A Whole Lot of Nothing

I've been surprised this week to hear all the reports of snow in SA. I know the global climate is changing alarmingly, but snow in Plett in May? It's quite bizarre, especially when coupled with the seeming randomness that is the weather in Europe. Over Easter, London was hotter (by quite a lot) than Spain, and then a week later it was snowing in the north of England - go figure. I think global warming may be promoting unity among mankind by specifically swapping weather from one territory to another. Such as, Cape Town is now dipping into the pot of London's wintery ways, and London is taking on the characteristics of more tropical climates, and people on either side of the pond are beginning to understand how the other group usually feels. Perhaps this will help to staunch the flow of scathing attitudes we take on when criticising the weather of a country other than our own!

So, it's more than a week since the gang arrived back from Turkey, and I'm happy to say I am back to normal once again. Other than occasionally milking it to get whatever I want (I'm becoming quite good at merely directing a death look at Shoes when he dares to suggest I can't / shouldn't be doing something), I have put it firmly behind me and am concentrating on getting the details of our trip to Italy finalised. The drivers license issue has not been completely resolved, but we have a partial solution: you can exchange your SA license for a British one for a certain time period when you arrive in the UK. After that time period has expired, you can still apply for the swap, but they don't just exchange it - they give you what is in essence a learner's license, although you are not required to have any L-plates or someone accompanying you in the car, and you are supposed to then do the British test within a year. This happened to my cousin's boyfriend recently - he applied to get his license swapped, and instead got this sort of learner's one, and had to create an almighty fuss to get them to change it. We've told a little white lie on Shoes' application form in the hope that they won't look too closely, and just pass his form through as a standard swap. We'll see how it goes... if this works, he can drive freely in many countries in Europe without an internaiotnal driver permit. I'm not bothering doing mine at this stage, as it's £50 and I don't plan on driving while Shoes is around to do it for me - is this just a South African thing, that men always drive, or is it a worldwide tradition? Still don't know the story about whether or not one has to redo the K53 test if one's license expires, but still think it's highly unlikely.

Shoes has just registered for his A+ exams, which, once passed, will give him his first qualification allowing him to get started in the IT field. There are two exams which are to be written before the end of June. If he doesn't pass these, he can rewrite, but due to the expiration date he will then have to write the updated exams rather than the "old" ones. He got a bit of a shock when his course got a massive facelift halfway through the year, and he received a whole new set of files containing additional info to what he'd been studying. Because it doesn't come nice and neatly - and logically, one would think - with the original info packaged together and handy addendums expanding on that, the only way for him to study the new stuff is by starting from the beginning again and picking out what he hasn't done. After studying for nearly a year, he just about had puppies when he found out about this, but luckily they're giving all those who started with the old course notes a chance to write the "old" exams as well, thereby preventing them from having to delay their exams by a further 4 months while they catch up. No pressure to pass first time, not at all!

I went to see a new agency yesterday, this one dealing in Media & Broadcasting, as well as the Fashion Industry - yes people, I now know people who know people who work in the glamorous world of fashion - my mouth is watering at the thought of free shoes as job perk! Not getting excited about anything yet though - they haven't offered me anything and it might all come to nothing, as it so often does. But I'm going back to meet one of the other agents (I hesitate to call them Witches at this early stage - they always seem so nice in the beginning) next week. I'm in a bit of a quandry at the moment when it comes to my career. I am quite happy where I am. I really like the company I work for, I love my team and not once since I got here have I woken up and felt dread at the thought of coming to work (except when I realised one morning I had forgotten to do something very important, but that was dread at being found out rather than dread of work). So, you're asking, why don't I just stay here? If I'm happy and enjoying what I'm doing, what's the problem? The problem is that I am 27 years old, and I should be trying to carve out a career rather than just doing a job. My job should have prospects in the future, such as promotion or transfers to SA for when I go home - or at the very least, the possibility of decent pay rises. It should be challenging and stretching, and developing in me new skills which I could take onto the next level, rather than just honing the skills I already have. Also, in London especially, you ARE your last job. Which means that if I do this long enough, I will only ever be seen as a PA, and the experience I have in Media will become null and void. As a production co-ordinator in Cape Town, I became extremely skilled at multi-tasking, working under pressure and doing a damn good job of co-ordinating large projects. Here, even if we put aside the fact that it is difficult to get a London agency to take your work back home seriously in the first place, I am also up against the obstacle of it being nearly two years since I did this role, and for most agents, that's long enough to induce selective blindness when adding up your skills. Add to this that I am not an ambitious person by nature - I would like to run my own dog shelter from my back garden one day, that's really about as much as I want in terms of a job - and it's hard to motviate myself to keep looking around. I know the role I'm in now will probably be offered to me permanently in the near future. I have to decide quite quickly then what I will do when that happens. Will I stay for a year or so, with job satisfaction and general good humour; and resign myself to being a PA forever more? Or do I keep pushing for something more, with the constant rejection and demotivation that comes with failing time and time again to get a positive response? I really don't know. Watch this space, hopefully I will get inspiration from somewhere.

Wow, I am doing some SERIOUS time wasting at work today.... I have e-mailed friends and family all morning, written this post, ebayed and facebooked for a good hour and even read my horoscope - something I never do because it's an absolute load of shit. Why the bad attitude... well, I have an enormous pile of filing on my desk. Filing makes me procrastinate the way I would if I had to finish my last meal and be led off to the gallows - each grain of rice would be bitten in half and then half again, and chewed with enough slow concentration to grind away teeth. I hate filing - it must be the worst part of any office job. Most of it was kindly left for me by the previous PA (may bad fortune curse him to his grave), so it's been on my desk for almost 2 months. Yes, time to suck it up and deal with it, I completely agree. I think I have just one more meeting to organise though......

Let me leave this before I start writing utter rubbish in an effort to put off the inevitable.