whats is it like living in Auckland?

I’m planning a proper post on how I’m finding New Zealand so far. I’ll probably put it on HipHipUK though, the Zig type stuff that I don’t mind just anyone reading will be on there from now on. It’s be a t-shirt free blog at last, as I don’t have to fund the traveling trip and Tjunction is making a tidy amount.

Whats the point of this post? Well after a mind-numbing 1.5hr spent researching discounted beds for the beds affiliate site, I need a break before I tackle wine or supermarkets. Its impressive that I picked these three niches when I’ve never brought a bed, don’t like wine and don’t buy my groceries online. Actually maybe its more impressive that they make money. Whatever.

Get to the point. What was the good news? Ah yes, I’ve finally uploaded pictures of the flat onto flickr. The plan was to do it earlier but the flat was always too messy. Annetts out working (short-term temp thing) so like the little bitch I am, I just cleaned the place up and now its dazzling clean. So go and take a look at where we live now if you’re interested.  We’re off to the capital Wellington for a few days now, enjoying my last days of freedom before I start work on Monday

After 5mnths off its going to be a big culture shock to re-enter the world of working. Grrr. If you don’t know where I’m working you can read about it on HipHipUK

That it? Yep, now get back to what you were doing.

In front of you….jobs. Flirting with their attractive paychecks, flaunting suggestively a big 20 days of holiday, ‘yeah I know I look good’- full pension and medical up in here. So you pick one. Now its all over. You’re committed. In a working relationship. The glory days are over. At the start it will be all nice during the honeymoon period. You’ll arrive on time. You’ll wear matching socks. You’ll eat with your mouth closed. But then they’ll start notice things about you. Firstly that you’re a moron. Secondly that your CV had lies of biblical proportions:

‘Good Team Player’ = Outsourcing and delegating is still valid team work right?

‘Highly Ambitious’ = Aims to come in 5 days a week.

‘Results Orientated’ = Takes only the tasks mundane enough to not warrant being fired when inevitably fucked up.

They’ll see you at your worst, hungover on a Monday. Asleep in meetings. Only able to type using one finger, your thumb.  Incapable of even using Powerpoint. That despite being an ‘advanced internet user’ you still look up the HTML code for a link.

So what can you do? Well not much. Keep your head down, your breath minted and pray that no-one notices that you have no idea what you’re doing. They probably won’t, luckily. As they’re doing the same thing as you.

We should just stop this whole charade. Lets just stop it now. Lets celebrate mediocrity! We can’t all be trailblazers, out to reinvent the wheelbarrow. If we were, the fast lane would be forever clogged and congested with high flyer’s. Lets celebrate life’s great underachievers, its car park attendants, its festering middle managers, pulling kindly into society’s slow lane. If we did then we could write truthful CVs and covering letters like this:

Adam Fletcher
General Sales/Marketing Bullshit
Global Evil Big Corp Tech

19th May 2008

Dear Boss to be,

Hi! My name is Adam Fletcher. I was just on my way back from trading my last cow for magic beans, when I saw your positions vacant advertisement for the job of ‘General Sales/Marketing Bullshit’. Even though that sounds like the worst job since fluffing, my rent is due soon and I do require food for the cat. I was hoping you might hire me and allow me to sit around the office, calling some people occasionally and trying to sell whatever crap it is that you make. I’m not a world beater or anything but I’m definitely okay at stuff. I’ll try and be on time and stay awake in meetings. If you like i’ll let you take credit for all my good ideas, should I have any. I’m also willing to tell you that even your shittest, most hair brained ideas are wonderful, if you like. So if you didn’t already employ some other blind lemming, and I’m not the worst applicant to apply, then how about we give it a go?

Thanks for you time and I hope to hear from you soon, so we can discuss this opportunity further. Please take the time to reject me personally. Rejection offends. Ignoration scars.

But that would be too easy wouldn’t it?

The last few weeks have been a whirl of interviews as I’ve been knee deep into my job hunt. You either love interviews, or hate them. I’m an emphatic ‘love them’. Why? Well, in normal social interactions you have to take part in - polite conversation. Thats means that you are forced to show an interest in the person you’ve forced to stop and listen to you, talking about yourself to. So when they say ‘how was your day’, you’ll answer and then they’ll leave an unnerving pause. In this pause you’re supposed to say ’so anyway how was your day?’, they’ll tell you some crap your not interested in about how they don’t like Wednesdays, or bosses who don’t understand how great they are, bills they need to pay blah blah blah - this is polite conversation. In interviews I don’t have to ask any questions back, the spotlights are shined purely at me. I get to just talk about myself for an hour or so, its kinda like therapy only if things go well they start paying you and not the other way round. It’s an excuse to talk solidly about myself without pesky interrupts, from others wanting to tell me about themselves. What easier subject can there be than talking about yourself? If I go on Mastermind thats the exact specialist topic I would request - ‘The thoughts and feelings of Adam Fletcher’. Yet they let you have this one in the test of whether or not you can have a job and earn money. Makes no sense to me.

There was a feature on the news today about CVs and job hunting. They had done a study and found that 70% of people lied on their CVs! This taught me two things:

1. TV teaches you nothing you don’t already know.

2. When confronted, 30% of people are unwilling to admit lying on their CV.

The other great things about interviews is you not only get to talk about yourself for hours on end without people walking away, or saying nasty things about you behind your back (egomaniac, asshole, fuck me what a bore etc etc), but you get to make stuff up. You can invent a whole new, better you. Its like a mini-vacation from your own rubbish self, while you get to test out what life would be like if you weren’t a hopeless bum. During an interview I’m an enthusiastic, motivated, intelligent, commited team player. Outside I’m an unemployed, balding, bum. Intellectually stimulated by wheel of fortune and shiny things.

My interview to job offer ratio has always been pretty high, which means I’m particularly skilled at creating better sounding versions of myself in interviews. I put this down to the realization at an early age that I wasn’t as good at wrestling, team sports, or buildings things like other men. In order not to be thrown on the dateless darwinian scrap-heap, I had to evolve new skills. I picked words. Now I think I’m okay at wielding them to get people to like me, at least in small doses. You just say smart things that someone else already said that you’ve memorized. Or you can say cute things that make people laugh such as ‘cheese is terrific’ or complimentary untruths such as ‘no, you definitely don’t look fat in that’.

But then it all falls apart. You have to actually pick a job. After the thrill of the employment chase the courtship ritual has come to an end. No more free therapy, or new improved you’s. You’re whoring yourself out there to anyone who’ll listen to you days are over. The next step is mans great nemesis - commitment.

‘Interviews Pt. 2 - commitment’ coming tomorrow (for real this time unlike all the other orphaned pt.1s on here, I’ve already written it and everything)

Despite us regularly being reminded on our trip that Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world, it was actually one of the most expensive we visited with accommodation costs reaching a dazzling (I hope you’re sitting down) $8 each a night! But  is not poor in all aspects, in fact, if ants were legal tender Cambodia would be a world economic superpower! There’d be Cambodians buying up mansions in Kensington left, right and centre, moving in four generations of their family, with photocopies of the Lonely Planet blowing everywhere in the London breeze. Its also incredibly hot, I got my first ever dose of heatstroke and had to buy a little communist hat to cover the patches of my head where once instead of anxiety, hair grew. 

Anyway in this post I wanted to introduce you to some of the people we met in Cambodia. While I’d say it wasn’t either of our favourite countries, I did have the best conversations here. I think that’s because speaking English in Cambodia is the fastest way to jump out of poverty, there’s little economy beyond tourism unlike in countries like Vietnam or China with economies not dependent on Tourism. So Cambodians speak very good English and it was great to be able to interact more with the people we met, travellers are obsessed with finding the “real” people or places within a country. In reality if you can’t talk to the people you meet there and find out their story then whats the point? That wasn’t a problem in Cambodia and I was fortunate enough to spend the day with this guy:

Onon. He was my guide for the day around Battambang for which he earned with tip and after gas about $6, not a bad days wage. He’s 27, the oldest of six children who all live together with his parents in a village outside of Battambang.  He spoke the best English of almost anybody non-European we met, because he studied it for two hours every morning at College. This along with the brand new scooter we spent the day riding, was paid for by an Englishman who he called his Godfather. He said that a few years back he had taken this man out for the day as he and his friend did for me and Annett. They bonded, which I didn’t find hard to imagine as we both spent the whole day laughing and playing around, Onon was really good fun. He said that before he met this man he didn’t really like his life, but that after the tour they stayed in touch the man who works as an English teacher in France set him up with an email address, and started to pay for him to study English and brought him this moped so he could go out and earn money for his family. As the eldest son he is party responsible to help feed his brothers and sisters. Now he said he can make decent money and he really enjoys his life.

He also told me lots of interesting things about Cambodian life:

Sex before marriage is still heavily frowned upon, with 60% of people still virgins until Marriage. After discussing it he seemed in favour of the the rather more liberal European system so that he could change girlfriend every few years and see what he liked, in Cambodia he gets only one choice and if he makes the wrong one he’s stuck (divorce is heavily frowned upon, as it brings shame to the family and is extremely expensive).

They have devised a brilliant system for stopping unwanted pregnancies and casual sex - once you’ve had sex with a woman you’re obliged to marry her. If not she can go to the police and report you. It doesn’t matter that it was consensual, now that you’ve sampled the product you are obliged to purchase marry it.

Wait, you must be joking right? Nope, whats the alternative?

Prison.

3 years of prison or a hefty bribe (Cambodia is totally corrupt, they don’t even have roads apparently because the airlines bribed the government not to build them so tourists have to fly between the major cities or take the pain of gruelling bumpy 10hr+ car rides). So I asked him what happens if the woman sees a man she wants to marry, but gets rejected because God made only the smallest deposit into her personality bank. He said she can just go the police and say they had sex and he is refusing to marry her. There is no way to prove or not that they did or didn’t have sex (they won’t do a physical check or anything), so they just assume they did have sex and the guy is screwed (regardless of whether or not he was the first time), with a prison sentence, marriage (some would say there’s little difference) or a hefty bribe (part of which the woman gets as well apparently, adding a nice extortion business opportunity angle for the Cambodian fairer sex).

This does happen apparently, women can trap men they want to marry and there’s not much they can do to get out of it. Not the best start to your married life I imagine, but skips all that unpleasant period of early happiness and jumps you nicely on to the bad times. Might cause a few problems at dinner parties:

Friend: So how did you too meet?

Wife: Ah that’s an interesting story isn’t it honey! I went to the police and pretended that we’d had sex and that he didn’t want to marry me. So the police arrested him, beat him up a bit, tried to bribe him but found out he had no money.  Anyway, eventually they convinced him that it would be best for everybody if we just got married. He thought he was probably too pretty for prison and so eventually he relented and agreed to marry me didn’t you sweety?

Husband:  (mumbling) I’m going to kill you in your sleep.

Friend: Ah, what a cute story you guys are adorable together.