Saturday night turned out alright, had a good time and as far as I know she did too. Picked her up at hers and we got talking easily enough even with it being the first we’d seen each other in so long. Went to a pub, had a couple of drinks and caught up with what we’d been doing for all this time. I made it sound as if I’d skipped from one job to another then on to college, trying to bring a more sabbatical air to things rather than plain old unemployment. She’s currently looking for work(™) but was doing photography beforehand. It’d be nice to date a photographer, so that when I’m middle-aged I’d have a shoebox of artful nudes from back in my glory days. There were no awkward silences thank christ, though the standby of old school stories was there just in case. The film afterwards wasn’t half bad, nothing to pass the time while you’re getting to know someone like sitting in a darkened room for a couple of hours. She got points for saying she didn’t like Breaking Dawn, I was slightly worried beforehand that we might end up seeing that instead, but no, dystopian sci-fi it was. Got a bite to eat later, a drive and I dropped her back at her’s in the wee hours with a kiss on the doorstep to end the night. She’s a nice girl, we’ve got things in common like the odd piece of music, films, and a similar sense of humour. She’s quite bubbly too, but there’s a little bit of sharpness underneath which I rather like. It’s not love at first sight, I’m not head over heels, but she’s cool. I wasn’t bored to tears or trying to drag out a conversation, it was just a fun night that I wouldn’t say no to having again.
I was tempted to call her the next day and ask if she wanted to come along and see the local junkie tower block getting torn down, make a joke of it and call it a hillbilly date or something, but I decided against it. One, I figured I’d leave it more than twelve hours before texting her, and two, some things in life are better enjoyed alone. Explosions are one of them I think. The building in question was one of the raft that were built back in the fifties and sixties when the dream was that the common man would be living in the sky. Instead it put people twenty floors up with their own little box and an effective fitness regime should the lifts ever break and you’ve got three kids or a dodgy hip to contend with. Like a lot of those places people soon wanted to move out, and more undesirable people were moved in to replace them. As junkies aren’t too fussy where they live, and people aren’t too keen to keep the places they reside in looking spick and span, the tower fell into disrepair and became more or less deserving of the moniker Heroin Heights. The little news segment that was on TV managed to skillfully dodge around that fact though.
I stood there in the drizzle with a couple of hundred other people and my dog loving the attention she gets from anyone walking by. Not so bad when it’s a girl in lycra jogging in the park, but when it’s half-cut guys and kids inching closer and closer unsure of if she’s nice or not I could do without it. She did something completely unforgivable though, and this is a dog that’s stolen the shoes off of children’s feet, rusks from their hands and nearly got knocked down chasing a fox when she was younger. Now, I like to think I’ve raised a confident dog. She doesn’t mind big crowds or traffic, she’s fine with horses and bigger dogs, even the likes of rotties and staffies. So when I’m standing in the middle of a crowd with a few people looking at her and subsequently me, what kind of dog do you think she’d be terrified of? A pug. In a pink harness. A pug in a fucking pink harness that didn’t make a sound and hardly showed any interest yet she was shying away as if it was Cerberus bearing down on her. People noticed and burst out laughing seeing this big dog dodging around the little one. I’m sorely tempted to just have her put down now.
As for the demolition itself, it was epic, if fleeting. There were four klaxon calls and then it basically imploded in no time. I had a fraction of a second to brace myself for the sound of it when I seen the first charge go off, never felt anything like it before. Not too bad for my first time seeing one. I hope that someone who lived in the flats nearby set up a camera on a tripod before they had to leave the house so that there’s a close-up view of it coming down. More demolitions please.
Had an interview today as well, round two of a possible three just for a job in a fucking call centre. I heard that in the olden days you used to go and sit in a room with someone and you’d talk to each other, then they’d call you back and tell you if you had a job or not. How archaic and simple! I’ve had a phone interview, now a group assessment, then maybe another phone interview to top it all off. It went alright, don’t think I could have done anything better than I did, other than find a parking space quicker so I was there early rather than just on time. I don’t know how many people overall they’re interviewing for it, but there were six of us there, all guys. I was the only one that didn’t have some sort of degree to do with computing, and I can’t figure out who that’s more depressing for. Me, if I don’t get this minimum wage job because you unofficially need a degree, or them, who’ve spent years working hard and still being on the shit pile with monkeys like yours truly. So I embellished my previous work to focus on all the wonderful and not at all cunt-faced customers I dealt with and how I can indeed use a phone. All said in a nice clear confident voice of course.
The competition was a Martin Freeman lookalike, ironically he was sat next to someone not too dissimilar to Gareth from The Office. The pair of them seemed like normal enough guys, over-qualified and quite quiet. Next was a ginger guy who started off by telling everyone how he left uni as he didn’t like the way the course was run, and then carried on in much the same vein, with a load of stuttering for good measure. The next guy was probably the most qualified for call centre work, talked easily, plenty of experience, I can see him getting it long before me. Naturally he’s my sworn enemy. Last but not least was an Indian guy with good but fairly heavily accented English that didn’t seem to talk confidently enough. Nobody struck me as a complete nutter or pain in the arse, wouldn’t mind working with any of them.
There were a couple of tasks along the lines of why you think you should get the job, what you have to bring to the table, where you see yourself in a years time, that kind of thing. I think I done alright at, was conscious not to have “um” as every third word and mostly had it planned out in my head as it was. Lastly was a short test with relatively basic tech question which I think I won’t have had too much trouble passing. We were told we’d hear back within a week about whether or not we’ve got the job. There might or might not be a phone interview, if not then it’s four weeks training followed by a six month probationary period. Feels like I’m trying to join the fucking Men in Black, not explain to old ladies the difference between wireless radio and wireless internet.
GREAT BIG HOOR OF AN EDIT: Just as I was spell checking this my phone went, turns out I’ve got through for the tech role I applied for, and they want me to come in tomorrow to try out for a different position in another part of the company. There was talk of “based on the answers I provided” on the test and the role being a bit more technical than the one I originally applied for, but I reckon that it might have been just spiel to get me to come along so they can quickly fill a gap. I didn’t go into a lot of detail filling in the answers and considering that I was in a room full scholars I can see it being the case. So tomorrow I’ve to go in for a more informal meeting to see how I get on. I think it’s less on my current knowledge and more on how it looks like I’ll learn. With a bit of luck it might pay a bit more as well.
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