The Dodgy Recruitment Agency Pty Ltd has palmed me off to an underpaid data entry job in a poky little office of six people in Darlinghurst. My job is to maintain the database of people who receive 'Taxi' magazine. What am I doing here? I'm too fucking intelligent for this place if I do say so myself. I will WASTE AWAY here. This will be the final insult delivered by the DRA. I am out of here. Who do they think I am? I have a fucking degree for god's sake. The lady whose job this used to be and who is training me is a moron - exacerbating the problem expontentially. I do not belong among morons and this is the last time anyone is ever going to undervalue me. Won't be letting that happen again.  ¶ 13:26 0 Comments

  Finished the assignment in about one hour. It's crap but it will pass I think. Went to the international careers expo on campus, it was mainly for Chinese people studying accounting. In fact they should have had a big sign up saying 'You must be Chinese and studying accounting'. It was stupid. For some, you had to be a resident of the Asian countries you wanted to work in... like I said: 'You must be Chinese and studying accounting'.

Got the job, start tomorrow. It's all data entry, yippee, but I am one level up from reception, which means I'm no longer at the bottom of the food chain. Yay. In my life I have gotten every job I have interviewed for (except one which doesn't count because they were weird and asked me personal questions like how much do i get from Centrelink and what do i live off etc)

I have a group assignment for each subject this semester and because Olya is in both my classes and we are friendly, we are in both groups together. It will be interesting to see how that works out. I'm not worried at all about any of these assignments because one is 630 words each (you've got to be joking, right?) and the other is 900 each. Jesus. A lesson in being concise, I suppose.

I have decided I want to work for a management consultancy. At the expo I spoke to a guy from Accenture who flies here from Singapore every two weeks to work with Optus. Anyway I think to join a consultancy/professional services firm, you need accounting knowledge. So I may end up doing that but I think I will make an appointment with the careers office first. I have a semester to think about it. Man I'm typing fast today. Actually what he said was that if you come from an accounting background, you can go into the Finance stream. Hmmm. But my main concern is... if I don't get into a single consulting firm, I'm stuck with an accounting degree which will then force me into doing something to do with accounting, if you get my drift. Accounts payable at Dolby for instance - hmmmmm, stimulating. There's no point doing this degree to be in a job which is half administration anyway. Who knows. Although apparently Comm bank hires people with Arts degrees...  ¶ 16:34 0 Comments

  Had an interview today, they were concerned that I thought there might be room for advancement when there wasn't, which I already knew, and they hardly gave me a chance to speak. Oh well. If I get the job it starts on Thursday. It's all data entry and admin and I get to work on my own which might be a bit lonely but then again I work really well on my own.

It's 2pm. Plan to have my 1000-word critical review finished by six when I have a lecture. Just realised you can't use word on these computers which means I will have to line up to use the computers in the other room (I'm in the library).

Saw Alex on Sunday. Had really nice thai dinner.

Have a group meeting on Saturday morning at nine thirty, would you believe? Shit! I was going to go out on Friday night. The assignment's on the HIH collapse. Interesting.

OK bye.  ¶ 13:44 0 Comments

  Opted out of the permanent position here, my friends at the newsagency were devastated that that was the last time I would see them again... Thankgod my supervisor isn't here today, I would have dreaded coming to work la.

Have an interview for a permanent position in Darlinghurst working for a company that coordinates training for new taxi drivers. Obviously oozing with career oppurtunities, I'm very excited about the interview. Please note sarcasm. If I get it, it starts on Thursday. It's reception/admin/data entry. Mmmm, data entry, sounds enticing.

I recently heard from Einar, an Icelandic friend I met while in Taiwan. He is coming to Australia for four weeks quite soon which is quite exciting. It has probably been about two years since I last saw him. Very cool.

I have my first assignment due next Wednesday. OH_MY_GOD. This is when I decided whether to drop out or not... and I think the answer will be no. In it for the long-haul...

I want to show you where I want to be in about four years time:

Wespac Asia Graduate Program

Must know simplified and traditional characters... and they usually hire people who are citizens of both Oz and Asia... hmm... Jesse in Taiwan reckons I'll never know if I don't try... and how well can I communicate in Chinese anyway?  ¶ 10:26 0 Comments

  The "Craptions" on Pointlesswasteoftime.com* are soooooo funny.

*Link courtesy of Chewin' in the Chung.

It has come to my attention that these links don't work. They're both already on the righthand side of the site now anyway.  ¶ 15:11 0 Comments

  Ale saw a possum for the first time last night. It climbed down the tree in front of our balcony.
Turns out Ale has a girlfriend back in Italy. He has interesting taste in movies. I came home to see the last bit of 'Midnight Express' and he we also watched Once Upon a Time in America which he recommended as well.
Enough of Ale. Although he does come over to our house nearly everyday.
I saw Andy my flatmate from #31 on the shuttle bus back from uni and he spoke to me completely in Chinese which is the way it should be when I tell a Chinese person I can speak Chinese! And I understood. Then later he popped over to give me some mail and Ale was impressed that I could understand what Andy was saying. So I think Andy really is a nice guy even though I nearly mistook his shyness for snobbiness which could have very easily been the case.
Work is interviewing people including me. Everyone's doing a typing test for some reason. I heard one of the ladies saying the girl from the recruitment agency was a bitch, this is probably not good news, because most people do not want to see commission going to people they regard as bitches... The agency is going to 'look' after me anyway if I don't get it. Which may be for the best.  ¶ 12:15 0 Comments

  J'ai decide a apprendre le francais encore.  ¶ 10:10 0 Comments

  I'm thoroughly enjoying my course so far and I feel like I'm in my element studying business. The course is usually one and a half years but if you do two specialisations it will be two years. And guess what, I think I want to do two specialisations, because I want to study Business Strategy, but I can't study that on it's own because I need to so something useful like accounting, HR, or marketing... On the faculty website it says 80% of jobs are found through networking, and well I don't know anyone in the business world which might be a problem. But I'm determined to work for Qantas! Last night's lecture was on competition and game theory. I have decided I have a love-hate relationship with economics: one the one hand, it's common sense and logic, so it's easy, but on the other hand, why study common sense? But anyway I love talking about how airlines make can make silent agreements without technically colluding and... etc etc. As for networking, I can imagine turning up to functions and introducing myself to hot businessmen, my only selling point being that I can speak a bit of Mandarin... Speaking of languages, Alesandro thinks I'm a secret agent and that I secretly know Italian, because I guessed how to say 'facile' and 'fromage' based on my knowledge of French. Speaking of Marissa, she doesn't think Ale (for short) is that cute, and I guess she's right, but we concluded that she goes for guys that do martial arts, and I go for guys who are foreign and exotic. We had pizza last night. Yummm. Tim's Taiwanese friends came over and Darren, the gay guy from Taipei, spoke to me in Chinese, which I really appreciate, because usually blah blah blah they just think you can't understand anything. Speaking of Chinese, I had class on Monday, and the teacher is a bit strange, she doesn't listen to you when you speak to her in Chinese, and trust me, it's not the accent, the Taiwanese understood me fine... she kinds of talks over you and it's very rude and it's discouraging. Oh well, what was I expecting? I've had two great Chinese teachers, out of about nine that I've had over the past three fours years. Mr Keenan, and ONE teacher at Tunghai. Even she followed the generic lesson plan but she was a nice person.  ¶ 09:08 0 Comments

  I'm wearing my new shoes today. They're pointy as hell and it's just to bad I couldn't compliment them with an angular corporate outfit.

On the guy front - it never rains, it pours. Have a crush on Alesandro the Italian from upstairs. He seems to be very friendly towards me too... we'll see. As for Alex, he's a little weird, we stayed up til five in the morning divulging our deepest darkest secrets - if I didn't successfully scare him off last time by refusing to shave my legs, I definitely did it this time. He's definitely got his own issues. But on the whole a nice person - will see. The drought is over, that's for sure.

The job I'm at is still going to interview people for the position - this makes me feel uneasy but hey maybe it's for the best? Will just keep temping, a lifetsyle which guarantees days off and variety. But I don't want days off. I want to work work work work. I've been sending off my resume to apply for 'marketing assistant' jobs I've seen on the internet. Guess I'm just not competitive enough. Claire in Taiwan reckons I should just keep trying... Hmmm... For all of them you need to have already finished a marketing degree plus have one year's experience... Nobody wants to actually give you that experience... Fuck that! Just went to the website of Pricewaterhouse Coopers. They have a psycho selection process for graduates. But I might try anyway. Once I've nearly finished my degree.

Surfing the net is losing it's allure. Tried reading my new book which I bought on Saturday when I bought my shoes... wasn't allowed to because I had to look busy while a guy from the San Francisco office is here. I'm over Forumosa already although talktalkchina.com is OK. Did I mention my new shoes? I think I need four more pairs, so I only where them each once a week.

Hmm maybe I do need something that keeps me busier. Sitting on my arse is not a good look.  ¶ 14:36 0 Comments