Right, I really don't have a lot of time to type, so I'll make this quick. Yes, I haven't done anything with this blog for almost a year. I'm well aware of that. But I do have my reasons, and I'll go in to them later. By later I might mean later in this entry or on another day altogether. I'm far to fickle to be even vaguely committal at the moment.
Anyway, once more, I'm typing this blog during my lunch break from a library, Uxbridge library. This of course means that I'm almost certainly still working in Uxbridge, but do I still work for Hertz? Unfortunately, I do, which is obviously a cause of great distress to me.
On the plus side, I'm typing this blog entry on my brand new netbook, mini-laptop-thing. Its diminutive size should, hopefully, allow me to carry it around wherever I go, so hopefully that'll mean more writing from now on in. With it's smaller keyboard, it's a little different to type on, so a few more errors in my typing will probably creep in until I've managed to become accustomed to it. At the moment, with Wi-fi off and 10% of the battery depleted, It's telling me that I should get another 2.5 hours out of it. Anyway, we'll see. I love it though. It still has that wonderful “new electrical item smell”.
But, you might ask (you might ask, but I wouldn't be able to hear you even if you did), surely I must have spent the last 10-11 months doing more than buying a tiny little laptop (there was research of course. Lot's of tedious, painstaking research; I loved it.)? Of course they have. I've bought loads of other stuff too. An Xbox 360 (even though I'd previously said that I never would. See, I'm terribly fickle), a PS3(just for blu rays, not for games. I only own two games and one of those came with the machine). On top of that (physically as well as metaphorically. Well, technically it stands atop a brand new glass stand, but the consoles lie beneath so I think I can be excused my slight technical inaccuracy) sits a brand new(-ish, I've had it since November last year) 32” Sony HD LCD TV.
So, I've bought stuff. What else? Hmm, what else? I fell for a girl at work who didn't like me back (probably for the best, on reflection I think she may have been a bit unbalanced.) She then became quite obviously attracted to a new guy who started (actually, blatantly is a better word. No, an even better word would be shamelessly. She was, at times, all over the poor guy, which I guess is the main reason why he wouldn't have been all that interested.) She left, which was probably best for all concerned.
I've been on holiday twice, most recently to Dublin (Again,. I was there last in 2004) which was great, and before that, to Warsaw, which wasn't. Actually it was depressingly like going on holiday in Slough, if Slough were overpriced and had fewer people in it. Actually I get the impression that most of Warsaw's previous residents had found their way to Berkshire. Maybe they feel at home there, who knows. Anyway, Slough... I mean Warsaw was a wholly depressing place where many depressing things happened. Once I returned home I headed to my Doctor's and got diagnosed with depression. This probably won't come as much of a shock to those of you who've been following my previous musings. Clearly some outside force (actually it's clearly an inside force since it's taken up residence on my head) was guiding me down the wrong path, ensuring that I could never drag myself away from the mediocrity
The little voice that tells me that I'm incapable of doing any better is a little quieter now. The one that tells me that even if I am good enough I don't deserve good things to happen to me is lying (if a disembodied thing can lie) bleeding to death in the gutter. It's that last voice that nearly made me run away from a recent interview. I stood outside the building, waiting to go in to my delayed interview. The job was pretty damn good. The advert from the Metro simply read
COPYWRITER WANTED
Experience an advantage but by no means essential, would also suit graduate or first-time jobber. Healthy interest in consoles and video games a big plus. Good English, grammar and punctuation a must! Small company based in Fulham, offering a fast-track to management and more money within a year for the right person. Starting salary of £18,000, plus participation in weekly cash bonus scheme.
If you're available immediately and want to work in a fun and dynamic environment,
call ***** now on 020 7*******
So, the only contact details were a telephone number. Normally, this would have put me off altogether. “What, you mean I have to talk to someone to get this job. No way, I'm not going to do it.” And that would be that. I'd ignore the add and move on to something else. But not this time. Whether it was because of the extra mental strength imbued through medication, or maybe it was because I really wanted to write about video games (Let's be honest, it was probably a combination of both), after a morning of soul searching I, after my boss had gone home for the day, picked up the phone and dialled the number. I talked to the voice on the other end for a while. I'm told by my friend who sits across from me, that I sounded really confident. I don't really remember, but I guess I must have done something right because I'd somehow managed to talk my way into an interview. To my mind, the interview went pretty well. In fact, I was pretty sure I'd actually managed to pull it off. Whilst the ad had said Fulham, the actual location of the company was Parson's Green, just one stop down from Fulham Broadway. I knew that I could easily manage the 45 minute train ride. It would give me ample time to read or maybe even write. Plus, since work hours were 10am until 6pm,I'd actually have a little more time for a lie in every morning.
One the way up there, I got a message on my mobile to let me know that the interview would have to be delayed by 30minutes. Not a big deal really. Sure, the delay added to my overall nervousness, but at least it would give me time to explore the surrounding area. Whilst there was little in the way of chain stores and restaurants (the delay had made me realise that I was craving a McDonalds Cheeseburger) there were a whole bunch of pubs, cafés and, most importantly, a library. Looking at the area's denizens I briefly fretted over not being (or looking) quite cool enough to work somewhere like this, but a trip to the nearby Gregg's Bakery for a sausage roll, where I noted the similarly not-cooler-than-thou clientèle, quelled my worries.
Anyway, to the interview itself. It took me a while to find the exact location of the office. On my reccy when I'd first arrived, I'd noted the company's sign, which I assumed would be pretty near to their front door. I headed down the side alley, a route suggested by the positioning of the signage, expecting to be greeted by a handy front door. Instead I found a man who, judging by his accent, was of Eastern European origin. Apparently there's an old joke Hollywood joke about a polish actress who sleeps with a screenwriter to get a part in a movie, the joke being that screenwriters have no power over hiring and firing for a movie (or over anything really), but the Polish actress was to dumb to know that. Effectively, in this branch of mildly racist humour, the average Pole is cast in much the same part as the Irishmen in “There was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman” jokes. I've never really understood how those jokes could have come about, since pretty much everybody I've ever met from Ireland seems to be pretty sharp. Conversely, the Eastern European man (for argument's sake, I'll say he was Polish) was doing his level best to reinforce the stereotype. Since, he was working on an entranceway to what, logically, seemed like the portal to the office sought, I asked him if he could point me in the right direction. His reply went something like this... “Many people have ask me where is this company. I do not know. Perhaps is next door?” I answered probably not, but thanked him for his help none the less. Obviously I'm not all that fond of racism and xenophobic stereotyping, so I would still be hopeful that this particular predjudice wouldturn out to be absolute codswallop.
As it turned out, the doorway he was working on happened to be the entryway to the office I required. In other words, he was so thick (or perhaps simply ill informed; I'll give him the benefit of the doubt) that he didn't even know for whom he was actually working.
Anyway, after making a few enquiries of another gentleman who was clearly more clued up than the Pole, I discovered that I had to go through the entrance of the building next door in order to get to the interview. The builders therein who were working on what appeared to the the kitchen and toilet area, were far more clued up than their Eastern European counterpart. From them I found out that the interviews were taking place just upstairs and that, as soon as the current one was over, I could start mine.
A short while, and a trip to the toilet later (last minute nerves perhaps) it was time for my interview. A woman with black hair and olive skin came to meet me. It transpired that this was the same woman who had spoken to me on the phone a couple of days earlier.
Until the downstairs building work was completed, the company was based entirely in one, near pristine, white room., accessible via a dirt covered, but clearly newly refurbished, staircase. My interviewer apologised for the messy stairs, noting that it didn't seem worthwhile cleaning them whilst all the building work was going on. I looked around the room. Sitting atop the desk on the right side of the room was a pristine, porcelain white iMac. It's newly opened box lay just a few meters away in the corner of the room. On the opposite desk was a Sony Vaio Laptop which my interviewer had clearly just been using.
The interview itself too the form of a brief chat, a handing over of my work examples and a quick 15 minute writing test during which I had to come up with promotional-(ish) blurb for 3 new/upcoming games, writing 100 words on each. The games were Resident Evil 5 (a game nobody really knows an awful lot about besides the “controversial”fact that it was set in Africa, meaning that all the bad guy Zombies would be black), The Star Wars, The Force Unleashed, a new multi-media/marketing opportunity tie in, which I'd never heard of, so I ended up writing an awful lot about Star Wars in general. The final game was Fallout 3. I'd heard the title, but knew little else about it. Handy then, that I was provided with a couple of magazines and the whole of the internet for research.
I don't think I did too badly. Apparently I did well enough to meet the guy who was bankrolling the operation too, so I went away with a good feeling about the whole thing. I'd find out on Monday afternoon whether my faith had been misplaced.
So, Monday afternoon came and went, and I received no call. By the time I returned home I was deflated. It seemed likely that I hadn't got the job. I actually spent a while convincing myself that not getting the job wasn't altogether bad. It was, of course, but there's no use pining after something that I clearly couldn't have. Or could I? At about 7pm my phone rang. Upon answering I was greeted by an apology that it had taken so long to get back to me. Apparently they'd had “shitloads” of applicants and it had taken some time to whittle them down. Anyway, they'd compiled a short-list of three people and I was on it. I'd get a final decision the next day.
When the decision finally came on Tuesday afternoon I was disappointed. I hadn't got the job. Worse, from what he'd said “we had to choose somebody” I got the impression that they'd virtually picked the winner's name out of a hat. I was pretty despondent despite the promise that they'd look me up in a few months time when they planned to expand and new positions became available. It remains to be seen whether that actually happens.
