Testing, testing. One iphone with voice recognition. Two or three terribly exaggerated accents. Eleven first lines from famous novels, read out in these voices and transcribed exactly as twenty-first century technology receives it. Can you guess what these opening gambits are supposed to be?
So I’m still working under the umbrella of market research, spending my less-than-full-time hours building databases full of contacts that might one day like to work with us. It’s not so bad I guess, but sometimes it gets terribly boring; all that googling and copying and pasting. I don’t like feeling like a robot so occasionally I take time to read about what I’m researching, and last week that happened to be Chancellors and Pro-Vice Chancellors of universities. Most of them are pretty dull. These guys are my favourites.
8AM: Wake up, but only because of someone else’s alarm. Snooze until you hear the door slam and then immediately feel guilty for being in bed.
8.15AM: Watch Judge Judy whilst applying for jobs. Fix your CV and submit to nine different jobs. Experience a mixture of hope and pre-emptive defeat.
“It’s just luck.” I was told yesterday. You check the websites every day and fill out application forms for hours each week, but chances are even if you’re a qualified gold-star candidate getting a job comes down to luck. The luck of an interviewer picking up your CV and reading it before others’, your email landing in their inbox at exactly the moment someone decides to read some more CVs. Luck. The word makes me want to pull my hair out.
Welcome to this blog’s First Ever Interview Post! I’ve scoured the world for a writer accomplished and interesting enough to carry the weight of the First Ever Interview on their shoulders and I’ve found quite the character. I caught up with Velcro Adams, this year’s favourite furry prodigy and asked him to type out some answers to the questions I know have all been on your mind.
I got one of those wooden “construct your own” gifts for Christmas. It was an owl. I had a lot of fun making it so I wanted to write a blog about it, but what do you say about a pieced together owl? I did it a bit wrong anyway so the wings are reaching out like it wants a hug. So instead I wrote a story about an owl who works in an office and interspersed the words with pictures from when I put my wooden owl together. Maverick.
My Buddy Holly t-shirt arrived from Raucous Records the other day. Buddy Holly is my current musical obsession and is great to listen to when you are washing up/dancing around the living room with a kitten/singing along to songs on the bus/generally existing. Who is this long-dead rock and roll star, and why don’t you love him as much as I do? Here is a guide to learning about about Buddy Holly and raving on.
It seems traditional at this time of year to recap via blogging all that you have learnt in 2011, from the mistakes you’ve made to the great times you’ve had. But you’re probably not that interested in my bank balance and crippling anxiety regarding my living situation, so I thought I’d do something different.
I spend a lot of time on Twitter, and I’m not even going to bullshit you that when people retweet me it doesn’t feel validating. I don’t have a lot to do daily, so it’s nice that when it comes to interacting with my thoughts, people not only read with their eyes but click with their fingers. Occasionally though I will tweet something completely ridiculous which ends up being the most popular thing I write all week. Here are a few silly examples to round the year off. Goodbye 2011!
I’m a strong independent woman with two degrees but sometimes at the pub I find myself asking questions I don’t know the answer to. This is where the valiant-but-costly (£1.50, oh holy shit oops) services of 118118 and 63336, otherwise known as “Any Question Answered”, who kindly provided me with their wisdom last night.
What goes with blue cheese pasta? A Beer Review, obviously. Over and between dinner another review was constructed using only the finest of Carringtons-bought beer, one of which was chosen because it reminded me of Lord of the Rings. Yummy!
