Monday, June 22, 2009

Join the club

I was looking back through my posts wondering why I hadn't yet ranted about the state of the job market. How unlike me...or perhaps I was still too sensitive about the fact that I had been made redundant. It's a huge blow to the ego, but when you retrench management consultants at a 'top-tier strategy firm', you're touching the realms of clinical depression.

Friendships have been tested, networks have been, well, worked, and we've run the gauntlet of head hunters, case interviews, (in)competency interviews, and enough CV/cover letter reiterations to decimate a forest. It ain't over yet.

It's been a complex journey. There's a perverse sense of security in not knowing how good the other guys are, but at the same time, if we weren't there to offset each other's cycles of doom, I'm pretty sure we'd all be living at home with our parents.

Autostalking edit: Cubicle confusion, the anti-9-to-5

There are probably many like this out there, but this one's quite cute for all of its non-offensive, gently lyrical descriptions of cubicle-life, and charmingly persistent lack of attention to grammar and spelling, of the sort you only get when you're brain-numb by 10.30am.

The cynic in my past, employed-version of me says appreciate the 5pm finish, but I'm hardly in a position to comment.

P.S. I've demoted Blobdot because its last post was over a year ago. Some of us clearly have better things to do.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

The minor inconveniences of life #1

Why is it that when you have to take a really important call, you're in any of the following places:
a) in a store that plays clubbing music
b) on the street in a crush of people
c) on the street in a crush of people with a convoy of buses rumbling past
d) on the street in a crush of people with a convoy of buses rumbling past and a line of vespas trying to out-gun them
e) on the street in a crush of people with a convoy of buses rumbling past, a line of vespas trying to out-gun them, and the street-cleaning machine very metticulously scrubbing the pavement right outside the phone booth you've ducked into?!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Unravelling the mysteries of life

Ever since Facebook enabled their quiz-publishing platform, there's been a flood of some of the strangest 'need to knows':

What's your name meaning?
How many girl/boyfriends before your marriage?
What does your birthday say about you?
What is your true age?
Your ideal job.
When will you die?
How will you find your wife/husband?
What's your swim stroke?
When will you get married?
Who will you marry?
How boyish/girlish are you?

My feed is now probably about 60% test results accompanied by some inane comment about whether the test taker agrees or not. I can imagine them sitting there shuddering with every eerily accurate result and denying anything they didn't want to know. Human beings can only survive that way.

I guess we're all seeking some sort of Greater Confirmation. Having said that, I don't fully understand the implications behind what swimstroke matches your personality. There wasn't really ever any doubt on that matter - your coach just yelled at you until you figured it out.

Other quiz results, however, could potentially be life-changing, and it was all a matter of self-awareness. What better than to lead our lives according to the appropriate "What Disney princess are you?" Code of Damsel-in-Distress Ethics.

I'm Belle and if I were a Starbucks coffe, I'd be a latte.

Monday, June 15, 2009

High summer in the city

I'm back by popular demand. Let me qualify that statement for all you skeptics out there.

A grand total of three people have clamoured for more writing, followed by the sentence "I've run out of things to read when I'm supposed to be working!". Thanks, you guys, it does a lot for my self-confidence and budding writing ambitions when I now know that I fill that all-important procrastination zone between your 9am start and your 6pm deadline.

I'm back, but only for a little while, because this outlet also serves me as a bit of a time waster, and I'd rather not fill out job applications on a glorious Monday afternoon when I have a glass of wine with my name on it two streets over. 4.15 is apparently a little too early for a tipple, but 4.45pm is much more socially acceptable, if just barely.

We've also been frantically busy. The CFA came and went with the usual brain-rape-type trauma that leaves you second-guessing all 3 multiple-choice options. Some people walked out way before the bell while others had to have their pencils and calculators forcibly removed. You can never really tell how well you did.

Then we moved to a beautiful flat near the Wharf. It was a long, exhausting weekend, made even more so by the morons that pulled up underneath our window at 6.30am on the Sunday morning and proceeded to have a radio war at maximum volume. Our final trip from the old flat to 'pick up the bits leftover' which turned out to be almost 30kg of washing detergents and other various odds and ends has left Weng broken.

We're now struggling to unpack in any kind of systematic way. Maybe Weng was right and we shouldnt've set up the TV first, but we really need to get going otherwise we'll be eating 2-minute microwaveable oats for the rest of our tenancy.

I've also been trying to determine the X-factor that makes a celebrity blogger a la Mr. Brown and Kenny Sia. It seems like a fairly cushy job - make witty comments about the world and get a heap of free things (for instance, I could really do with a Panasonic LX-3 right now). I suppose the main difference between me and them, if I had to pick just one thing, would be a fanbase. Hmm, I really need to get me one of those.

But maybe not right now. Right now is for making like the locals; when in Rome hey?