Two weeks ago, while Shane and I were still living at the hostel, I applied for a job I saw posted on the net. The next day, Friday, I got a phone call to go in for a sub editing (copy editing) test, and an interview. I was pretty psyched. But then, when I got to the place, I realized it was a recruitment agency, kind of. This agency, called The Media Network, placed the job ad for a company, and their job was to weed out the candidates before sending the company a final list. Enh. But since I had woken up early, put on my nice clothes and made the trip out there, I decided to stay and take the test. This test was really easy. They handed me a story and asked me to edit it. It was supposed to take 45 minutes, or something ridiculous like that. I was done in 20. (Seriously, it was easy. Words such as “fast” were purposely misspelled as “fasst.”) Anyway, when I was done, the job recruiter took a look at my test, and her eyes grew wide. I guess she expected me to be an idiot, being from Canada and all. But I aced the test, so she had no other choice but to send along my name to the business magazine.
On Tuesday, I got a call from another recruiter at TMN. The chief sub and editor of the magazine wanted to meet me on Friday. The interview was to be 45 minutes long, followed by a one-hour subbing test. I was nervous, but excited. The recruiter, whose name is Allan Cross (hehe), kept giving me “tips” on what I should be prepared to answer in the interview (ie. Why I moved to England, how long I’m planning on staying, etc). I kept expecting him to launch into the history of how Oasis came to be, or tell me whatever happened to the Manic Street Preachers. Friday rolls around, and I had to get up really early. We live in Peckham, which is just far enough away from the tube station that you can’t walk it. Well, you can, as Dingman and I did Sunday night, but the trip takes over an hour one way. Anyway, this means I had to take a bus to get to the tube station, pay another fare to get into the tube (I miss the TTC, where one fare gets you almost anywhere as long as you have a transfer) and switch trains twice. I hate the #63 bus from Peckham to Elephant & Castle (tube station) with a passion one would normally reserve for rapists, child molesters and lawyers. This bus is supposed to come around every 10 minutes. HA! It’s worse than the Midland bus in the hood, which comes once every 20 minutes if you’re lucky. So this means that the bus stop is always crowded. There are always at least 15 to 20 people waiting for the 63 bus at any one time – even in the middle of the day. When the bus finally does show up, it’s packed. And that’s when you get to know your neighbours really well. They push, shove and swear at you as they’re trying to board the bus. Especially the old ladies; they’re the worst. As if I don’t have somewhere important to be too. On Sunday, Dingman got so angry waiting for the bus at the tube station that we walked home. Yes, that’s right. We voluntarily took the one-hour and a half trek home, when the bus would have had us back in 20 minutes. It’s funny, really. When I see that crowd of people pushing closer to the curb, so they can be one of the first people to board the bus, I can almost see the horns rise from their skulls, their tongues forking and their tails growing. I wish I had a stun gun. Feel free to send one along. :)
But I digress. The interview on Friday lasted an hour and a half – twice as long as it was supposed to. And then the test came. I finished it in 20 minutes, and went home feeling mightily discouraged because I had had a hard time reading the editor and the chief sub. I thought they were being a little standoffish. A couple of hours later, Allan called and told me I had missed a spelling mistake in the proofing test. I thought I had blown it for sure. I was distracted most of the weekend, because I kept thinking about how I could have missed something so obvious. When I wasn’t feeling bad about myself, I was talking myself out of the job. Who really wants all that money anyway? And who needs six weeks holiday? It wasn’t working.
On Monday, I got a phone call. They wanted to see me again. Apparently, I had done so well on Friday, they would have offered me the job if I had been a UK national. The editor and the chief sub weren’t being standoffish, they were just being Brits. It all made sense suddenly. Anyway, I went in to see them again on Tuesday. Two hours later, the job was mine. The excitement of the news still has not worn off: I. got. a. job. See? It’s still exciting. Woo! I’ll be sub editing and laying out pages in a business magazine. My favourite part of the job, even though I haven’t started yet, is the 30-day holiday package. Oh yeah baby. Six weeks of pure vacation and a subsidized gym membership for Bomba! As if I exercise. :) But I digress… To celebrate, Shane bought me some Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream. Mmmmm… I can’t wait to go shopping. We’re going to London Dungeon on Saturday, because we haven’t done anything really cheesy and touristy since we got here. Anyway, I start work on Oct. 14, and get to be a “lady of leisure” until then, since Shane started work Wednesday. That means I can be lazy, watch British soaps and eat bonbons until Oct. 14, while someone else brings home the bacon. Nice. :) It’s almost like living at home… hehe.
Speaking of home… our new home is an interesting experiment in social behaviour. We share a house with four other people: Mark and Marit, the married Jamaican and Norweigan couple; Tom Green (hee hee); and Gemma, our landlady. I’ve seen Tom twice. The first time I met him he was wearing a towel. I think I’ve said less than five words to him so far, and we’ve been here over a week. Mark and Marit spend all of their time in their room, which is twice the size of ours, because they have their own TV and stereo system. If our room didn’t smell like cat piss, I’d be in there more too, since the cats do a fine job of mucking up the hallway carpet and the lounge carpet with their crap. Gemma is crazy, as far as I can tell. She’s nice most of the time, but sometimes, because she’s the landlady, it feels as though I’m living with my boss. But it’s a cheap place for what we get, and I do like our neighbourhood, even though it has a bad reputation. Peckham has a lot of council estates (ie. projects), hence the bad reputation. But I like it. We live right across the street from a huge library, where we can get free internet access, and about five minutes away from a Safeway, where we do our cheap grocery shopping. There are also a few banks, clothing stores and something called Argos (like Consumers Distributing) in the area.
Anyway, the last time I wrote, I mentioned the upcoming documentary on Michael Jackson’s face. But by the time we watched it, it had been so played out in other media outlets that I felt like I had already seen it three times. Still, the documentary had some new stuff, and had no trouble showing its bias. My favourite part was the section entitled, “Jacko goes cracko,” which was all about what Wacko (as they so lovingly called him) has been up to in the last decade. Hee hee. I still get a kick out of those nicknames. It almost makes up for their interspersing close-ups of some dude getting his nose chopped up as transitions between scenes. Almost.
S.
