Finally a well earned weekend...

Classes/training finished 2 hours late, as usual, on top of all on a Friday and this time I didn’t have my usual healing at the end of the day (although it has as a consequence very few hours of sleep and people asking me why I’m so pale ;) But without this certain spiritual healing I couldn’t do this…

Now happy stuff, I bought this week nearly all the albums I still didn’t have of Beck (only One Foot in the Grave wasn’t at site, but 45 euros was a total madness on only one day and with no salary to smooth stuff) and here comes the really sad thing! Yes, once again! Tomorrow Mr. Beck is performing at Festival da Ilha do Ermal and tomorrow, or better saying, today is Sunday and Ilha do Ermal is about 5 hours, by car, from Lisbon! Unfortunately, Beck will start most probably at 1 o’clock in the morning and I’ve training at 9 o’clock in the morning so as you can guess there won’t be any Beck for me… :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

Although I still doubt it, because somehow Beck as forgotten that he’s playing there because if you check his site you can see that his last gig is at Spain (http://www.beck.com/tour/index.php) not Portugal and the webmaster never forgets to put our country down… But that is wild dreaming, as well as dreaming that he’ll come soon to Coliseu dos Recreios in Lisbon… My only fear is that tomorrow he’ll see so few people at the festival that he may think that we no longer enjoy him and that it’s not worth coming back… It’s the second concert I miss in a row and what’s hard is knowing I could have gone to the last, but sometimes you just have to do some huge sacrifices… Maybe I’ll grab one of these days a plane to London, with my best friend, and see him there, preferably at a small club! Oh, well dreaming does no harm, does it? Here goes his new video (http://www.beck.com/news) and I really hope people enjoy the one of the best concerts of their life in a few hours, I can only be there in spirit and hoping that my favorite radio (http://www.antena3.pt/) can transmit the concert, hopefully all the concert…

With loads of technical problems but at least it’s a post...

Ok, so for those who visit this blog regularly and I know they are very few, not even a certain person does so, and here is the latest news about me.

Well as you can read some posts below I started a job recruitment process on the 15th of June and after doing IQ tests and a job interview that day, I had to do another job interview the following day for the same company. The company was CGD, witch is the biggest bank in Portugal (it’s still public and all the public employees where forced, until some years ago, to open an account at CGD).

This all to say that on the 17th of June I answered a phone call in the morning which ended up being from CGD. They wanted to know if I wanted to sign a one-year contract with them and it was to start on the 20th of June that is 2 days after! And this all happened last week! As the job is being a cashier and who ever knows me well knows that (after my previous job experience at Caldas da Rainha, which only had my colleague as a very positive aspect) the worst thing I could ever possibly imagine me doing is being behind a balcony selling credit cards and insurance, specially to Portuguese who are already full of debt (they are using 117 or 115% of their salary). After all if it was selling stuff people actually needed…

On top of all I received an offer from Vodafone, but I had to refuse it although the internship was in the marketing department, but 600 euros, that would be only 470 or less euros per month after paying taxes and a highly unstable and fragile job position (no contract signed, it would be kind of a free lance job but with all the obligations of a employee and none of the benefits), would make it impossible for me to live in Lisbon and have money to eat at the end of the month.

I took the hardest decision of my life; I gave up all my dreams, because unless I can get a job soon in marketing it will be better to give up, as afterwards for all the marketing positions available in the future I will lack the most important job characteristic: marketing experience… I’ve given up my dream of working in development projects in Africa, now marketing, so goodbye professional realization, as another dream would be opening my own company but in Portugal that would mean bankruptcy at that takes all the fun of it…

On the bright side, I’m a women and, at least I think so, fertile, so if I can at least fulfill my dream of being a mother and I can feed my children then will have reached happiness!

Ok, now the job at CGD. Well I’ve started classes this Monday, just talking about the bank, how it works, what to do when the agency is robbed, which banking products and services exist, how the financial markets and the banking sector works (loads of the theoretical stuff are a revision from university, but then the bank procedures are not so I’ve to learn that). My colleagues are very nice, some more then others, and it has been tiring but fun, but only because of them and I’ll end up learning lot’s of stuff about banks, for example how they con and deceive us ;)

I’m still hoping I’ll be able to get into P&G as a marketing assistant, but only in a few weeks I’ll find out…

Updates only next weekend

But I can say it's because of a job offer I accepted and because I don't have net at my cousin's house...

Change of plans...

Sorry but I have 2 interviews, one tomorrow, the other on Friday, in Lisbon, so blogging will have to be left for the weekend, when I return from Lisbon (I think staying in Lisbon for the next 2 days will be cheaper for my dear car, poor thing it has worked a lot this week ;)

Just a quickie...

Tomorrow yet more IQ tests for yet another Job process (in this case the biggest bank in Portugal, but for a job as a cashier) and then helping my father so hopefully you’ll have some more news tomorrow/Thursday, I promise ;)

After all I've a higher IQ than I thought I had ;)

That’s it I passed to the second phase of yesterday’s job recruitment process! I kind of think, it is more a question of practice at so many job recruitment processes, as I had already done some of those exercises at other recruitment processes. Oh, well, that means I’ll get lost once again on Monday (if you ever drive in Porto you will understand why I’ll probably get lost twice ;)

The company is Lactogal and it's the leader in dairy products here in Portugal.

More of the same and getting lost ;)

Yesterday guess where I went? Ya, you got it right: yet another job recruitment process. This time it was only IQ tests but this time it had a twist and I’m not talking of the sets of drawings in which you have to guess the picture that is missing ;)

The twist was that it was in Vila do Conde, Oporto and guess you got lost on the way! Me, of course, but until you drive in Porto without having any knowledge of the city nor having a map recorded in your brain you would easily do the same has I did. My father’s GPS didn’t work until I got to Porto, and that was only when I got to Porto for the second time, as Porto has no road signs pointing to Vila do Conde so I was looking for roads I remember seeing in Auto Route the previous day. As IC1 is a road that nearly crosses the whole country, it was not a good guiding point and on top of all I couldn’t find a sign pointing to the airport, so I ended up going to IC2 to get to IC1 (which I didn’t find) and suddenly I’m starting to see signs for A29 – Espinho (if you see the Portuguese map, you can see that first you have Espinho, then Porto and then Vila do Conde, so I was going backwards).

Of course, by this time I was panicking as I had lost already 40 minutes trying to make the GPS work during the way and I only had 20 minutes to get to Vila do Conde at time, I really wanted to phone a certain person, but I ended up getting calm and phoning my Daddy as he had Auto Route in his computer and he is an Ace in traffic orientation. With my father’s directions I got back to the motorway in direction to Porto (not without getting again into the motorway in direction to Espinho, not my fault, as write after the roundabout you had a curve and straight away 2 signs on a fork one pointing to Porto and the other to Espinho, so I had a 5o% chance of getting it right, but I didn’t and there was too much traffic even if I wanted to violate law – Portuguese know what I mean ;)

As soon as I get to Porto, for the second time, the GPS finally decides that I’m no longer at Rio Maior but at Porto and starts giving me directions to Vila do Conde. So never mind what my Daddy told me and just follow the lady’s directions ;)

Well the tests were hard and I didn’t manage to end them in such a short period of time (except the verbal one, which I always find rather easy), so I wasted a gas tank and money at the motorways’ entrances (there are hardly any ones free of charge in our country), but I visited my grandparents so it wasn’t a completely waste of time and money ;)

P.S. – I really must put some songs up and some photos, as this blog must be getting very boring for you, only job interviews and misadventures ;)

P.P.S. – But that will have to wait as I’m helping out my father to do a Access database for Treasury Management (that is my father has done the most and corrected some of the stuff I’ve been doing, as mainly I’ve been coping what he already has done to complete the database).

Finito!!! :D

Well I’ve already finished Vodafone’s challenge so wish me all the best of luck, as I’m really starting to have little options or opportunities… On top of all every time you switch the TV on to the news you get even worse news than the previous day. I know our countries need urgent reforms and I know what is being done is too little, but we are already in our 4 year and a half of recession and crisis and I’m only seeing the poorer and the middle class paying for the incompetence of our last 3 governments (and the one that is now ruling is also highly incompetent, although I still have some hope in my professor as Finance Minister)…

In the end it means more unemployment and for me and some of my friends that is really bad news as it means grabbing anything or putting your life at a full stop and hoping your parents won’t get out of job, otherwise… And sabbatical years right after finishing your degree is not well seen by employers even if they are forced sabbatical years…

But I really have high hopes and it is for the department I most like, so maybe I’ll have good news in the following days :)

Another Job Interview, thoughts on it and shopping :(

Well today I got up at 6 am to arrive at Lisbon about 8 am and catch jam traffic as usual ;) But I got in time for my job interview at Ernst & Young where we did some team work and in the end the dreadful job interview. I’m really bad at “selling” myself, although with so many job interviews I’m finding it easier to just chute the first adjectives I can think of, preferably, those that I think the company is looking for, because it’s so hard to state one’s qualities, I really can’t think of many… In fact, I can stay the whole day just pointing my shortcomings, but if I did so I would never get a job… After talking with my best friend, I think recruiters should change their recruiting process and interview our best friends, after all they are the most fit to say which are our real qualities and state those shortcomings that wouldn’t harm us in a job interview! I’m sure of one thing I could “sell” my best friend to any company, because I’m completely sure about his qualities and his competence!

So after a joyful morning pretending I’m in a consulting firm and a job interview I was prepared to wait for my best friend (now that he’s doing exams I don’t even have weekends to see him), be with him and then doing something I really hate: doing shopping for me, specially when it suits ;)

But eventually after looking in about 5 shops and getting very, very, sore feet due to the bloody shoes (I really need to invest in a pair of Dr. Martens Mary Jane’s) I was wearing - and just whishing I had my Dr. Marten boots – I found a red blazer, 2 red trousers and a red t-shirt, besides a red casual dress and wonders of wonders a black skirt! I actually bought a skirt for work, of course it’s long enough to nearly reach my ankles and thus cover my whole legs ;)

So no swimming today, but yesterday I managed to do 1250 meters (and this morning, besides my arms, my legs were also complaining ;)

Tomorrow I’m going to help my father so I really don’t know if there will be time for swimming before 9:30 pm :(