let's catch up...

Last week was a very productive week. Chasing down a bunch of different leads and creatively addressing others. Every day I had a meeting scheduled with different people and I was in contact with a number of others by phone. In between I had the time to apply for a few jobs but this time with a bit of a difference. I applied to one online travel company and a sales/business development/marketing role... but as times are as they are and as I know that i'm basically pissing in a bucket anyway I decided to be creative about it. I wrote my cover letter in the form of a Hotel description... this is a little excerpt:

Richard Strom

Position X

Versatility 5*

Analytical skills 5*

Ability to Communicate 5*

Project Management 4*

Online marketing techniques 3*

Richard offers an extremely versatile marketing candidate with broad background ideal for sales, marketing and operations. Primary basic advantages of this candidate are:
...

Now I know what you might be saying... nobody's goin to take you serious if you write like that... at the same time though... there are 1000+ candidates... the role wanted someone creative... and ultimateily I have absolutely nothing to lose... and last but not least, its quite entertaining writing a bit of a different cover letter/CV... who knows, it might be more noticeable, memorable etc... now I've done that with a few that I think that it might be suitable to do it with...

I also had a number of meetings with different people who are unemployed currently and finding it near impossible to find work like I am... As I have mentioned before I have started this group called Lon-doers and we are meeting this week again on Wednesday in Angel. So far we're 4-5 that are going to be there so should be an interesting discussion. It's surprising how many people are redundent, might be made redundant and who are generally unhappy at work due to the times... don't really know if this is as wide-spread across Europe etc but London definitely feels it...

So week was good and ended at the Australian High Commission on Friday night where Anne and I were invited by Bridget (an Australian living here) to come along together with her bf Sam and Alex (Gemma's bf was there too) ... it was their St. Patricks day celebrations...anyway, was nice and they had Aussie beers, snacks and meat pies...!!!

On Saturday my friend John B from Malmö (he's originally from Connorsville Indiana... BIGGUP to INDIANA)... came to town and we walked around and around and had a lovely Lunch at an American Diner near OldStreet/Liverpool Street... good place for American food if you fancy link is here... then we went siteseeing, hopefully he'll send me a picture we took at Buckingham palace that was quite nice... we also ended up people watching.. one of my favorite past-times... you get a really interesting blend here and with the Euro so strong you see loads and loads of Spanish, Italian, French, German tourists everywhere... and one or two american's two...

While I'm on the subject I'd just like to say a great big THANK YOU to the Swedish Krona for strengthening so incredibly against the English pound, as all my savings are in Swedish krona I've saved loads and loads of money on the 1.5 SEK drop in the past few weeks... !!! LONG Let it continue (until I get a job) ...

Back to the story, was great having John B here.. Saturday night we went to Brick Lane for a curry ... it was AWESOME, i love spicy curry's... mmm mmm.. now i'm afraid I don't know what i ordered because I dislike tomatoes I asked the waiter for a quite spicy non-tomato based curry... and he delivered!!! oh did he deliver.. mm mmm... Anne on the other hand didn't realise that one of the "peppers" in her dish should probably not have been eaten and she was on the verge of passing out in front of a chorus of laughing Bangladeshi men... I'm happy to say luckily she survived :-)


I have an interesting call scheduled for Thursday that could potentially lead to some work so fingers crossed on that... I'll go into more detail if anything materialises but I'm not really one to get ahead of myself and thus don't really like writing about any opportunities until they are almost done!!!

I plan to do a 20 observation post next time I write so look out for 20 observations from London... I already have a few of them in my head now which I'll probably forget but you know how it is...:-)