly-full box of condoms?

With the flat back to hosting only one person (oh privacy how I have missed you - almost as much as my back has missed the nice, supportive, not-an-air-mattress-bed) I have started packing.

Oh don't get me wrong, I packed up all my books two weeks ago when the boxes arrived but saved the rest of the packing for after the parental units left for Europe (it being a one bedroom flat there just isn't enough room for boxes, packing and three adults).

So far the paintings and picture frames are done.

Unfortunately so is some paint around the picture hooks. I'm going to have to go find some white paint to do some touch up (and hope the landlady doesn't notice [ulp]).

I've started onto my first tea cartoon (which is much smaller than previously thought) and discovered, to my chagrin that work suits weigh more than previously expected.

Also, ow my back.

Tomorrow I think it's time for a quick dash into the city to see if Bang Bang actually does buy clothes from you (and if so how much I can get for some fashion mishaps or never-wore I have). Hopefully that'll still give me enough time to find my swimming suit and start dividing clothes between got-to-keep and get-rid-of.

I am desperately trying not to panic about the fact that (1) I have less than 19 days to get this all packed up AND (2) there's noticeable paint missing from around the picture hooks.

Oh lol! Group of Welsh shepherds and their sheep. No words.

Today I had the first of what is likely to be many catch up sessions intended to take everything I know about the account and working on it and passing it on to the closest thing we have to a technical lead for that account.

Which might seem weird since usually it should be the other way around - except I have two years seniority on the technical lead (long story - suffice to say I probably got more than weird looks when I refused to be a technical lead for the account citing lack of experience).

He said that due to recent global decisions from the account, I was probably leaving at the moment when we would be getting the interesting, technically challenging work that I'd waited so long for.

And just like that: REGRET! DOUBT! UNCERTAINTY! AUGH.

I sat back at my desk, and starting the twelfth hour of the fourteen hours I had spent setting up and preparing thirteen newsletters intended for too-fucking-many-languages-and-countries with this gnawing hole of DOUBT in my stomach.

And then, as I yawned (and tried not to scream "NOBODY READS THIS FUCKING EMAILS" whilst stripping off my clothes and diving out the window in boredom) I came to a realisation.

Even if the work got more interesting - it would only be a way for me to get more experience in preparation for me finding a job in Melbourne.
Even if the work got more interesting - it wouldn't for six to twelve more months. And judging from previous experience, the interesting stuff wouldn't come to me because I got all the other work done so much faster so they depended on me keeping that bit down and stable.
Even if the work got more interesting - it probably wouldn't be interesting enough for me.

And I thought: enough.

I'll miss London and I'll miss my little apartment and the beauty that surrounds me on a daily basis and the lifestyle and the independence. But every step I've made here has been made with the intention of going home one day.

And for now, home is still Australia.

Even with the migration visa laws changing (from bachelor to masters as a qualifier), I can still return to London. Albeit I'll probably have to find some man with English citizenship willing to marry me in return for Australian citizenship - but hey, the way the probabilities stack up, that's as likely as me marrying for love.

It's enough. This has been enough. I'm ready for the next adventure and one day, maybe I'll come back but that will be the start of another adventure.

The irony of moving home to Australia is that although I've chosen the timing - although it has all been about me me me - I am petrified that in a year (or six months or three months or next month) I will look up and regret leaving a city I love, a job that paid me enough for me to be independent and a lifestyle that whilst having no future was certainly pleasant enough.

They say to live your life to the fullest, to do what you wish so long as nobody is hurt. I think, sometimes, I live my life in the abject fear that if I don't do something now, I will regret it later. So all the pleasure that might occur now is over-written by the fear of pain in the future.

Which is to say that this must be what percolating an ulcer feels like.