I’m hoping this is the weirdest interview question I will ever get for the rest of my life:
What would your cat say about moving to Kelowna?
It just goes to show you will never be 100% prepared for an interview, so I suggest you formulate your answer to this in advance of your next job search, just in case.
Supposedly if you map your brain waves to music, that’s what they sound like. Which begs the question, what do the brain waves of stoned cats sound like? I’m guessing Nickelback.
Unlike the turtle-humping-inanimate-objects video genre, these ones I can actually reproduce, that is, once I contact a high-grade catnip supplier and get my keyboard out of storage downstairs. Surely I could get my cat to say anything I want about Kelowna after 10 minutes of her writhing in A minor.
So a friend said when I mentioned that I’d left the new job that I started two weeks ago (and only worked four days for). It’s nice that someone feels they’d benefit from this move on my part.
I now owe my friend John a beer because he bet I wouldn’t last three weeks at that new company. My stepfather said on the phone today, “I’m surprised you stayed that long”. Oh ye of completely realistic-sized faith!
Although I wouldn’t presume to call myself the most honest person around, I am not good at make believe. The truth is, I didn’t want the job, and I was applying and interviewing elsewhere while starting this job, and I felt completely shitty the whole time that I was deceiving them. I think the dental pain showed up when it did because I was grinding my teeth at night from the worry, when I managed to sleep at all.
Friends kept saying, it’s just a job, it’s better to have a job while you look for something else, at least it’s a paycheque, etc. whenever I said I should quit. I think I’m going to be judged for turning down any job in this recession; however, for me, the only good thing about it was the paycheque (not to insult the company, they are good people). As for the bad things:
I’d leave my apartment at quarter to 7 and come home after work at a quarter to 7, having not done anything but work and commute that day.
The company is not an IT company (but a company with an IT team, which is different).
I did not feel at one with the IT team.
I wasn’t going to learn anything new in this position except for things specific to the company itself.
The second point isn’t a biggie, but the rest are, especially the last: I wouldn’t be completely adverse to a junior position if it was something new that would be challenging and give me some new skills, but this wasn’t going to be the case. It seems I set up my workstation so quickly they didn’t have any work for me and were going to have to scramble to find me some; and, I mean, I’m not that awesome. So it didn’t seem fair to them to pay me to twiddle my thumbs for several days while I slyly send out resumes in my off-hours and pray to God to make me a DBA again.
Speaking of which, this was one of the reasons given for why they hired me for a position which I considered too junior for me:
Well, you see, I don’t consider MySQL DBAs to be real DBAs.
One thing I look forward to every summer is a new season of So You Think You Can Dance. It’s been TV crack for me ever since I happened to catch an episode in its second season, and I was happy to see that they started making a Canadian version last year. I think what makes the show great is that the dance numbers are only a few minutes long each, meaning that with my ADHD I can actually pay attention the whole time (and with Tivo I can fast-forward through the annoying screams of the judge Mary Murphy).
It seems my favourite genre is contemporary, which is interesting as I didn’t really know it existed until I saw SYTYCD. Mom used to take me to ballets all the time back when I was a kid and she still liked me, but that was all I ever really knew about dance beyond movies like Strictly Ballroom and Dirty Dancing. Neither of which made me want to take up the art more than I wanted a hot boyfriend who was strong enough to lift me. Contemporary dance, however, makes me wish that Mom had put me in dance classes back when I watched ballet and said I wanted to do that; alas!
I was reminded of how much I liked that style last week when I saw this piece choreographed by the Canadian Stacey Tookey, to The Frame’s Falling Slowly.
Here’s the original dance that got me really interested in the show in 2006 (which I blogged about at the time, too):
I think what grabs me about contemporary is how organic and emotive it is; it talks to my mushy inner core. It also talks to my flabby outer core, saying that I really need to hit the gym.
That’s what I told Mom I’d been paying the last few days by the amount of pain I’d been in. Normally I’d just say it was divine retribution for past wrongs, but I can’t have done all that much since I paid up last year. I feel like running out and robbing a bank or something just to even things out both for my soul and my personal savings.
My first week of work lasted just a day and then I was bedridden with dental/facial pain similar to the early stages of last year’s hell, and then I was bedridden recovering from the dental work. I have a month of several procedures per week which will decimate my entire savings account (what with the lack of health benefits that went along with the lack of job). Oh, and I’ll be working only three days a week in the meantime, making me extra-poor!
It turns out that eating sugary foods and not brushing your teeth twice a day results in cavities. Whodathunkit? I’m going to blame myself for most of this, because I always associated brushing my teeth with the migration of my pants, and as I wasn’t getting dressed most mornings during my unemployment and self-employment I wasn’t usually brushing my teeth then either. Hey, I live alone.
I also put some blame on the sadistic dentist of last year’s ills, as a good portion of the cost I’m stuck with is in fixing things he screwed up or ignored. If I had any money left I’d probably use it to put a hit out on him, so he sort of saved himself.
The dental work in progress is as follows:
fillings for cavities in all the back teeth
crown on last year’s root canal tooth which has cavities
two replacement crowns where there are cavities under the crowns
fillings to fix the “buckling” of several teeth due to extreme grinding
new mouthguard
It’s sad when the only good things you hear from the dentist are “your front teeth are fine” and “you don’t have gingivitis”.
A friend suggested I get all my teeth removed but I told him that if I was going to be the topic of rap songs it was going to be in praise of fine white titties and not as a joke on toothless women.
The other thing that sucks is that I had planned to visit a friend in Seattle this weekend where I was going to go kayaking and drink beer and buy Canadian yarn which isn’t sold in Vancouver, and now I can’t.
So if nothing good happens to me soon I fully prepare to go do something bad because I figure the universe owes me now. Perhaps they could’ve just paid the dental industry themselves and skipped me entirely, though.
I was recently asked at the end of an interview what music I listened to (this was in regards to the very-strange-in-an-IT-worker music degree I have). I was asked this after I was dismissed for not being a jazz fan (in retrospect I wish I’d asked the guy which sub-genre he was referring to and try to outdo him on jazz knowledge). Anyways, I responded to the question with “indie rock”. The guy then said something along the lines of, “I know you were in college for quite a while, but it’s time to move on.”
Ouch.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, and I said this to him too: having a music degree means nobody can insult your musical tastes. I truly believe this: you don’t have to like what I listen to, but most likely if you’re questioning my taste you have less music education than I do. In essence, I’m more qualified to bug you for what’s on your iPod; but I think the only bad taste is that which isn’t open to new types of music. Or if your favourite band is Nickelback.
(Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)
I’ve been relaying the interview story to friends, particularly those who take a similar liking to up-and-coming, independent music artists. It’s a bit silly to dismiss indie music outright as being a “phase” one goes through in early adulthood, since by definition it really just means any band or artist who isn’t signed to a major record label, regardless of what genre they play. But, of course, if you’re not on a major label then it’s because you suck, right?
Sheesh.
Back in January I wrote about the correlation between recessions and fixed-meter hits on the radio, the example for nowadays being Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”. I said then that I found myself listening to a lot more pop music, perhaps to compensate for feeling crappy about being unemployed. That trend has continued, along with my lack of a regular paycheck, and I’ve recently realized that I seem to be listening almost exclusively to indie pop. Man, has my life sucked.
I haven’t recommended any music in a long time, so let me point out a few of the songs and artists on my current happy-making playlist:
I saw this video a few weeks ago on The Wedge, the only show left on Muchmusic that doesn’t make me feel old. I really hated it at first, but the song’s an earworm and I have to admit the retro design and video effects are a big win.
This is a new band formed by Nate Ruess of the on-haitus The Format along with dudes from Anathallo and Steel Train. The band’s name itself is ironically unironic, in that they’re an indie band that plays fun music. I saw them opening for another band (Manchester Orchestra, who have a name consistent with indie naming rules since they’re neither an orchestra nor from Manchester) at The Biltmore a few weeks ago and enjoyed every second of their performance. Sadly they have only released one song, and their full-length doesn’t come out until August. This was my personal anthem last month.
I heard these guys were the new It-band at this year’s SXSW. The new album is upbeat, multi-layered electro-pop, but this song stuck out for me because of its lyrics (which are often an afterthought in such genres).
I have to admit I like this song just for its title, and for the title of its album (Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix), which I highly recommend if you’re wanting to get in a pick-me-up sort of mood. I can’t understand what the hell they’re singing (they’re French), but who cares?
Is it just me, or can you too no longer differentiate between music videos nowadays and those from the 80s? I mean, hair, clothes, design, effects… I feel like I’m supposed to be starting elementary school on Monday.
In case you were wondering, the reasons I took down all my blog content were as follows:
I had applied for a job with a company whose corporate image was sort of counter to that which I portray on my blog, except maybe for the cute pictures of cats; I was worried that they might google me and discover this.
My blog stats were telling me that most of the google searches to my website were from people very interested in unwashed underclothing, thanks to my many posts about that cancer charity event I’ve done the last three July’s. And I was grossed out.
Absolutely nothing was going on in my life for me to write about.
In regards to 1, the company hasn’t contacted me. 2, the google seems to have refreshed its results into no longer sending such people to my site, and 3, shit’s happening now. So screw the self-censorship, I’m back.
The happening shit to which I’m referring is:
I’m taking a detour from my DBA career by accepting a reports developer position at a local company. I’m calling it a “detour” because that sounds better than “pay cut”.
I chopped off all my hair.
I can’t think of a third point to make, but other stuff’s going down too, seriously.
I’m hoping all of this will return my life into something resembling normality, though that’s a bit much to ask of a haircut.
I’m hoping this is the weirdest interview question I will ever get for the rest of my life: