good week

• Frolicked about the laboratories in my Vibram Fivefingers imitations
• Got a call to schedule a Melbourne-based vac work interview
• Got back an essay with no comments marked 25/30 - I was typing this up until 6AM on the day it was due
• Missed a departmental photo but instead had lunch in very amiable company
• Got to see the effects of five midday beers on a Malaysian kid (after the departmental photo/bbq)- 太贪心了
• Set a personal best cycling commute time of 35 minutes to make it on time to a friend's thesis final presentation
• Broke my pannier bag clip trying to make the return journey in the same time
• Had the pleasant company of graduating classmates over a steak dinner
• Bought a $5 government subsidised helmet
• Converted a 20+ page report (done mostly in the 8 hours before it was due) into 30 slides and got through my mid-thesis satisfactorily
• Consulted with a classmate about my laziness/procrastination and whether it can be attributed to post-exchange syndrome

Good for you!

It was quite an interesting twenty-four hour period for me earlier this week. I got fitted for Vibram Fivefingers shoes and talked to some people.

Of course I’m not putting the correct emphasis on those events. Monday afternoon was my interview session for ATO vacation work. It was only supposed to take thirty minutes but I ended up wasting forty minutes of their lives, asking a few questions at the end. ATO dress code seemed pretty casual. I found it funny how the interviewers brought up work-life balance as a pull factor towards the ATO while revealing that they don’t have scheduled lunch breaks, or any breaks for that matter, on interview days. They kept on saying congratulations on getting this far in the process – it started sounding tiresome!

Making the most of my time in the CBD, I decided to get fitted for Vibram Fivefingers shoes. My feet are too small for the men’s range. The ladies range has some outrageous colours. All the prices are pretty steep though.

The next part of the day was at Government House. I had only really orbited the place in high school as part of cross country running. Today I had a follow up for my exchange program. “Thanks for taking our money and doing stuff overseas.” Well more on that later. It was a bit messy outside the gate. There was only one person verifying guests coming in by car and on foot. Luckily for me there happened to be quite an attractive young lady within my field of vision with whom I could query the matter. Her hair was most impressive and she had an interesting voice.

While waiting for the ceremony to begin, a buxom lady who works in administering the program talked to me about a variety of topics. It was an opportunity for her to see who she administers the program for. At this stage there was finger food and alcohol floating about freely by waiters emblazoned with EIIR.

Important people made their speeches. The grants help strengthen ties in this global world. Apparently they’re fiercely contested too. Hmm. Each awardee was presented with a slab of glass labelled with their name. It’s pretty thick too. Looks nice. Group photos were taken in another room. Due to the official party being composed of largely tall people, the awardees had to be moved backwards, up stairs to be visible to the camera. I ended up next to aforementioned young lady due to a photographer instigated swap.

My mother wasn’t very helpful in the next part of the evening. She wanted me to make the most of the food and drink floating about. I had planned to talk to some representatives of a locally-based company owned by the group that finances these exchange grants. The organisers were helpful in helping me locate a representative. Unfortunately he was a few levels too high, being the chairman and all. It was nice to learn about the field from those managers. I liked how a CEO of a related company said he started off by living in a hut while installing hydro generators. Another guy who reminds me of Richard Dawkins managed to use “good for you” as a filler phrase while there was nothing said. I shall endeavour to try that at some stage. It was also stated that current graduates are expecting too quick a career progression, but can overtake older engineers by rank on merit, rather than the old system of age. I ended up having to drive the car home.

On the morning of the following day I had an interview at a detergent factory for vacation work. It was quite a long drive and the time was over allocated. It was interesting to note that this organisation runs its vacation work solely as part of its corporate social responsibility programme. There are no graduate positions available and only three engineers employed. Oh well, hopefully I get something suitable for this summer.

bloody technology

Yes... it's that time of the year. Spamming all of your favourite organisations for work (and also some not so favourable ones). I think it's great how some companies have web-based systems that can take in your CV and churn out the details into the appropriate text boxes in the application process. At least for the details part, but not employment history, it's been pretty accurate. Fantastic.
The part I don't understand is why academic results need to be entered manually. If they're smart enough to rip heterogeneous data out of a CV then surely they can deal with fairly homogeneous data from a spreadsheet.
Of course you're thinking something annoying must've happened otherwise he wouldn't be ranting like this. Well, the page decided to refresh just as I was about 70% done with it. It returned with empty cells.
This wouldn't have happened in an email or snail mail application.

polling assistant-ing

Last weekend I had the pleasure of working at a polling place for the federal election. It was not without issues in gaining employment in the first place. The AEC seem to ignore their web applications. It was only after some eavesdropping, round-about thinking aloud from co-workers and other weird human interaction that I was verbally prodded into following up my application by telephone. To my delight the AEC was both eager and desperate sounding on the phone and promised me a call back later that evening. This was on a Thursday.
On Friday I received an email telling me to do the online course. It goes through all you need to know but won't remember. There's a 1% pass rate required on the quizzes.
Saturday was when it all happened. The officer in charge, OIC, gave me the role of ballot box guard. It sounds quite alright but in reality it's not that interesting. It mainly involved making suggestions to people about which box to put their ballot papers in. One fellow didn't take kindly to my suggested, retorting that he'd been doing it for 70 years already. It was reasonably straightforward except that some people decided to fold the House of Representatives paper into the Senate paper.
It took until around 1PM for the queues to die out. After lunch I had a stint as ordinary issuing officer - just the regular name marker person. It does require marginally more knowledge and more brain-sapping interaction. Although it was quiet when I got into it and so I went to sharpen some pencils and clean out the booths. I really wouldn't mind the job of 2IC - it seems like a position where you can jump in to relieve people while holding experience and knowledge but not so much that you're flooded with paperwork like the OIC.

Days like this also provide an opportunity to see the whole spectrum of the community. But firstly, I did happen to make myself known to my granduncle and his mob. The generation+1 members didn’t recognise me at first but ran back in five minutes after putting in their ballot papers to confirm my identity. This is one of those days where people who ordinarily wouldn’t be seen in public with their parents are caught doing exactly that. It was notable that white male Asian female couples tended to be older and not always arriving together and almost certainly without the children being present. Asian male white female couples tended to be younger and with kids in tow, or rather man happily pushing stroller. The kids from a darker man with curly hair (possibly West Indies) and Asian female were absolutely adorable. “I voted” stickers turned out to be an absolute winner with the kids, but not so much with the adults. That is, except for a group of mid-twenties dark-dressing group of four (Goth or something?) who were thrilled to be offered a whole roll of stickers.

By the close of polling I had managed to stuff down two meals in a space of four hours. A class of 2006 MHS dude joined the crew and we developed an effective way of sorting Senate papers. Well, at least much more effective than the others. I think the 2IC was impressed, especially with the gravity-assisted compact temporary storage. There’s still a place for time and management studies and it would be rather cool to implement it in the next election.

Party-appointed scruntineers turned out to be much more well-mannered than the OIC and my work manager made them out to be. In fact, everyone was really nice! An old lady said that to me in the morning after I bode her a good day as she walked past the ballot box. I thought the OIC didn’t have to be that nice – there were plenty of things that would have ticked me off. Mainly ignorant questions.

All up it was quite a worthwhile experience. Recommended. 10/10