Poor effort all round

So I have been suitably chastised for my slackness at updating this blog and upon checking the date of last entry, I stand before you apologetically.  And its slackness that I want to chat about today.

Considering that I have now been home 3 and a half months and am still unemployed it is evident that something clearly has gone wrong.  Now while I admit that I took a little me time in December, what with everyone on holiday and a multitude of visitors, I certainly have been back in the saddle since the second week of January.  In London, jobhunting was relatively straightforward.  You register at as many employment agencies as you can bare, fill out those forms where you say you’ll do anything but Telesales and wait for the phone calls to come in….offering you fantastic positions in Telesales.

In South Africa you attend your first interview in November, 3 weeks later you hear back from the company asking if you are still interested, you say yes, you then have a 2nd interview and meet the CEO of the company in the 2nd week of January, you hear nothing, you are then invited to meet someone else at a 3rd interview until you are even on first name terms with the tea lady, and yes you guessed it, you hear nothing until you prompt a response with an email trying your best not to sound desperate despite the fact that you are having sleepless nights and anxiety attacks over the whole affair.  The job market is so biased to the employer that they can literally stuff you around for over 2 months, make you put on a button up shirt and shave 3 times in a Cape Town summer, and then not employ you.

And then you get the employment agencies.  Im not sure whats worse, getting a million phone calls offering you jobs you specifically said you didnt want to do, or not hearing anything at all.  Im not sure quite how they make any money if they never actually place you.  And it would be hard for them to do that seen as they never actually contact you.  Thats if they actually keep the appointment to meet you in the first place.  They must have so many candidates desperate for work if they can be as slack as they are.

But with all this free time getting into wife finding shape has begun in earnest.  Tomorrow is the first weigh in after a month of serious treadmill pounding, and a weight program that involves writing stuff down in a notebook after each set. Serious stuff hey.  I think half an hour in the sauna before the scales ought to do it, just to sweat out at a few more grams.  And maybe a healthy dose of California Fig.  Staying on the vanity side of things, suntanning had a set back when it was discovered that spray on sun tan lotion still needs to be rubbed in.  The peeling is finally over although there still might be some flakes in the bed sheets.

The social life had a brief sojourn out of the doldrums over the last weekend, braai on Friday, concert on Clifton on Saturday and a trip to a whiskey bar on Sunday night, where I carefully checked the menu to make sure I didnt order the extra special single malt that comes at a jaw droppingly expensive R15,000 a tot.  Hopefully will have more to report soon.  Must go as the agency has just called to say that they can see me in an hour.  Fantastic, its 30 degrees outside and those underarm burger pattie sweat patches sure scream “employ me”.