I'm going to open this post up on a complete tangent from what it's meant to be about. I have just been forced to endure the latest Powergen advert again. I'm sure you all know the one - "Powergen is cheaper than Gritish Bas?". Utter bastards - it's such a cheap shot and a rubbish advert. I have no particular love of British Gas; I just really hate massively patronising adverts which are about as inventive as putting foam on your coffee and giving it a different name. Anyway, the mini-rant is over now as the adverts have finished and it's a music video by Pink (Just like a pill).
Also, on another brief tangent (this post has become tangent-tastic. I might bring Sin and Cosine into it later - good old trigonometry), I wanted to put a link to an interesting site that Vicky has directed me to. She sent me the link to a site called Pandora, which is created by the Music Genome Project and is for helping people expand their musical repertoire. You type in the name of a song or band. It will then play that song, or a song by that band. Then (and this is the clever bit) it will enqueue a list of other songs to play by artists who are similar to the one you originally selected. I know some of you are thinking it sounds a lot like Launchcast, but I assure you this is better. For a start, it isn't covered in all the nasty, messy adverts etc that now plague the Launchcast site.
Ok I guess I should actually get to the meat of this post - I can't put it off any longer. As many of you are aware, yesterday I went to London for my long awaited Japan interview. All in all, it was quite a fun, yet tiring, day and I shall run you through it all now.
Much to my dismay, the day started at 5:00am. Malheureusement, I had only had about 3-4 hours of sleep, although strangely enough I didn't feel quite as dead at the time as I had expected. I didn't feel like my eyes were bleeding or like bits of my brain were "falling away like wet cake". I got up and got myself ready for the day, then at 6:00am my dad kindly gave me a lift to Newark which is about 30 minutes away. I got the 6:46am train to King's Cross, which arrived 3 minutes early (much to the driver's obvious delight as he announced it) at 8:11am. Upon arrival at King's Cross I then doubled checked the route I would be taking on the map and then proceeded to walk to the Nova Group's London office. The route seemed simple enough - I walked along Euston road, took a left and went down Tottenham Court road, then a right down Oxford Street. It was when I reached Oxford Circus that a problem arose. The Offices were (according to Nova Group's mini-map and directions that I had printed off) about 8 minutes along Regent street from Oxford Circus. After walking along Regent street for about 10 minutes I started to get worried as I only had 15 minutes to get to my interview and I still hadn't found it. Another 5 minutes on I reached the end of Regent street. Panic set in. I checked the proper London map I had with me and discovered that I had looked at their print out upside down. I should've turned left at Oxford Circus rather than right. It was a true Bugs Bunny moment - "I knew I should've turned left at albuquerque!". I then became increasingly aware of the fact that their office was 8 minutes away from something that I had just walked 15 minutes away from in the opposite direction and I had about 10-12 minutes to get there. I marched back towards Oxford Circus like my life depended on it. I reached it again with about 3 minutes to get to their
office. At this point, I realised it was all or nothing, so I ran down Regent Street towards their office. When I reached the road it was on I felt destroyed. After about another panic-filled minute I found which building the office was located in. Then I just ran up the two flights of stairs (thank god it wasn't a massive building) and managed to get in about 30 seconds before the day began.
The day involved a long, but interesting, presentation about the company. This was broken up with a couple of tasks for us prospective employees and a demonstration of a typical teaching lesson. One of the tasks involved looking at a picture for 15 seconds, then giving a 45 second presentation about it to the rest of the group. I volunteered to go first just to seem keen and it was easy enough, as I am reasonably good at babbling endlessly (as I'm sure most of you are aware). After the presentation, we had 15 minutes to complete a quick psychometric test (I hate those) and a couple of mini essay questions about why we should be picked. Then there was a short break before the one-to-one interviews started.
The interview was reasonable unnerving, but I feel it went reasonably well. There was the usual questions about "give an example where..." - this was the bulk of the interview. There was also a section of quick-fire questions where my answer wasn't allowed to be any longer than 3 words and any hesitation resulted in skipping the question. That was by far the worst bit. I then had to give an example of my teaching ability based on the demonstration I had seen earlier.
All in all I feel it went quite well, but it's impossible to tell really. I shall find out in 3 weeks if I made it or not. I was pleased with how I did though, so I guess it all depends if I am the sort of person they are looking for.
After the interview, the day was over. It was about 1:00pm, so I headed back to King's Cross at a leisurely pace as there was a train at 2:05pm back to Newark. I arrived at the station with just enough time to grab a smoothie and a chicken ceaser wrap from the Marks & Spencer food hall at King's Cross. Marks & Spencer food halls really are excellent and whoever thought of putting them in areas heavily populated by commuters was a genius.
On the train back I received a call from Success Matrix informing me that the company I had an interview for on the friday decided to cancel the position, so none of the applicants got the job. I was quite relieved to be honest as I didn't want that job, but didn't want to turn it down if I had got it.
That pretty much covers yesterday. Tomorrow I am going to go to Doncaster to meet up with Leigh. Then later in the day we are going to trek over to Hull for the weekend, where we shall stay with Tom and also be joined by Vicky and Hannah. It should be an excellent weekend. Then I shall return on the sunday as I have another interview on monday.
Right now however, I think it's time for some Leo Sayer...
Also, on another brief tangent (this post has become tangent-tastic. I might bring Sin and Cosine into it later - good old trigonometry), I wanted to put a link to an interesting site that Vicky has directed me to. She sent me the link to a site called Pandora, which is created by the Music Genome Project and is for helping people expand their musical repertoire. You type in the name of a song or band. It will then play that song, or a song by that band. Then (and this is the clever bit) it will enqueue a list of other songs to play by artists who are similar to the one you originally selected. I know some of you are thinking it sounds a lot like Launchcast, but I assure you this is better. For a start, it isn't covered in all the nasty, messy adverts etc that now plague the Launchcast site.
Ok I guess I should actually get to the meat of this post - I can't put it off any longer. As many of you are aware, yesterday I went to London for my long awaited Japan interview. All in all, it was quite a fun, yet tiring, day and I shall run you through it all now.
Much to my dismay, the day started at 5:00am. Malheureusement, I had only had about 3-4 hours of sleep, although strangely enough I didn't feel quite as dead at the time as I had expected. I didn't feel like my eyes were bleeding or like bits of my brain were "falling away like wet cake". I got up and got myself ready for the day, then at 6:00am my dad kindly gave me a lift to Newark which is about 30 minutes away. I got the 6:46am train to King's Cross, which arrived 3 minutes early (much to the driver's obvious delight as he announced it) at 8:11am. Upon arrival at King's Cross I then doubled checked the route I would be taking on the map and then proceeded to walk to the Nova Group's London office. The route seemed simple enough - I walked along Euston road, took a left and went down Tottenham Court road, then a right down Oxford Street. It was when I reached Oxford Circus that a problem arose. The Offices were (according to Nova Group's mini-map and directions that I had printed off) about 8 minutes along Regent street from Oxford Circus. After walking along Regent street for about 10 minutes I started to get worried as I only had 15 minutes to get to my interview and I still hadn't found it. Another 5 minutes on I reached the end of Regent street. Panic set in. I checked the proper London map I had with me and discovered that I had looked at their print out upside down. I should've turned left at Oxford Circus rather than right. It was a true Bugs Bunny moment - "I knew I should've turned left at albuquerque!". I then became increasingly aware of the fact that their office was 8 minutes away from something that I had just walked 15 minutes away from in the opposite direction and I had about 10-12 minutes to get there. I marched back towards Oxford Circus like my life depended on it. I reached it again with about 3 minutes to get to their
office. At this point, I realised it was all or nothing, so I ran down Regent Street towards their office. When I reached the road it was on I felt destroyed. After about another panic-filled minute I found which building the office was located in. Then I just ran up the two flights of stairs (thank god it wasn't a massive building) and managed to get in about 30 seconds before the day began.
The day involved a long, but interesting, presentation about the company. This was broken up with a couple of tasks for us prospective employees and a demonstration of a typical teaching lesson. One of the tasks involved looking at a picture for 15 seconds, then giving a 45 second presentation about it to the rest of the group. I volunteered to go first just to seem keen and it was easy enough, as I am reasonably good at babbling endlessly (as I'm sure most of you are aware). After the presentation, we had 15 minutes to complete a quick psychometric test (I hate those) and a couple of mini essay questions about why we should be picked. Then there was a short break before the one-to-one interviews started.
The interview was reasonable unnerving, but I feel it went reasonably well. There was the usual questions about "give an example where..." - this was the bulk of the interview. There was also a section of quick-fire questions where my answer wasn't allowed to be any longer than 3 words and any hesitation resulted in skipping the question. That was by far the worst bit. I then had to give an example of my teaching ability based on the demonstration I had seen earlier.
All in all I feel it went quite well, but it's impossible to tell really. I shall find out in 3 weeks if I made it or not. I was pleased with how I did though, so I guess it all depends if I am the sort of person they are looking for.
After the interview, the day was over. It was about 1:00pm, so I headed back to King's Cross at a leisurely pace as there was a train at 2:05pm back to Newark. I arrived at the station with just enough time to grab a smoothie and a chicken ceaser wrap from the Marks & Spencer food hall at King's Cross. Marks & Spencer food halls really are excellent and whoever thought of putting them in areas heavily populated by commuters was a genius.
On the train back I received a call from Success Matrix informing me that the company I had an interview for on the friday decided to cancel the position, so none of the applicants got the job. I was quite relieved to be honest as I didn't want that job, but didn't want to turn it down if I had got it.
That pretty much covers yesterday. Tomorrow I am going to go to Doncaster to meet up with Leigh. Then later in the day we are going to trek over to Hull for the weekend, where we shall stay with Tom and also be joined by Vicky and Hannah. It should be an excellent weekend. Then I shall return on the sunday as I have another interview on monday.
Right now however, I think it's time for some Leo Sayer...
Take me baby, I'm all yours
Do just what you wanna do with my love
Do just what you wanna do with my love
Is it possible to put any more mundane detail in your post? It is distinctly lacking in detail.