Friday, December 19, 2008

After the realisation that I am start to work shortly - I get an email (only received it today) telling me that the start date has been put forward after some discussion, so I will now be starting work on the 12th of January, which is exciting.

Though it gives me less time to celebrate my birthday :(

Ah well. In other news, I went to see Chubby Brown at the Manchester Apollo last night. He was rude, crude and very very dirty but in my opinion, he gets an unfair rap from the media. Sure his act was foul in parts but he's also very funny and I give anyone kudos who can stand up on stage for an hour and a half and perform a stand up comedy act. It's tough as hell. It takes a lot of guts and you have to really be on the ball, as comedy is basically thinking ahead to the next joke all the time. So yes, he was good :) but, whilst some of the jokes were not to my cup of tea I can still appreciate a comic like him for the work he has done and for making people laugh [even if it does come across as terribly right wing, sexist and fascist] there is still room and always should be room for freedom of thoughts and speech, even if the majority disagree.

Also as a surprise, Ricky Hatton was in the crowd - he was sat like 2 rows in front of me and Gary.

But it was on the way home - well just as we'd reached Gary's house and had just parked up, that I was getting my bag out of the car and was stood on the road...when a car came hurtling around the corner, saw that I was in the road and actually started SPEEDING UP - FFS. I was so scared I just ran to the pavement to get out the way and the car door was still open - but the car kept going full speed at it! Thankfully it never got hit. But still - it's the principle.

The sad thing is that the chavs inside that car no doubt thought that was hilarious. But what if it had been a little old lady? or someone equally as vulnerable? would they speed up then? idiots. As they turned the car around they nearly ran Gary over as well as they were parking up right behind our car. Then they got out and started shouting abuse at us. >.< it was sooo infuriating and upsetting, I can't tell you.

Even when we got in, I found it difficult to calm down because of the worry that they might do something to our car. Grrrr. Scum like that deserve to be put down.
Those teenage boy chav idiots sure know how to ruin a good evening. Bastards.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Well I never thought it would happen, but I knew it would eventually.
I heard back about that job I applied for - and I got it! :D
I'm so happy and ecstatic about it I'm not sure what to do with myself as I now have all this energy and I'm like wanting to tell everyone but so far I've only told about 3 people.
I should be receiving my contract in the post either tomorrow or this weekend. Which is exciting. I'm sooo glad I don't have to carry on looking for more jobs now as the whole 'sign on this line' process was really beginning to get me down after 6 months of searching. I've been told I don't have to start until late January either the week starting the 19th or the 26th. So I'll have plenty of time to celebrate Christmas, New Years and my 22nd birthday :) good times.

More details on that as they arrive :p

So today I don't know what to do with myself really. I want to help set up the Christmas tree but I've been told my Mum will do it personally, later on. What else? Could be going to see Chubby Brown tonight which would be cool. I don't know 100% if that'll be the case however.

Sorry too excited to do much else now.

*DANCES OFF* YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY :D :D :D

xxxx

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Heylo. Ok so I've been trying to get into the festive spirit with Christmas only a week away. I'm feeling very very excited :) and I know it's gonna be really fun and amazing.

This past week has been fairly hectic I'd say. Well, last week felt like it was. A lot has happened.

After that dreadful Monday, I spent Tuesday and Wednesday preparing myself for a job interview I had on Thursday morning.

Oh I got my hair cut pretty short on Wednesday :) it's now a mid lenth bob with a fringe and I'm really digging it I must say XD

On the day of the job interview I had to do a little presentation on why I wanted the role and what steps I would implement etc etc - and I felt as if all was going well - and I got told at the end I would hear back 'some time early next week' probably Monday. I left feeling relieved. &wanting to enjoy the weekend.

So last weekend was great :) I went to a GPW show (wrestling for those who don't know) on Friday night with Gary and Griff in Wigan. &whilst it was quite a drive, the actual show was pretty good. It was all fairly amateur for sure, but I had a good time and the place was fairly packed considering it was just an average sized social room (Monaco Ballroom). Had some trouble with the SatNav on the way home - it seemed to be taking us to Widnes via Bootle, lol. Finally realised in the end that the sensor wasn't up so couldn't pick up the signal, haha. We're such dumdums :p

I went to another wrestling show on Saturday night in Doncaster. I ended up driving 93 miles to this place called Edlington to watch some guys wrestle :p

We got there before 7pm and then we went into this small venue called 'The Granby' which was where the 1PW show was set. It was decent enough though the crowds were a great reminder of where we were. Yes, inbred doesn't even come into it. There were people there with mullets and anoraks on, ffs :s it was just like being involved in a timewarp back to the 80's. *shudders*.

After the show which was ok at best, we drove to Sheffield to meet up with a mate and stay for his house party :) that was fun. Though being fairly tired, me and Gary only had a few drinks and then we ordered pizza and our injection of cheesy sauce and chips :D mmm. Then ended up falling asleep in the back of the car for around an hour, lol. When we went back in and it was around 3.30am or so and whilst there was some weird hippy guy pretending he was a DJ in Davey's bedroom and some girl dancing for a good while, me and Gary finally got to sleep...eventually.

The next day (Sunday) was spent chilling out, then finally going into town and doing a bit of Christmas shopping. Yay. I saw an old friend in the morning as I was queuing up to use the bathroom. Rob who I knew from halls. Other than that...spent the day shopping as I say and ended up buying my Dad a christmas present :). Ended up going home via the Snakes Pass which was a little scary for me in the dark, but I didn't mind. It's all good experience.

Monday - some new cupboards arrived for me :D so me and my parents spent most of the day rearranging my bedroom. We've replaced the blue cupboard I had and put in the spare room, which is now being used for towels. My new desk is really nice as it doubles as a desk/cupboard and it's opened up a lot of space. My bed has also been rearranged so it's facing the desk rather than the door/wall as it was previously. It looks a lot better and gives the illusion of a lot of space. It's nice.

I even have my own little bookshelf and a nice throw over the head of my bed to 'break up' the part between the computer and where my bed begins. I really want to sort out my brothers' academic books as they're really clogging up the top and bottom of my wardrobes. If I could just get rid of them, I'd be happy with it to be honest as it'd look a lot less cluttered. I'm glad my room has been rearranged now as it's looking a lot better and no doubt will save me from being mithered to go and 'tidy my room'. If my room is already very nice then they'll have to find something else to moan about :p haha.

Anyway I've been waiting all week to hear back on that job I applied for...and have heard nothing, so I'm presuming I haven't got it, which sucks :( but hey, guess it wasn't meant to be. I'm just trying to keep positive through it all as something is bound to come up eventually.

Over and out.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Haha so much happened yesterday it was almost surreal.

Ok, I got invited to this 'Alumni Academy' day which took place yesterday. Some lady invited me on Tuesday via phone call, explaining to me that it was for graduates and the intention was to try and place them into relevant sales/marketing placements, if they passed a series of exercises and got involved in debates.

So I went along yesterday. I had to be up fairly early (7am) in order to get myself back home, showered and prepared. I had to wear a business suit, which looked smart but admittedly, wasn't all that comfortable.I took the train at around 10am to get to Manchester Oxford Road. All was well I was thinking, until on the second leg of the journey, I got accused by the train conductor of trying to 'have him off' by not purchasing my ticket straight away and asking for a return from Manchester Oxford Road to Heald Green (the place where the academy was). He asked me,'So how did you get through the barrier at Oxford Road?' and asked me where I had actually come from.

It wasn't my intention to do anything 'illegal' as he was claiming, but to just buy my ticket from Oxford Road-Widnes on the way back home.

For starters, I couldn't get a ticket at Widnes station because there was some guy in the queue faffing about and taking ageees discussing with the station controller - by which point I was losing the will to live and probably would've missed my train. Then on the train the conductors walked right past and just completely ignored me - they seemed to have some new girl who didn't know what she was doing at all. So by the time I got to Manchester I just thought 'fuck it I'll just buy it on the train here'. Didn't realise that was such a crime.

Also I didn't know that you could buy a ticket like an 'all in one' direct. That sounds kinda odd, but last time I had to switch trains I could only purchase a ticket from said station to [insert destination] on the route, so I was under the assumption it was still like that.

Anyway I arrived at Heald Green by 11am. It's on the route to Manchester Airport, so it's like the station stop before that one. I had already ate a sandwich on the way down there and by the time I got off the train I realised I was walking with a few people of similar age to my own who had business suits on themselves. So we all started to have a chat and before long we were at the Academy which was based at the Manchester International Office Centre which was this big building next to a load of other officey type places. We went in there and we had to wait for the good part of an hour before being called up.

There was at least 20 different graduates there. All very different. All dressed in business suits. Most were men. I was one of only four girls there. We received name badges and were led into a business meeting type room.

The next couple of hours went fast, but in that time we got a basic grounding of the day, did an 'ice breaker' exercise where we had to present our 'neighbour' to the rest of the class. &then we received a sales training course, which included performing an exercise where we had to pretend we were a sales training company and were selling our services to some IT company who were looking to employ people.

Then finally we had to get involved in a 'constructed' debate - my group's was about capital punishment but some girl in our group argued 'for' capital punishment rather than against which was a lot bloody harder. The other group had to argue for and against the congestion charge. Whilst I got involved, I didn't feel as though I contributed enough on the actual day because the people there just seemed to be talking utter bullshit - it was definitely a matter of manner over content. Plus I fall under the pressure of having to think directly on my feet, I'd rather prepare for a bit longer than 5 minutes to be honest.

Didn't help much that they didn't have any breaks whatsoever either. I bloody well needed the toilet too, but you only got 5 minutes to prepare for these massive exercises and then it was straight back in the room. I knew I wouldn't pass by the time the debates rolled around. The way they announced who had passed this free sales training course was by calling out a list of people's names and taking them out of the room. I knew by the point where he said 'You can leave your stuff as you'll be coming back' that those people had gone through.

But quite a lot of people's names didn't get called. Mine was one. But there were at least 10 people or so who didn't get called. We got told we could then leave. I was kinda excited to be honest by this point as I was about ready to burst. I ended up going to the pub with one of the guys I'd previously met on the way down there called Blake. We also met a fellow rejectee and had a drink with him. I had a white wine spritzer and we just had a chat about why we never passed. One of the main reasons I believe was that we had journalism/humanities degrees. Like nearly all the people who got through had engineering or technical degrees. So the potential 'vacancies' must be in those sectors. As one of the girls who sat in on the process specifically asked if anyone had an engineering or technical degree as some of the recruiters were being very specific with that detail. So there you go.

I was used to basically meet a requirement, which was to 'fill' a place. I suspect the people there who arrange these days have to find so many graduates from different disciplines interested in that sort of area and it gets rather tricky so they just try and find anyone. Whilst I do feel that the day was somewhat of a waste, it was learning experience - that was my first graduate assesment day I've ever been to. Admittedly, it was a bit weird though.

It wasn't a waste in many ways however. I talked to a few of the people who succeeded on the day and they said that there probably isn't any vacancies anyway and that all of the people who got through probably won't get jobs. &also, one of the guys who was about 26, was being offered a starting salary for one vacancy of £14K, but he's currently on a lot more than that with his present job- so that wouldn't be very worthwhile.

I got the train home with a bunch of them and I talked to one guy who told me a load of names for different companies I should try and that sort of thing. So it was really helpful in those ways.

By the time I got to Manchester Piccadilly though - there was no train back home to Widnes :( so I ended up having to go to Warrington. Then wait there for another train which stopped at Widnes. Waiting on the platform however, some guy who looked rather unkempt and unclean asked me if he didn't mind me smoking (no, but it's now illegal to smoke at a train station). I said I didn't. Then he started telling me how he'd never been on a train before and how he was going to visit his mum for the first time in 10 years :/ I didn't really know what to say. He was rambling a little but he was like 'Will you keep me company on the train?' and when we were on there he was like 'What do I do - how does it work?' and I ended up having to tell him where he'd have to get off when he got to Lime St and then take another train from there which would hopefully take him to Ellesmere Port. Apparently he was from somewhere called Ashton, not far from Wigan and he'd been travelling all day.

Weird.

Obviously freaked out a little and trying to keep calm by this point, he got a phone call from his Mum who wouldn't believe he was on a train so he was like 'Look Mum, I've got this lady friend, go on speak into the phone...' Errr 'Say hello?'
'Hello' I said, then that was that. Lol.
I couldn't get over how a 31 year old was acting more like he was 10. I was glad to get off the train and finally get home. It was great to get back and relax.

While yesterday was sure interesting, I think I'll be sticking to proper job interviews and avoiding those 'graduate days' from now on. Urgh.

Not sure what I'll be doing today, but I know that tonight I'm going to see Slipknot with Gary and his sister Katy. Should be interesting as Machine Head and Children of Bodom are also playing XD

xx

Saturday, December 06, 2008

I received a letter today. I thought it was strange because I normally never get mail. Anyway it turns out after I open it, to be one of the application forms I filled in around 2 months ago. Apparently I hadn't put enough postage on it or something and was 6p under - so they'd returned it to me. Bloody annoying. So there was me thinking all along that the people I had applied to a job to weren't interested - when they had probably never even received my application form at all! grrrr.

It's most worrying because it contains loads of my information and I even included a picture of me which sounds strange, but they actually requested I do that on the application form. So anyone could potentially steal all of my personal information or even worse, set up a false identity using my details. What I want to know is - why'd it take 2 months to return it to me, if it failed to send? Infact, why bother sending it back at all. Bastards. I am SOOO angry. &I know you might say it's my fault, but honest to god I spent all day working on that application form in October and thought that one stamp would be enough because it wasn't even that heavy, just a few pieces of paper. Bastards. Aaaaarggghhh.


Anyway *calm* I'm ok now. Been busy buying Christmas presents today, so am expecting to be fairly broke v v shortly. But I figure I'd have to buy these pressies sooner or later so may as well get them now :) rather than end up in a blind panic in the last couple of days.

Still enjoying chocolatey adventness as well. Today I got an angel, I believe. Yerse.

Friday, December 05, 2008

Been pretty busy lately as I've been looking after Gary. He's not been feeling too well lately, so I've spent the past two days at his house looking after him and keeping him company until he makes a full recovery.

With Christmas looming ever nearer I also need to start sorting out my gift list for everyone and really take a good look at what I've already bought and go through what I need to buy - because I think there might be quite a lot somehow! hah. I don't mind though because it means I'll stay on top of it and get everything sorted early(ish) considering it's the 4th of December already...

My advent calendar has been suitably weird this year. I managed to purchase a Disney one on Monday and so far the first day was ok because it provided me with a christmas tree behind December 1st, but then I started getting...a mushroom?? and today's looked like a mince pie (slightly more reasonable) but it could've been a small christmas present for all I know *sigh*. I dunno, it just feels like standards are slipping.

I'm loving Coronation Street as always I am ADDICTED to that, hehhee. Though some of the stories seem a little far fetched (though me and my Mum completely saw the Becky and Steve love story that's blossomed in the past week or so). People in soaps are never happy though are they - I guess that's the point. Kinda makes me glad to live in the real world.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

I never update this. Maybe I should more. But life seems so frantic these days.
Which sounds crazy as it's not like I'm spending all day doing something I hate, I still have all the time in the world. For now.

Ok so Christmas is coming up shortly and here's my current situation:

- I'm constantly in a state of flux. Riding the rollercoaster of emotions career wise. I have not had much luck to be honest, despite all my best efforts and constant searching I am still out of work :( and looking for my first opportunity.

- But I remain hopeful that the opportunity I long for is just around the corner.

- I'm doing whatever I want to which is cool, but pretty odd. After spending such a long time having to do various assignments and so forth, and now being degree qualified I'm expected to know which direction to take my life and you think by this point you'd be well equipped for it - but truth is, that's just not the case at all. Infact it feels even more confusing. As a result I guess I'm just taking any opportunity that comes my way which sounds half decent.

- But in that time many good things have happened and I've really developed as a person which I see as a positive result.

- Plus I'm in a fantastic relationship in which we both share and look after one another which has been a real blessing. I've never known anything like it before. We've also shared many experiences, both over these past few months and prior to that when I was still in Sheffield and didn't get to see him as much as I would've liked. All that is over now and we've really, really become a lot closer.

Right now I'm wondering how the hell I'm going to get everything sorted before Christmas with only 23 days to go?! arggh. Where has time gone at all...