Short trip to Paris

So, I got through to the third round of interviews! My last interview is tomorrow in Paris. Wish me luck! Since going and returning on the same day is a bit silly, I rearranged the days I was working this week and am leaving later on today, to return Sunday night. I need a break - I feel like I'm going crazy - and I missed Paris. The lovely is going to put me up for a night or two (I wonder if she'll like me dragging her around Paris, I missed the river and the bridges so badly!) and I might sleep on the floor of a friend for another night, or I'll see if I can find a hotel that isn't too expensive or too awful. We'll see. I'm feeling so out of sorts, I'm having a hard time making arrangements and taking decisions. Anyway, off I go!

Hydra Photos

So I promised photos from Hydra, the greek island I visited in April for two days while I was in Greece. It's a lovely picturesque island, but rather expensive and chic. Be warned that the slideshow is very long. I took quite a few photos. (For some strange reason it's showing my photos from last to first and I can't find how to change it!)

What I've been up to over the weekend

I have been busy being depressed and doing stuff. Let me tell you about my weekend. Saturday: Saturday was a friend's birthday, so a whole bunch of us met up in Covent Garden for lunch, and we had a lovely time. As usual I arrived a little late (I got detained in John Lewis trying to find a throw for my grandmother's dinning table to replace the one I destroyed the night before. I spilled brown ink all over it while making Darry a card. I am very last minute, I know). We sat at Navajo Joe's where we had spicy vaguely mexican food and cocktails (I had two delicious margarita's!). Afterwards we went to the Icecreamists for some delicious ice creams, yum. Despite having reserved a table for eleven, they had exiled us into a small dark corner upstairs. Armed with my two ingested margarita's I went to complain, and ended up talking to the manager. You know you're obsessed with Glee when a random shop manager reminds you of Glee's choreographer and that makes you go easy on him. I was distracted, ok! (What's more worrying about my level of obsession is that I know what Zach Woodlee looks like, let alone who he is.) Hmm. Okay, now that I'm looking again, Zach is way cuter than the manager was... Anyway! Even though I went easy on him, and though I was rather nice and reasonable too, I must have scared him (or else he was just taken with my low cut dress) because he apologised profusely, offered me a top up on my ice cream and then offered us all a lovely alcoholic ice cream cocktail on the house. Yum, yum. It was delicious! With green apple sorbet and lots of vodka. I left decidedly tipsy! Afterwards, those who still had energy, went to one of the group's beautiful new flat (wooden floors, guys! Large windows! Beautiful rooms! A cute french flatmate! And, who knows, maybe the other flatmate is even cuter!) where we ate sparkly birthday cake, giggled and talked and most emphatically didn't watch the Eurovision song contest. I got home just in time to see Sweden win, with rather a boring song. Sunday: Sunday I woke up with a fuzzy head from the heavy weather and the alcohol, but no rest for the wicked! I went all the way to Excel to meet up with a friend, my sister and her boyfriend to go to the Comic Expo. I felt decidedly underdressed in "civilian" clothes seeing as almost everyone was in costume. The expo was interesting. All those colourful cartoonish people! And the bright stalls. And so much stuff. My favourites of course were the artists' tables. Mangas aren't really my style, but I did see some comic styles that I did rather like. My favourite artist was Girl In The Rain As usual I couldn't resist the lure of buying stuff and got myself some more pretty chopsticks for my hair (I will eventually acquire the whole rainbow!) and some more badges (god knows where I will find to put them, I have too many already!). At half past three-ish I abandoned my poor friend to the mercy of her cosplaying friends and left with my sister and her boyfriend to enjoy the last of the sun. We met up with some friends in a very very crowded Primrose Hill to laze in the grass and drink cider (because my head wasn't fuzzy enough!) Afterwards we found the only pub with an empty table and ate the world's thinest pizza. And that was my weekend. I have more stuff to share, but later.

Update

I've been surprisingly busy these last days, and not so surprisingly stressed and depressed. Even now that I am typing, I would much rather be curled up under my duvet dozing or watching old Doctor Who episodes or reading fanfiction. But I have decided I should be sociable, so I am siting with my grandmother watching a documentary about meercats and updating my journal so you don't all start worrying something happened to me. And I have news. 1 On the Paris job front, I got accepted into the second round of interviews! I had it earlier today. I think it went very well, but on the other hand they are interviewing at least a dozen people so I think the competition is very stiff. Which doesn't bode well. I am good at talking and selling myself and coming across as capable and likeable. But I am not good at ruthlessly pushing myself forward and brazenly telling people that I am the best. Anyway. I have a week or maybe a bit longer to wait for them to finish up all the interviews and decide. I hope there won't be third interview! 2 As for my present job in retail, things are once more up in the air. We have yet another head manager. The last one started out all energetic and optimistic and in about two months he gave up and asked to be transferred to another store. And I still never found out what happened to our first head manager. He was pretty useless anyway. Managers! They all seem to be rather soft if you ask me. The new manager has started of very determined and serious. He really wants to shake things up. He's going to radically change the layout of the store and switch around everyone's jobs and timetables. Hm. He better not make me a salesperson! If he does, he'll be a complete idiot, and that doesn't bode well for the store. Lets see how long he lasts. 3 My sister and her boyfriend found a house! It's house-share with three other people in a cute house with a garden in Wimbledon. The house is nice. The room is very nice, and has its own bathroom. And Wimbledon is rather a nice place too. I am very happy for them. Now all my sister needs is to find a job. Lets hope things work out for us, because things are looking really really bad for Greece. There are days when I feel more afraid for my friends and family back in Greece than I do for my homeless semi-employed self.

Possible new beginnings

So I am still very very stressed. Actually I have made myself so stressed that I feel like I might fall into hysterical panic or extreme depression if I don't manage to keep a handle on myself. Yes, life is totally getting the better of me at the moment. It's been a year of being constantly rejected and there is only so much a person can take. Many you must have gone (or are going) through something similar and I'm sure you understand how there is a breaking point, no matter how strong willed and positive you try to be, and I'm rapidly reaching mine. On friday, as I mentioned, I had a skype interview for a rather interesting job in Paris. Something very different from what I've been doing the last years, and far closer to my university experiences. I was surprised that I was even considered since I don't really have the relevant experience and I might even be slightly under-qualified. (Especially after being turned down for so many jobs in London that I was actually over-qualified for.) And returning to Paris! It is something I had told myself I would never do, since despite loving the actual city to bits, I fell into the deepest depression I've ever been in while living there last time. But never say never. I can't help but feel that if I want to ever get anywhere I have to leave London, since its clear that the british will never give me a chance. I had been thinking of Amsterdam or Copenhagen, or even Oslo. But why not Paris? I know the language and I know how it works. That is why I am so afraid I will not get the job. My interview didn't go bad, but it didn't go great either. And he told me that he had a lot more interviews to do, so I won't learn for another week at least what their verdict is. I can't help but feel that being one of the first people they interviewed is a bad thing and will lessen my chances even more. And I can't help but be very disappointed with myself for being so stressed that I froze on certain questions and didn't make the best impression I could. Who am I kidding, I didn't get the job. And I was so looking forward to finally managing to regain a semblance of a life... And so we come to the second song I am considering as a soundtrack for my life at the moment (after the last post's song):

In which I tell you far more than you wanted to know about my job

I'm very nervous and edgy and anxious. I have a job interview tomorrow for a job that could prove a great chance. I'll tell you after the interview more details. I do realise I have promised photos from Hydra, but things have got on top of me and I left the job of arranging and fixing them up in the middle to be undertaken when I feel more relaxed. I even wanted to get a start at my own 100 things, but I just can't seem to find the energy and time. God, I'm the world's worst blogger! You see, my sister has returned from Argentina (where she went for two months with her boyfriend, supposedly to volunteer, but actually as an extended holiday). And now she's staying with me at our grandmother's and it's really cramped and difficult and stressful. She's trying hard with her boyfriend to find a flat, but with their budget, it's not easy in London. The whole business is stressing me too, because it's a constant reminder of what a total mess my life is at the moment. I am in a total limbo, without enough money and no way of making any sort of plans for the next month, let alone the future. Sometimes I think the only thing stopping me from going crazy is my crappy job. I was supposed to tell you about the crappy job I'm doing and the crazy interview I had to go through, but life got in the way and I never got round to it. Anyway, I'm working part time in retail. I wanted a simple easy no stress no responsibilities job to earn some money while searching for real work. But things never quite work out as you think they will. I applied for the position of sales assistant in Currys (a UK electrical appliance and electronic store). I didn't get the job. It seems like selling stuff is not easy in the UK, because I also got turned down by Boots, River Island, Next, John Lewis and a whole bunch of other shops. And all for part time temp sales jobs. They certainly are demanding! Anyway, I got a call out of the blue for an interview with Currys. So I dressed up as if I was going for an office job and went. It turned out they had decided to open a temporary clearance store over the Christmas holidays and needed a lot of people in a hurry. After the wackiest interview they ended up hiring almost everyone. They needed about 30 or so people at a short notice and minimum wage, which means they hired a lot of first timers and unexperienced youngsters. Which was great of them, because no one is hiring the unexperienced young any more. In the beginning we worked about a fortnight of 10 to 14 hour shifts with no days off, doing anything and everything to fix the shop up. At the same time we had managers and experienced people from other shops giving us some sort of minimal training all the while scoping out who would be best for which job. They needed mainly salespeople, but also warehouse people, merchandisers, people for the tills and some admins. I kind of stood out I guess because I was one of the oldest women they hired and I let it slip in the interview that am actually an architect (I peeked at the interviewer's notes and she had written it in capitals across the paper.) At one point one of the managers asked me what I would rather do, and I answered honestly that I like/am good at arranging and organising. I was hoping they would make me a merchandiser rather than a salesperson. They ended up making me a Product Inventory Counter. As in the person who counts the merchandise to find out what is missing (and what is extra) and then investigates it to find out why. It is obviously harder and more frustrating than it sounds, because the shop is rather big and we have loads of stock and everything is in such a mess you wouldn't believe. So yeah, so much for easy low stress job... I'm only working 20 hours a week, which means that to get what I have to done each week I am practically the only one in the whole shop who works non-stop with hardly any breaks. It's pretty exhausting. But on the other hand it looks better on my cv that a sales assistant position would. Obviously the job they gave me is far too hard and has far too high a level of responsibility for someone who has never done this sort of thing before and is only earning minimum wage (I am feeling decidedly fucked over by that aspect of the job.) Everyone who had ever visited from another store to help from time to time couldn't believe they had me all by myself. From the beginning I was told I would be an assistant PI counter and soon they would send round someone highly experienced to work with me. Only the weeks dragged on and this experienced person never showed up. I kept on asking and they kept on putting off the dates of his long expected arrival. I can only guess that they realised that this was only going to be a temporary store and I was doing a good enough job on my own and the experienced guy would cost too much. We ended up making record sales over the holidays so they put the closing date off till february. Then they put the date off till May. Now it's been put off again till July. In any case it might end up a permanent store. In which case they have to try and make it work like a proper shop. And a good first thing to do is do something about the ridiculous amount of stock loss we have - a very large amount of which is in-store theft. As the merchandise counter I know exactly how much stuff has been going missing from behind locked doors and locked cabinets, and I have pointed it out numerous times to the managers and the loss prevention officers that visit us. I also have repeatedly told co-workers who have tried to talk to me about it, that I don't care if they know who's stealing and how, I do not want to know. Since it's my job to find out what has gone missing, if I was to find out who had taken it, I could hardly keep quiet about it. So the less I know the better. To try and combat the whole messy business of making us work more smoothly, they have gotten rid of the old (rather useless) manager and sent a new guy, with good intentions and more organised, but also with a less flexible style. He has already fired a couple of people for no good reason (just because they asked for fixed hours and days rather than an ever changing schedule). They also finally send me another PI counter. Not the super experienced guy I was promised, but a guy my own age with a little bit of experience. He's a good guy and knows what he's doing, only he had a bit of heart attack when he saw what our shop is like (he used to work in a nice neat organised high street shop). Just yesterday when he was asked to count ipods (we had hundreds of them, half of which where mixed up and mislabeled as per usual), he had a total meltdown and I had to call the manager to talk to him and calm him down. Anyway, crappy as the job is, the good thing is that it gets me out the house and I get to talk to people (and I have stopped eating into my savings). I'm not too keen on the salespeople (mostly bitchy or dim) but I really do like the warehouse guys (I spend most of my down time hiding in the warehouse with them) and the some of the merchandisers and admins are cool too. All in all it's nice to work in a place with a lot of people. And it seems like I'm one of those people who gets on better with men than women. Who would have known? Most of my friends have always been women and gay men... It's also proving an interesting social experience. I had never done a minimum wage job before or hung out with working class people. Actually half my university friends always accused me of being too high-brow and having too intellectual interests. I'm talking to people I would never have met otherwise and that is quite interesting. I keep on thinking that the song that best describes this period of my life, could be nothing else but Pulp's britpop anthem from back when I was in my late teens: (tl;dr ?):