blog

Got that call

Posted: 13-11-05

OK so I've been applying for work left, right and centre for about two months now and to say that hitherto I've been feeling a tad disheartened with the prospect of no employment come new year, would be somewhat of an understatement.

You see it's different for me way over here - although I have the support of family and friends, I don't have the physical or geographical proximity of that support, which makes it really bloody hard sometimes. On occasion I catch me having a word with myself about pulling myself together, to quit being such a loser - so as many of you might know I'm pretty tough on myself on occasion and you'll be able to see then that a lack knowledge of my immediate future combined with being overly self critical are perfect ingredients for a painful broth of sorrow.

Oh pull yourself together man...

Well that's easy to say NOW isn't it!? You see I had a phone interview last Monday with GNS (The Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences) based in Wellington which went so well, they flew me down to the capital at a day's notice for a face to face chat. Well that went so well that the next day I was offered the job.

Sweet.

I explained all this to my current employer who is fine with all this I might add. Before I told him the outcome of the interview he had asked me: "Did they show you round the building?" to which I replied that they had indeed shown me round the new swish premises in which yours truly gets his own office. To which he immediately replied "Oh you got the job then no worries"...

So is this a well known rubric by which friends and family of job applicants go by when asking how an interview went? Why do I never seem to be privy to these things...?

GNS are a government quango of sorts, a Crown Research Institute, and I'm to be employed in the Department of Natural Hazards. I'm a hazard you see. Pass me any form of electrical or mechanical device which doesn't belong to me and as my mate Paul will attest at little or no cost, it'll break or come apart in my hands. He should know as I broke his company car, Kombi and one of his beetles...

Anyhow, the Hazards Department run a project called "GeoNet" (www.geonet.org.nz) which is a network of seismic detection hardware dotted around the New Zealand countryside and offshore locations such as White Island for example. You're probably not aware that the two main islands that comprise New Zealand are largely made from extinct and ancient volcanoes. The most active and most recent of which to have exploded is Mt Ruapehu of the central North Island, as I remember - it made BBC news in the UK back in '97.

My job is as part of small team to convert the data transmitted by satellite from various locations to a central data centre and thence onto the publics computer screens. The GeoNet website is therefore the public portal in New Zealand for warnings of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and Nuclear explosions - being as it is part of a global grid of listening devices helping maintain the UN's Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

So I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.

This last weekend I have been down in Welly for the second time in a week with my friend's Paul and Michelle down from Napier and Elaine and John visiting from Glasgow. I first met Elaine as a chance encounter on a Newman's Coach journey between Auckland and Wellington in October 1999 and we immediately became friends and later flatmates. If it weren't for my having flatted with Elaine, then at least two other people whom I regard as friends, I wouldn't even know today.

It was Elaine's 30th you see and John her partner had surprised her with twelve days in New Zealand, the first time in New Zealand for him and for her since she left in 2000. A double celebration for a 30th birthday and my new job. It was sad for all of us though when we parted company last night in Wellington outside the Embassy Theatre, as we all knew that it would be years before we were all in the same place together again.

Good grief, I've just re-read this and I've made my dealings with life out to be some sort of hospital drama. Oh bugger, I can't be arsed to re-write it! Enjoy regardless.

Take care folks,
Russ