3 posts tagged “interviews”

Fortunately, prior to leaving the colonies, my mother upended her medicine cabinet into our luggage (a suppository? I didn't think they actually existed).

So I have hit the antibiotics, the nasal sprays, the painkillers -the whole cocktail- really hard.

Yeah, it's probably overkill but I am running on two to three meetings a day. And you know what kind of meetings you can't postpone due to illness? Job interviews.

You also can't even mention that you are sick/high on meds lest you look like a whining little pussy before they've even hired you.

So you just sit there, nod, say you're fine and then collapse into a coughing, sweating heap the second you leave the office.

Such was my lot yesterday.


Interview 1
First thing in the morning I had a meeting just down from the palace (I still find that neat. 'Meet you near the palace?' 'I'm just coming past the palace, where are you?' and so on). And of course it had to include the most difficult/awesomest questions yet. Such as "how do you influence people?"

There is absolutely no non-evil answer to that question. None! So I decide to duck it, Tory-style.

No such luck. Next question: "You mean to tell me that you are wanting to be put forward for sales positions and you can't even tell me how you influence people?"

This is so not fair when you are high on the meds. (Actually, it is. It is an entirely fair, entirely relevant question. They all were.)

After we both got tired of my folksy/druggy/colonial act, I eventually answered "I make myself available and useful to clients and colleagues alike outside the traditional commercial window." ie - I do shit for/help people even when there isn't any money in it and it falls outside my job description.

There. That wasn't so hard... Unless you are on antibiotics.

But we solider on... To the next meeting. Which wasn't for three hours and was only about seven blocks from the first meeting.


Lunch
Thing about three hours is that it is just enough time to go home, have a cup of tea then come back to the exact same tube station for the next meeting. It is also far too long to spend in any one bar/restaurant during the day.

Usually, James and I use this time to get in a bit of sightseeing whereever we happen to be. Our sightseeing is always free which usually means it is also outside.

Outside is not a place I can be at the moment. (Did I mention the rain and the wind? Do I need to? It is London, after all.)

So I shudder and sweat my way along to a bar that we have to sit in for three hours, drinking diet coke. Well, I was drinking the diet coke... Not because of the job interviews -I can usually manage one pint with lunch and be fine- but because of the stupid, stupid, stupid antibiotics. James was fine, of course. A couple of brews, a couple of ciders.

Bastard.

It's a pity, too, because it was a really neat little pub. I was too high to remember the name of it but it is about five metres from Ben Franklin's London house (so he would have ate/drank there, which is cool) and sits on both sides of a cobbled lane. And it's a block from Trafalgar Square so it's still all nautical and shit.

Mental note: return to said pub.


Interview 2
Not much to say about this one that isn't good. Somehow all those half pints of water with aspro-clear consumed in multiple pubs throughout the day (believe me, it's extremely embarrassing) started to have an effect.

Because my head miraculously cleared for almost all the interview. I say "almost all" because the interviewer and I got along great and we ran overtime. This is a good sign for me but a very bad thing for an immune system that can't be more than forty five mintues from its next strepsils/sinex dose.


The Unclean Adventure
Suffice to say, that as I left the meeting I was blurry/confused and completely blind. The blindness was multiplied by the fact that it was now that special "magic" twilight in which my eyesight is at its worse. I can literally see better in the dark than at sunset. I had no idea what was going on or where it was going on at.

So I promptly got on the wrong bus. The ghetto bus.

By the way, I should point out that I caught this bus from right outside Waterloo station. Waterloo station is on the Northern Line. We live on the Northern Line. So I didn't just catch the wrong bus. Over James's protests I caught the wrong type of vehicle.

And this is how James and I -me in a full business suit- came to be wandering through the scary, ghettoised backstreets of Hackney, surrounded by nothing but ominous highrise council estates, with only minutes of daylight left, cruising for a stabbing.

The thing about the sun going down... It gets cold. Super, super cold if you are unwell. So I started to get weak, headachey, etc which meant navigation was up to James. This is not a situation you want to be in. Ever. I have to tie string to him whenever he leaves the living room just so he can find his way back.

Poor bastard. I started to get extremely grumpy (I know, I know, you're shocked, right?) despite the fact it was entirely my fault.... But dammit, I am sick, I had just been in a brain war with someone much smarter than me, I was tired, hungry, sober, cold, lost.... boo frikkety hoo.

So we decide to walk home... Or at least in the direction of home and then maybe find a bus. (We were waaay in the backstreets. I haven't gone that far in London without seeing a bus stop in my life.) But I didn't want to walk down these dark, ominous lanes in a suit and tie.

The boys will understand... Have you ever tried to "cool up" a suit after work? Like if you're going for a few drinks and it starts to turn into a few more but you're still in office clothes.

Yeah, really the only thing you can do is take your tie off and untuck your shirt, assuming it's a fashion-cut rather than suit-cuit shirt (mine was). The look you're going for is "trendy suit jacket media type who is too cool for all the established suit rules" but what you end up with -at the end of the day- is "overgrown schoolboy clearly playing hookie". The bottom of the shirt is all crumpled, the shoes are a giveaway.

It's a mess. It was my mess.

But hey, it worked. It warded off the muggers/stabbers. I assume because I actually looked like I had already been mugged -ashen face, crumpled clothes- and thusly had no money to take. (Sadly, this is also true.)

And that, children, is how you turn a train journey of no more than nine minutes into a bus-walk-bus-walk journey of one and a half hours.

The rest of the photos are to be found here if you're interested (mum). The pub by the Thames was awesome... Just because it was by the Thames. Fosters is Fosters wherever you drink it.

We had to take the overland to get there. Worst. Train ride. Ever.

The police had to stop the train twice on the way back because of assaults. And the train kept stopping in the middle of nowhere because there was another train broken down ahead of us they were shunting. Of course, in my head I was picturing two cartoon characters on a railroad handcart.

In other (some might say "real") news, I have a job interview for a viral video company tomorrow. I'm a little bit excited about it.