And ANOTHER Job!

It’s been over a month since I last posted on this blog. I’m honestly not very good at doing this, really now, am I?

The last post I made was a somewhat hopeful one discussing a job that was starting a few days after working for a professional fundraising organisation. It was certainly an interesting experience and I learnt a lot about it. Mainly that I do not like doing telephone fundraising and that I cannot do it anyway, and that my work ethic is apparently pretty good.

I lasted a week in that job.

Cue a month of being unemployed. When you’re working towards the goal of saving enough money to get yourself to Japan, a month where the opportunities are dry is the worst thing possible. That, and there’s the fact that Christmas is coming up and you struggle to pay board, let alone get anyone anything. I honestly feel pretty dreadful about it, I’d go as far as to say that until this week I’ve been flitting into fits of depression and the urge to give up was on the horizon.

The day that was brought me up is the day that is perhaps the worst day of my year. Last Thursday was the fourth anniversary of the day my dad died. I never forget, but then again it’s the day before my dad’s birthday, which is a week after my birthday so there is no way I CAN forget.  I try my best to shut myself in on that day, I’m quite open but at the same time I’m also quite private with the things that are closest to my heart and my father was pretty much my role model throughout childhood. I’ve always had to do SOMETHING around that time too, whether it was helping a professor give a lecture by singing Blackbird by The Beatles or giving a presentation about my research project’s progress (or lack thereof), I was busy.  I’ve pushed myself forward and I’ve gone ahead and lived my dreams of going to Japan, and now I am going to go again.

I’d like to think that he’d be pretty damned proud of me; after all I finally got my degree!

The good news is that I have another temporary job that will last me until the end of January. It pays national minimum wage and is situated in Nottingham, but the actual work seems to be pretty good and involving Microsoft Excel and Google searches. How awesome is that? (Please note, I thought laser spectroscopy was awesome at one point…who am I kidding it’s still fascinating chemistry!) I found out that I can type at 81 words per minute when copy typing, and the assumption is that generally people type faster when they are audio typing, but I’m not sure I completely buy that to be honest. I can also type at double the average keystrokes when doing alphanumeric data entry, which I am pretty pleased about to be honest.

Last Week's Job & This Week's Job

I guess now is a good a time as any to make a new post. My life took a turn for the interesting last week, and then got more interesting. Not quite Japan just yet, but still...

Despite my uneasy feelings, I went for the second stage of the interviews with the company with the hasty progression system. I spent the day with one of the accounts managers with the company and learnt more about what they did. The job was door-to-door sales (in my case it was canvassing for charity donations) I still had reservations, but I needed a job pretty desperately.

Little did I realise that the hours weren't what they claimed. I was told originally that it was 11:30 to 8:30, but the truth is that of the 4 days I went, I arrived at 10 AM in 3 of the days and every day I struggled to get the last train at 10:05 PM. The money per time ratio was terrible, and I just couldn't see myself getting any money for at least 2 weeks, and being paid 2 weeks in hand would mean it'd take a month before I received my earnings. So in all, I was unimpressed after 2 days.

That's not to say that I'm afraid of the hard work, dislike my colleagues, dislike the job or the hours. In fact I found the people quite pleasant, I don't mind working any of the hours as long as I'm paid AT LEAST national minimum wage. There were times in the job which were pleasant, especially when you're just about to get an app but at the end of the day it was financially not for me.

I skived away from work in order to go to an interview last Friday, get new shoes to replace the ones were wrecked from all the walking at work and get an eye test. So now I start a new job on Wednesday, with the induction tomorrow. Go me!

The new job has a steady wage, though I wish there were more hours in the job. I think with this I should have no problem paying my way to getting new glasses and going to Japan.

In another note, I applied for another job working as an energy surveyor, only to discover that the job was actually with the company that I was going to leave. Oops!

Still no news from Interac at the moment, hopefully it all goes well. I have no idea where it is I'll be going to...

Lots of Interviews

After receiving a call from a recruitment agency last Wednesday, I was surprised even further when my usual agency gave me a ring the day after and informed me of a position in Nottingham that would be right down my street. It was with one of the credit card corporations, close to the Nottingham station (and therefore VERY convenient) and had a very nice working attitude. They offered to let me meet up with one of the managers there and see what the job entailed.

I arrived at Nottingham very early, about an hour or two earlier than they had said, so I had the chance to go and tour Nottingham. It’s quite a lovely city that I fell in love with almost instantly. It has a lot of history and historical buildings in the city centre and Nottingham Castle gives a feeling of being a western version of the many castles that I saw whilst I was in Japan a year ago. I think if I get the time I’ll be sure to give Nottingham a good tour and see what other history it has to offer. There’s a lace centre near the Castle that looks quite nice and I am very fond of Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, which is billed as the oldest pub in England. I wonder where the oldest pub in the world could be.

I got to the building of the company and waited, got the opportunity to talk to the other two candidates sent by my agency (we aren’t competing, there are 3 positions open) and then we met the lady looking for candidates. It started off with two tests to see if we could first be good at proofreading and limit the number of errors we would make. The second was to see if we could write a letter in the way that they desired. As it turned out I not only passed but was the strongest in that particular area. One of the other candidates and I were asked to turn up for another interview on Monday. We had a nice chat and had two additional interviews. The first was a job fit, and I personally felt it went very well. The second was a behavioural interview, which I can’t help but feel as if I didn’t do so great and I think I shot myself in the foot by saying so. I think it could go either way, but I’m not entirely confident to be honest.

That same day, I had an interview with the recruitment agency that contacted me on Wednesday. The lady I spoke to was very pleasant and I got along quite well. I think that she’ll be quite good at finding me work in the local area. She also offered to give me a job with a charity doing telephone fundraising. I don’t know how I feel about that due to the constant rejection I would get, which I would probably not take too well. I think if it were face to face it would be so much easier for me. The truth is that it pays well, so I might take it.

The third interview was yesterday. It wasn’t too hard to find and I wasn’t late for it at all. I went in and spoke to a gentleman who was one of the managers on two campaigns who began to tell me the deal with their company. He spoke of the progression scheme that his company offered and that I could get myself into a position of management between 6 to 12 months. As I am going to Japan in March and this sounded like quite a hefty commitment, I can’t help but feel as if this job would interfere with it, and am feeling a little unsettled after the interview. It felt like a waste of train fare just going there to see them (just as my cousin Rachel SO told me so), and more so a waste of my time that I could spend applying for other positions. I felt like he was trying to sell the role for me, not sell myself to the role, and that was something that I wasn’t entirely comfortable about. Plus, it’s more sales work and I was expecting it to be more related to customer service. I wonder what I need to do in order to do work in customer service roles.

I went to a party over the weekend too…to be honest I wish I hadn’t. At the very least, I wish I hadn’t drunk so much and spoke about my many insecurities because I’m certain they’ll come to bite me up the arse. That’s something that I need to sort out. I don’t think I’ll be doing much drinking for a very long time.

Interac

I haven't been very good at updating this, to be honest. Then again, I'm not very good at keeping blogs in general. It just so easy to lose track of what you're doing or supposed to be doing that it's quite insane.

I've been thinking of what I should do about this blog, and I think the best thing I can do is write about events leading up to and including my life in Japan. To do that, I need some background information. So...

I've lived in Japan for about a year, I came back to the UK a year and a month ago and it was the experience of my life. I lived in a city called Okayama and made some pretty good friends from across the world. One of them is in Japan now, doing a similar job to the one I will be doing. We had a bar that we considered our local called Matador. Matador was a Spanish themed bar that became more nightclub-like during the weekends and I found it a good place to chill out and practice my Japanese. Needless to say that I have yet to find an experience quite like Matador and so I want to go back to Japan and find something close enough to it.

There's a lot about Japan that I enjoy, and not just Matador and the izakayas. The food is healthy and nice, although I confess I will no doubt hanker for some good old British food but right now I miss things like okonomiyaki and Mitsuya food. I loved being able to cycle anywhere, that freedom of transportation is something that you just cannot replicate in the UK unless you have a driving licence. Cycling is so dangerous in the UK and the pavements were not made with hordes of cyclists in mind unlike in Japan. As far as working is concerned, I adore the work ethic of the Japanese and the community spirit that the workers in a Japanese company have. All those reasons are why I want to make my return. I find the word 'weeaboo' tossed around a lot, and I like to think that I'm not one of them. I enjoy Japan and Japanese culture, I still love my own country and own culture...except for the idiots who go rioting or beating or children and old people.

So, I've applied for a few companies and to be honest chief on my list was Interac. I tried for Peppy Kids earlier as my friend recommended it to me, but unfortunately my lack of experience proved to be quite a large hindrance to being accepted by that company, but I prefer the idea of working as a language instructor in an actual school than working for what is called an Eikaiwa, or English conversation school. I'm very interested in teaching because of it fits with my ideals in what I want to do with a job. I want to do work that benefits other people. I actually chose chemistry as my degree because I wanted to study medicinal chemistry and help to synthesise a cure for a disease we all struggle with. (I had one year project working on a compound to treat prion disease, but I'll discuss that at a later date.) Truth is, I'm not a very good chemist. I think I'm probably better at teaching because I have quite a good deal of enthusiasm for it, and a memorable personality. Interac was the one for me, and I thought the third time would be the lucky one.

I applied a little too late to meet the September send-offs, but I sent off my application anyway. It took a while for me to receive a phone interview and I felt it didn't go brilliantly. I didn't feel I shined particularly well. Imagine my surprise when I found out that I got an interview in early September. The interview itself was in a rather posh looking hotel in York, and there were four other candidates in the interview along with me, and we all had experience with either Japan or teaching so it was hard to really stand out. It started with a brief presentation on what the company was about and a quick grammar and spelling quiz. I don't know how well that went. Following up from that we had to prepare our own presentation with a few tasks to a video camera. I thought that I didn't do so great, I forgot a few of the Japanese words I wanted to say and I got ahead of myself a little during the reading exercise. The teaching, I felt, went okay. Following that we had to fill in a questionnaire like the questions an interviewer would ask you and do a Myers-Briggs personality test.

Despite the fact I felt it went quite badly, I actually got the job at the end of the day. I've recently sent off documents for my visa and an application for an enhanced CRB which Interac should have received in the post yesterday. I should probably send an email to let them know that I sent it.

My next task is to find myself some temporary work to last me until late March. Next week is going to be busy because I have a party this Saturday, a trip to Nottingham to talk to a recruitment agency (the first in weeks to actually CONTACT me) and then a trip to Edinburgh to see a few good friends I haven't seen in ages.

I hope to keep this updated with information about my work, and my preparations for Japan. I may also post other things like my guilty pleasures. I'm a bit of a geek really.

First Post

Hello, I'm honestly not a big fan of talking about myself too much, and I'm not really sure what I plan to do with this at the moment. I think I'll start by talking about myself a bit.

Actually, the first thing I'll do is give a big shout-out to my brother, Martin. Please, go and read his blog, he's quite a lovely guy.

Right now I am 28, I study Chemistry and am in my final year. I've lived in four countries throughout my life: Japan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and England. I can speak Japanese to a vague degree but not Arabic. I'm quite an open minded person when it comes to other cultures and I am eager to learn new languages despite being quite weak at it.

Like my brother, I have a big interest in music. Martin's better than me by a long shot, he can play so many instruments to a (I presume) high level of skill that I can't even list them off. For me, it's mostly singing and (very bad) dancing. The people at the bar I frequented in Japan seemed to enjoy my dancing though. I'll talk about them another day, along with maybe my brothers too. My family is very important to me.

I'm quite a big guy, while I could add "with a big heart" and that would be true I'm looking into working out to get slimmer and more muscular. It's more to do with building my self confidence and improving my health than it is looking good for other people, although I guess that's a bonus. I'm currently a member of the local gym and try to go swimming as often as I can as it's a good all around exercise. I don't want to lose too much, I run the risk of losing my boyish looks if I am too skinny but I think that's not something I need to worry about. I'll be talking about my friends that I have met from the gym along with progress in my exercise too.