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At last, the weekend. I'm sure once my body adjust to working life I won't feel quite so tired but this week was exhausting!
All in all the week was pretty good. I've already learnt so much but it feels like the 'to learn' pile isn't going to decrease for months and months. There's a lot you have to pick up on your own, but there's lots of documentation and friendly colleagues to ask for help.
Right... when's pay day?!
Despite being back in London for over a year now, returning to a UK workplace I've been having strange reverse culture shock experiences. It's certainly different from working in Japanese schools. Here are some occasions when I've felt decidedly odd:
1. Psyching myself up for a self introduction to my team/dept. only for my manager to briefly introduce each person to me.
2. Calling everyone by their first names felt strange at first.
3. When speaking to someone who was explaining she'd be doing part of my training I felt an irrestible urge to reply, 'Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu.' With no English equivalent I felt like I couldn't express myself!
4. It's true that English people bring cakes into work on their own birthdays. I had struggled to confirm/dispell the fact when a Japanese friend living here was talking about this earlier in the year. How much have I forgotten?
5. Most people leave the office within 0-10 minutes of 5:30, the official finishing time! I feel very guilty leaving in this interval and wonder if people are judging me.
Where can you leave money in full view where it might not be taken?
So, day one of my new job is over. Unlike my past jobs there was no need to stand up and introduce myself; rather, it was a case of walking through my department being introduced to people by my manager. I realised afterwards that I hadn't remembered a single name. Oops! Everyone has been really friendly and a pleasure to meet.
In terms of work, this week looks like it will mainly be self-study of tutorials and familiarising myself with the company systems and procedures. All in all it was a decent day.
At Crockford Bridge Farm Shop & Pick Your Own you can go strawberry picking!
Actually, you can also pick fresh rasberries, blackberries, runner beans, marrows, courgettes... I picked out a number of delicious strawberries and rasberries for about £2.25. Great fun!
British bathrooms usually have two taps instead of one because, historically, British plumbing provides hot and cold water at different pressures, meaning mixer taps are more difficult to fit.
Read more interesting facts from BBC's 10 things we didn't know last week.
Tennis heel. I thought I'd just made it up but the term seems to be already in use. I've just returned from tennis and have minor pain in the outside area of my left heel. Actually, I've had it for a few weeks now.
I can't work out whether tennis is to blame, because although the first time I felt the pain was while playing tennis, the previous day I'd gone jogging for the first time in a while. The pain was quite bad but since then has much improved.
Perhaps it's related to the tennis shoes which I bought over Christmas in Japan. There were two pairs that I considered, one a wider fitting shoe, the other was very stylish but narrower. Stupidly, I chose the good looking pair. Since then, I have stretch them umpteen times and now they are OK, but now I'm wondering about the heel/arch support.
Many people play tennis to keep fit, but a regular player has to keep fit to play tennis.
What a strange place to put a tennis court: next to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge! Is this poor tennis court disused?
Yesterday I spent a lovely evening down by the river at Tower Bridge. In fact, I walked across Tower Bridge for the first time in ages. What a great bridge! In walking across the bridge I must have been snapped by at least a hundred different tourists' cameras.
The heat over the last few days has been so stiffling. On the way to Tower Hill on the District Line everyone looked sweaty, hot and bothered. On the other side of Tower Bridge I rested in the shade and realised that there was a nice breeze, too.
Butler's Wharf, with it's old converted buildings, is a very attractive area. If you walk a along the riverside you will find interesting objects, presumably all from boats and ships, forming pieces of art on the pavement. A few minutes along, past some stylish restaurants, you come to the Design Museum, which is worth a visit.
Look out over the river and to the left you have Tower Bridge and far to the right you can see Canary Wharf dominating the skyline.
One of my job applications, for a support analyst role, has been successful. A job offer!
If all goes to plan and the contract gets sorted out, I should be starting full-time work in the not too distant future.
My friends and I were walking along Wardour Street looking for somewhere to eat. We stumbled across Gama, a Korean (BBQ) & Japanese restaurant, and decided to go in.
The menu was a little hard to decipher, especially the set menus which were only written in Korean. However, our waiter was incredibly kind and patient and recommended the first set course. On top of that we ordered kimchi and chijimi pajon, two personal favourites of mine.
We had so much food! The set course included Korean BBQ (in this case beef and squid), a delicous kind of sweet and sour chicken, egg omelette rolls, muscles in soup and even shochu! Plus we had the tasty kimchi, pajon, and of course, rice.
The shochu was poweful stuff. Towards the end of the meal one of my friends said, 'Let's down these.' Despite already suffering from a hangover, I agreed. My lack of shot drinking experience showed - I didn't gulp properly and started coughing and spluttering shochu all over the place!
Overall the food was great and I'm looking forward to going back again.
Actually, downstairs there is more to attract customers: a bar/night club which you have to walk through to get to the toilets. It looks quite stylish down there and there is a huge TV projector set-up. Check it!
It's always lurking in the background, almost forgotten but not quite: the student loan.
How depressing it was to see my annual statement arrive quoting a debt still far exceeding £5000. All that money just to go to university...
Yesterday was a strange day. The Japanese agency I registered with sent me off to an interview with a Japanese company - which shall remain unnamed - with offices in London. This 'interview' was difficult to prepare for as there was no job spec. Did they just want to interview me and keep my name for the future?
I arrived early and waited in the lobby until it was time to go to the appropriate floor. A kind lady let me in and showed me to an office to wait for my interviewer. My Japanese interviewer failed to show up for 15 minutes and when he did offered no apologies. 'How rude and un-Japanese,' I thought.
When he came into the room and introduced himself I was speechless at his appearance and my reply was delayed by at least a few seconds. He was a middle-aged man, with medium length wiry hair sticking out in every direction and as he spoke, barely moving his mouth I might add, froth appeared at the sides of his mouth! How can a highly-ranked person in sales do good business without cutting his hair once in a while?
He mumbled and started asking about my history and what my goals were. After five minutes he asked how much Japanese I understood. 'Some,' I assured him and from that moment on until the end everything was in Japanese! Worse still, his Japanese was even more of a mumble than his English.
I was pretty much given a presentation about the company - page after page of printouts about what they do and who they are partnered with. For half an hour I sat there saying, 'Hai.' wondering when it was going to end.
It turned out there were no positions in particular that he'd had in mind for me and he as good as said, 'Come back when you have more experience.' I was particularly annoyed when he said, 'If only you didn't have this period away from IT...' to which I retorted, 'In that case I wouldn't understand Japanese [and wouldn't be sitting here!]'
By the end I honestly felt sick (the frothing) and even thinking about it now I feel unsettled. Waiting for the lift my interviewer started a converstion with one of his colleagues - another English guy speaking Japanese - and I was practically ignored. I felt such relief leaving the building. What an unbelievable interview experience.
I'm sure there will be good news on the job front soon - I've already had one to many interviews.
When a friend asked, 'Are you free next Monday?' he was clever not to reveal all the details of his plan. I was swiftly recruited for a day's hard labour.
It was a morning start when my friend pulled up in his hired van. We wasted no time in picking the first batch of about 90 paving slabs for his garden, some from locally and the rest from a building merchant. I was surprised the van could move considering the heavy load it was carrying.
Then it was back to his place, to slowly unload all the slabs and move them to his garden. It was a slow process but after a short rest we began loading all his old (not to mention heavier) slabs into the van. The van suspension looked very dodgy by the time we had finished. Off to the dump.
On arrival at the dump we were told that the 'weighing bridge' was closed for the day and that we should try a skip company down the road. At the skip company we drove on to the weighing bridge and got the all clear to start emptying the van.
At the end of the compound was a huge mound of junk, being pushed into a sort of pyramid by a powerful looking JCB. It reversed away a little and a man pointed to the heap. We began chucking the slabs and rubbish out of the back of the van and they shattered on impact with the rubbish heap in a very gratifying way.
The job had only just become fun when the JCB returned and proceeded to move rubbish around not 10ft away! As it pushed and reversed, rubbish tumbled everywhere and it was seriously dangerous. Haven't they heard of health and safety? In less than five minutes we had cleared the back of the van - speed was of the essense.
Back at the weighing scale we got to see how much weight we'd actually been working with - close to 1.5 tonnes!!!
With visits to B&Q, Wickes and can you believe it, even Ikea thrown in, man, what a slave driver. When I move house there's no question who will be first on my list of helpers! Be ready.
Today I had a second interview for a London based support role. In my experience so far, second interviews tend to be more difficult because often they are with more senior members of staff who are more 'business-like'. Today followed the same pattern, but I tried to stay positive and sell my skills as best possible.
Although I had been expecting another test, the interviewer sprung a five minute test on me to test how well I work under pressure (wasn't that last week's test?) doing one of the things that will be required of the job - prioritising support calls to allocate to the support staff. I don't think I did all that well, but it was good because I got to see the kind of work and type of thinking that are involved. I learnt a great deal in the five minutes we spent discussing the list support call priorities. The interview lasted for about 45 minutes.
Then a lovely lady from HR came to tell me a little more about the company and the benefits employees receive. Next, the real test.
I did enquire as to why it was necessary to complete a programmer's test for a support role. The team leader said that the skills of a developer are useful in support and in some cases you need to think more when in support to solve problems than when programming from a specification, so logical skills are essential.
The test was an hour long and a mixture of different things. A few questions were about following confusing flow charts; other questions were about manipulating symbols and computer programming function calls; there were alphanumeric ordering and reordering questions; finally, there was a complicated flow chart based around converging number series.
It was a bit of a mind-bending test but I felt that I gave it a pretty good shot. With two interviews and three test results to go on, this company should have a fair bit of data to make a decision with.
This hand dryer has a fitting which allows you to blow hot air over your face. Handy, eh?
It feels like ages since I've been able to sit down at my computer with a few minutes to spare. Let's catch up a little, starting from the weekend.
On Sunday morning, I went to play tennis with friends. Probably owing to Wimbledon and the promise of warmer summer weather, the number of participants was more than double the usual number. It's funny how many people pick up their rackets for about two weeks of the year. Actually, it's not funny, just plain annoying.
As it was men's Wimbledon finals day, we went in search of a pub which would be showing the Federer - Nadal showdown. We found a decent place, ordered our food (I'd recommend the sausages and mash) and sat down just in time for the match.
I should have put down a bet on the score because I predicted a three sets to one victory for Federer. After Nadal winning the French Open and his dominance over Federer this year, I was rooting for Federer and he didn't let me down.
The match inspired many of us and a spur-of-the-moment decision had us heading back to a local park for another hit. Just by watching the pros you start to feel that you can hit the same shots. Our evening tennis session was great, apart from the fact that I broke another string and missed the World Cup final.
The good news is I've found a way to improve my backhand; the bad news is that inspite of my ongoing efforts to strengthen my shoulder, experimenting with what I believe to be an improved service action - similar to an older one - brought back that familiar onset of pain.
Yesterday's interview experience presented an extra bit of pressure because of the test beforehand. I was told that the team do look for a passing mark, so whether I'd actually have the interview or not would depend on my score. In most of the applications I've made so far, any tests are online tests before being invited to the interview.
I passed the test, and was then given one of those personality questionnaires to fill in. I hate to rate a number of words or phrases (dependable, social skills, easy on people, pliable etc) into an order which reflects how I believe others perceive me in the work place. The strange part came when I turned over the page and was asked, 'Now rate how you really are.' Was that just a way to get my honest judgements? What do companies to with these tests? It's strange considering you are normally told they will not affect your application.
After the interview itself, which went quite well, I left the room only to see Federer at match point in the Wimbledon semi-finals on a large flat screen LCD TV mounted on a wall. He won and I left the building.
What do you make of this job advert I came across on the Internet?
Programmer/Hacker Required
Got some time to spare and some mad skills? Cool new company seeks web developer looking for a summer job. Dare you to apply.
When asked at a recent interview to name a successful company, I shot myself in the foot by naming Starbucks. Sure, they are a phenomenal success and new Starbucks coffee shops are still spreading like wild-fire all over the UK and Japan (presumably their success is far wider reaching than these two countries), but I couldn't explain the success.
What is so special about Starbucks compared to other coffee shops? I could only think of brand power and familiarity. Possibly also the various seasonal drinks that appear giving variety. I think that the cafe culture which has become so popular, at least as far as England goes, goes some way to explaining the Starbucks success. Not many young people used to study and spend hours in cafes, but now they do. I remember signs in Japanese cafes asking for students not to sit for hours on end without buying another drink. Apparently, starbucks distinguishes itself with its quality of service and product, but in many cases Starbucks shops are so busy that it's all rush rush rush and 'here's your coffee in a paper cup'. There are so many coffee shops with good service and better coffee... Any opinions?
Interesting facts: The first Starbucks was opened in Seattle; The first Starbucks outside North America opened in Tokyo, two years before entering the U.K. market in 1998; Starbucks now has coffee shops in over 30 countries.
'What exactly is Canada Day?' I thought, as I walked into a packed Trafalgar Square and read the electronic board on display last Friday. There were hundreds of people around a stage in the square, many carrying or even wrapped in Canadian flags, sipping beers as they chatted. By that time, it appeared that most of the festivities had ended, but there was still a good atmosphere.
The event was to celebrate Canada's national day, 1st July. Apparently many Canadians celebrate at the Canadian themed Maple Leaf pub in Covent Garden.
