YMMWTBAM!

I was on a course for the past two weeks (yeah, I've talked about this elsewhere - so sue me!). It was a course sponsored by the job centre designed to improve team building and communication skills - but i reckon it was also an intensive job-searching boot camp to make sure we were actually looking for jobs! XD You only get sent there if you haven't found a job in six months.

The first day was horrible - half of them were chavs who didn't even want jobs! >_<

I went shopping around Hanley in my lunch hour and there are sales on everywhere ^-^ My brother told me about a shop called Gemini that was having an "up to 75% off" sale and they sold genuine Burberry goods. He bought a pink Burberry scarf as a birthday present for a friend.

I thought maybe I should go buy some things as Christmas presents while they're cheap XD But when I got there they had jacked up the prices again ;-; Burberry is pretty expensive - chavs like to dress head to toe in fake Burberry and tracksuits with gold chains. It's horrible.. I had to do team building exercises with them...

Utada Hikaru released her European debut single, You Make Me Want To Be A Man, a couple of days ago but I couldn't find it anywhere in HMV. It's not a very good song and i was going to give it away as joke Christmas presents XD

Anyway, the intensive job-search that they made us do on the course.. we had to do it for 3 or 4 hours everyday (with breaks of course but it was still mind-numbing). We had to look on the internet and in the phonebook and make a list of all the employers we wanted to send speculative letters to.

It's not that different from what I've been doing for the past 6 months! I haven't been sending speculative letters though =/ I've only been looking at local design companies' websites and seeing if they had any vacancies.. i'm not a pushy person and it's totally against my nature to just say "giz a job!" like that guy from Boys From the Black Stuff XD (oh, you americans will probably have no idea what i'm talking about lol)

We had to redo our CVs (some of the chavs didn't even have one) and write cover letters according to their guidelines! I have never used centered text in all my life but the made me do it! We also had to include information about the New Deal in the letters as an added incentive for the employers. They also told me to omit that I can speak Cantonese in my list of skills.. because I have to avoid giving them anything that could be discriminated against - sad but true (but I've got "working for my parents' Chinese Takeaway" in the employment history XD won't they put two and two together?)

They set us targets like "send 10 letters out everyday"... there aren't that many companies in the phonebook! Usually I would include a CD with my work on it but I did't have anything prepared..

It might sound like I'm complaining, but I'm not. I've had 5 replies in one week! That's five more than I've had in the past 6 months!