bizgirl

Between selling off all my worldly possessions in order to get myself to Texas (for a web award where I might win $20), interviews with international media organisations, and watching my story being turned into a controversial school play, I've remained unemployed, and in search of a job.

And having a bad time of it. I think I may have been black-listed by the Library Association. I'm now been to seven interviews, and, despite having felt I was a shoe-in for at least three of the jobs, I've yet to get an offer of employment. Thankfully, vacancies keep popping up on the LIANZA website and NZ-Libs listserv, and I've been dutifully tailoring my CV for each likely looking position, sending off my letters of application, and have managed to get another four interviews lined up over the next week.

One of them is for a job at Te Papa (New Zealand's National Museum, on the waterfront in town for those who don't know), and, if it wasn't for the uniforms, would be high on my list of dream jobs. Mmm, Te Papa.

The interview was yesterday morning, and I pulled out all the stops, putting on my new, as yet uncreased World dress in order to give it a trial run before the Bloggies next month, and spent a good hour wrangling my shockingly-in-need-of-hairdresser-assistance locks into some semblance of a stylish corporate bun. I stowed my new heels into my bag, slipped on my sandals, and walked to town.

I stopped at Fidel's Cafe on the way for a rest and a mind-sharpening coffee. I ordered my flat white, sat down at a table, and looked up to see Hollywood actor Cliff Curtis sitting opposite me. He was wolfing down one of Fidel's monster breakfasts: hash browns, bacon, eggs, toast, sausages and hollandaise sauce. My stomach, which has seen nothing but an unsteady diet of two minute noodles, cheap white toast and marmite over the last few penny-pinching weeks, started to rumble furiously with envy. My coffee didn't help at all, so, when Cliff left a few minutes later, leaving half his feast uneaten behind, I sidled over to his table, and quickly started to help myself to his leftovers.

I'd forgotten how good fatty food tastes. I was in heaven as I squished some egg-yolk onto the last remaining hash brown and put the whole gooey mess into my mouth. Tingles of pleasure shot up from stomach to my brain as I nibbled on a portion of bacon that I found hiding beneath the token bit of salad garnish. So engrossed was I in eating every remaining crumb and drop of sauce on the plate, that I didn't see or hear the large figure that had loomed up in front of me until a loud 'ahem-hem' issued forth from it. I looked up.

It was Cliff.

"Oh, ah, ummm," I said, looking around for some sort of excuse as to why I had just eaten the rest of his breakfast. None sprung to mind.

He looked at me, a little baffled.

"Umm," he said, gesturing at the now empty plate.
"Uh, I thought you were, errrr, finished," I said, blushing as brightly as I think I've ever blushed. "I was just, um..."
"Um?"
"Oh, look at the time. I have to go."

I stood up muttering some vaguely apologetic noises. Perhaps not quite knowing how he should react to a breakfast-stealing girl wearing a $500 World dress, Cliff let me go without a word.

As I walked past the front window, I could still see him standing there, looking down at the remnants of his breakfast, a puzzled frown on his face. Next time I see him, I vowed, I'll buy him breakfast. Or, budget notwithstanding, a coffee.

Despite my embarrassment, I arrived at Te Papa with a full stomach, and my synapses firing on the fresh intake of fat, cholesterol, caffeine and sugar. I felt confident and eminently employable in my new dress and sexy heels. No surprise then, that the interview went very well. The issue of uniforms came up. In my potential role, I won't need to wear one. It is the dream job.

Fingers crossed: gainful employment may just be around the corner.

Wooohooo!

I am off to the Bloggies next month!

It's amazing how much money you can get together in a short amount of time when you put your mind to it.

First up was the payment from the woman's magazine, which was but a drop in the airfare ocean, but, then, out of nowhere noizyboy randomly threw some cash my way for the editing work I do over on his music website. This got my bank balance up to a point where the whole thing suddenly started to seem feasible, so I spent a few days on trademe flogging off everything I could possibly do without. Which, when you actually undertake such an exercise, is quite a lot. I must admit, though, once I got into it, I found the whole online auction thing very addictive, and I got a bit too carried away. If anyone wants to gift me a kettle, I'd be most appreciative.

I was still a decent sum short of the required total though, so I did what I promised to myself I would never do, and applied for a credit card. I still had a couple of recent payslips from the library to support my income claims, so got all the necessary paperwork together, made sure I only asked for a limit that covered what I needed, and fired it off. The little bit of miracle plastic arrived on Friday, with twice the limit I'd asked for, so I went to the World sale and bought a new dress to wear to the Bloggies ceremony. And another one for wearing out on the town. And some new shoes. Goodbye credit card surplus...

I rang Dougal at the TV production company to let him know how my plans were progressing, and he gave me the name and number of the producer who was organising all the SXSW Festival filming. I got in touch with her, and we organised to meet up to co-ordinate our schedules. Thankfully, she reminded me of the one thing I had totally overlooked up to that point...

"Is your passport up to date?"

I rummaged through the pile of papers and documents that took up the floorspace where my desk had once stood, and pulled out my passport. Bloody hell! It wasn't! It had expired less than two months previously. Some 'International Librarian of Mystery' I am. I fired up the Internal Affairs website and headed to the passport section. Argh! More expense! And I need new passport photos! I wandered down to the Newtown shops where there's a passport photo-taking machine, and proceeded to waste about $30 on trying to get a photo I could bear to look at. What exactly is it with those machines? Do they have some sort of built-in photoshop-style 'uglify' filter on them? Are they programmed only to trigger when they detect you blinking? After a dozen tries, it eventually produced a mugshot I could live with, and I walked to town where the suitably qualified Jess put her authenticating scrawl on the back.

With all the documents hand-delivered to the Internal Affairs department, and the promise I'd have a new passport within ten working days, I visited the bank to transfer all my money onto my shiny new credit card. And then, with a deep breath and a 'I-will-probably-never-have-this-chance-again' moment of resolve, I bought the tickets.

Austin, Texas, here I come!

Despite the instructions, I got lost trying to find Artemis's school, and arrived twenty minutes after the rehearsal start time.

Artemis goes to a swanky school in town - one I thought was boys only, but which I have since discovered has mixed senior classes. The private girls' school down the road is apparently too small to be able to maintain senior classes on its own, so the two schools join forces when their pupils 'come of age', so to speak.

Wandering between the I finally heard the distinctive tone of projected speech coming from through an door. I slipped in, un-noticed, and took a seat down the back. They were doing the coffee shop scene, where, in the play, Artemis lets me in on his 'secret plan'.

I took a good look at the actors. The younger version of Artemis was a normal looking lad: the hint of an afro starting to emerge from his unruly curled locks, a cute face, not quite as handsome as Artemis, but definitely headed in the right direction. Natalie, however, was ... well ... beautiful. Her Scandanavian cheekbones were nearly as sharp as the cut of of her jet-black bob-cut. I could see the dazzling green of her eyes from the back of the hall, and when she smiled - wide and toothsome - she transformed from ice-cold vixen to warm-hearted maiden. I was torn between hating her for being too beautiful, and being ecstatic that such a lovely girl had been chosen to play my role.

As I juggled my thoughts, the act ended, on a slightly different note to the way it had in the draft Artemis had already given me, and the assembled cast and crew near the front of the stage assembled into a huddle. An older man I had initally assumed was a teacher, but whose clothes now told me otherwise, spotted me at the back, and came down to where I was sitting.

"Natalie? Natalie Biz?"
"Um, yes. Hello."
"I'm Artemis's father. Dougal. Hello. Lovely to finally meet you."
"Oh! Oh, hello. Dougal. Hi."
"What do you think so far?"
"Ah, well, I just arrived, really. I was still getting over the shock of seeing someone acting me. Especially someone so pretty."
"Ha! Not quite as pretty as you."

Charmer. We chatted a bit about the play, and how Dougal had been so pleased that Artemis had turned his hand to a creative pursuit, when, up to recently, he had been more into conquering various virtual worlds on his computer.

"He'd be good at that, I imagine," I said.
"Ooohhh yes," said Dougal. "I suspect the only reason he stopped was because he'd run out of games to beat. And Anna, I suppose."

He gestured at the Nordic goddess girl.

"I think he might be a bit smitten," said Dougal.
"So," I said, changing the subject, "what do you do?"
"I own a production company," said Dougal.
"Producing, um...?"
"Television mostly. Ads, drama, documentaries. In fact, I was going to ask you about something. Are you still planning on going to South by Southwest? To the Bloggies?"
"Um, well, 'hoping' would be a better word than 'planning'. But yes, fingers crossed."
"Look, " said Dougal, "I've got a team headed over to film some of the New Zealand bands that are playing at the Music Festival there this year. I've had a look at the schedule, and my guys are going to be in town the week before the music stuff, when the Interactive Festival will be taking place. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind the team tagging along with you for a bit. I can't promise anything, but we could end up getting enough footage to make a documentary on the whole thing. You know, you, the blog, the Bloggies, the whole story."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Um, well, yes, that'd be amazing."
"Great!" exclaimed Dougal. "As I say, nothing's ever for certain in TV-land, but drop me a line in the next couple of days with your plans, and I'll get the wheels rolling."

He gave me his card, at which point the third act got under way, and I sat and watched the dramatic conclusion of my story in a sort of out-of-body experience.

Which was all for the best, considering the revised, unauthorised ending Artemis had written.

There was no chance to talk to him properly in the throng of post-rehearsal chit-chat, and Dougal and Artemis disappeared while I was stuck talking to Anna. She wanted to probe my personality so she could 'really, you know, find my character.'

Really. You know?

Continued here...

Well, after getting my hopes up, I didn't get the job.

The Director rang me the next day as promised, and was ever so nice, but had to tell me they'd found a candidate who was so suited to the job he had overshadowed all the other 'highly qualified' candidates. Best of luck for the future and all that. Since I had him on the phone, I enquired as to the prospects of getting one of his department's business grants - one of the schemes I had come up with as a way to get some cash together so I could get to the Bloggies Awards Ceremony in March...

"Oh, yes," he said, "if you've got a start-up on the go, and a robust business plan that outlines all the necessary details, I'm sure you'd have a good chance at getting a grant. Have you got a business plan?"
"Um, I'm working on it," I lied. I'm sure I could whip one up though - this is just the sort of thing the interweb is useful for. "How long would it take to get some money after sending in the paperwork?"
"Oh, maybe a month or two. Not very long."

Too long for me though. I need cash now. I thanked the Director for his help, and rang around the other government departments that offered the same sort of start-up grants, and they all had similar answers: do a business plan, fill in the forms, then wait. I considered getting a dodgy instant loan from one of the cash merchants in town, but I've already got an overwhelming student loan, and another mound of debt accruing at an insane interest rate is the last thing I need.

(If there are any wealthy altruists out there that want to help me out, now is the time to email me).

In the meantime, the international media were telling my story to the wider world again. Australia's Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age had run stories on a) me specifically, and b) the Australasian Bloggies Finalists in general. Combined with the people still coming in via the Bloggies site, traffic was through the roof. All very gratifying for the ego, but no good when it comes to the bank balance.

Or so I thought.

A few hours after the Sydney Morning Herald ran their first story, I got an email from one of the bewildering number of Australian woman's mags. They were wondering if I might be interested in doing an interview. For a fee, of course. Well, for a fee, of course I would!

The cash isn't going to be anywhere near enough to cover the cost of a trip to the USA, but it's a start, and fulfills a long-held desire to be the subject of a story in one of those magazines. One, preferably, that didn't involve some tragic rare disease. The moment had finally come. The thought of someone picking up the mag in some doctor's waiting room in a small town in Australia and reading about my online exploits fills me a sort of mirth that causes me to burst out into spontaneous laughter, which was exactly what happened on the bus on the way home from town that day.

My good mood was aided by a phone call I got from Artemis later that night.

"Natalie, hello. It's Artemis. I hope you don't mind me calling?"
"Artemis! Not at all - that's why I gave you my number. How are you?"
"Very well thank you. I just thought I'd ring to let you know that the Drama Group has had a couple of rehearsals of the Bizgirl play. It's shaping up quite well, and I was wondering if you might like to come along tomorrow night and sit in on a session. We've reworked it a bit from the original script I gave to you, and I thought you might like to see how it's evolved. Maybe give us a few hints? An outside perspective can be very useful at times, I find."
"That would be great! Where?"

Artemis gave me the address of his swanky school, and directions to the hall within.

How exciting! This leaves the woman's mag interview in the dust in terms of achievement: a play based on my blog! What a crack-up! Still, I've got a few doubts. Is the play going to be any good? Who has Artemis got to play the part of me? Is she pretty? Prettier than me? We shall see...

I spent that last half of my remaining severance pay on a haircut and a new pair of shoes. I figured it was worth the risk - I had three interviews coming up over the next two days, and a swish do and a new pair of heels were my self-prescribed psychological pick-me-up to get my career back on track.

The first interview was a 'Legal Library Assistant' position at one of the middling sized firms in town. The job description also stated, along with being 'aide' (read: slave) to the Senior Legal Librarian, the Assistant would be responsible for 'content management of the intranet and internet websites'. I figured I could try and get myself in on the web angle, and try and talk around the fact I'd never actually done the Legal Librarianship elective as part of my Library Masters degree.

They were having none of it. Once they discovered I had no legal background at all, they were all very nice, but it was essentially chit-chat until they could politely get me out the door.

I then had to hang about central Wellington for a couple of hours before my next interview. I went to Civic Square with a plan to do some pre-interview swotting. At home, I've had to change to a slow-as-mud dial-up connection, but have recently discovered an open wi-fi hotspot in Civic Square. Today the signal was strongest at the top of the steps overlooking the Library, so I sat down and called up my usual pre-do-anything-else chores that I should really just program into my start-up sequence...

Tap tap. No email. Click. No comments. Tappity-tap. Stats? Shall I even bother?
Click. Ohhhh, traffic spike, what's up? Clickity click.

Ahhh, it's the Bloggies™. Baahahaha! I'm a finalist! I had completely assumed that my role as panelist was to be the end of any involvement I was to have in proceedings. But no, somehow I've made it through the hodgepodge nomination and panel-voting stage, and am now one of the final five - and the only kiwi - in the Australia/NZ category. Of course, any thought of browsing the website of my potential employer disappeared, and I spent the next hour reading the other finalists' blogs, and wondering how I could possibly get myself organised to get to the March awards ceremony at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, USA.

Only a pre-programmed alert saved me from missing my interview completely, and I arrived at the anonymous looking tower block on The Terrace hot and flustered from my last minute dash up the hill.

"So, what do know about our organisation Natalie?" asked the Director of Information Services, about five minutes into our interview.

I completely blanked on the name and function of the Government department in which I was sitting. My interview schedule was fuzzy in my head. Was this the exporting place? Trade NZ? Or is it Industry NZ? Or the Trade and Enterprise one? Or was it the Ministry of Social Development? Or Economic Development? Bloody government departments!

Bereft of any thought, I waffled. I may well have uttered such verbal travesties as "pro-active information initiatives" and "the need for well maintained information channels to help maximise organisational throughput." Terrible.

The Director frowned at me slightly.

"You weren't previously at the Ministry of Education were you?" he asked.
"Errr, no. City Libraries."
"Sorry, just my little joke."
"Oh."

Again, it was a slave job - keeping a small library ticking over, some filing, and assisting with content management on the department's intranet. But, as far as slave-drivers went, the Director seemed as if he wouldn't be the worst in the world: he was quite a small man, in his forties or fifties, married, softly-spoken, and wearing a tweed jacket despite the fact it was a hot summer's day. Adorable. Thankfully the interview was a 'how-well-do-we-get-along' exercise as opposed to a 'how-much-do-I-know' interview, and we got along quite well.

As we chatted about my potential role, my memory of where we were returned, and from there I managed to pull out a couple of nuggets of relevant information to help save the day. The haircut and shoes were doing their job too, I suspected.

The Director and I parted ways with a firm handshake, and he promised to call me personally the next day to let me know if I was to be in with a job or not.

As the song goes, I reckon I could well be in.

My first job interview since being dooced from the Library had been going extremely well. Up to now.

"So, Natalie, you're confident with technology?"
"Yes."
"What are your core web skills, would you say?"

Deep breath, here goes...

"Well, um, probably designing user-friendly interfaces and HTML layouts. But I've also helped develop some web initiatives using active server pages and vbscript ... I wouldn't say I was a coding geek or anything, though, but I do pick up that sort of thing quite easily. I've got quite good database skills - we did quite a lot of database work at library school, actually. I've, um, helped develop sites built with various database back-ends, so I'm comfortable around things like mysql, access, sql server or oracle.
"Oracle?"
"Um, well, I imagine I would be. I can't say I've worked with an actual oracle database before, but I've always thought that with databases that as long as you're au fait with sql then you're probably half the way there."
"Is that right?"

Is it? I really had no idea. I was up for a 'Information Technology Officer' job at a medium-sized Government agency, and had walked in with a head brimming of IT jargon and lingo that noizyboy had been versing me in over drinks the night before. The job description included a decent-sized hunk of simple old-school library tasks, and I had sailed through that part of the interview with John, the effusive human resources manager. But now, with Bill, the non-nonsense IT manager who was grilling me at the moment on the technical side of things, I was deep into bluffing it territory.

"Well, that's what I've found, anyway."
"How about standards compliance? You're aware of the e-govt web guidelines?"
"Um, yes, actually. I've read through them..."

This is true. That very morning. Maybe 'skim-read' might have been putting it more accurately.

"... and I think it won't be too much of a hassle to work to them. It's quite sensible really, I think it does a lot to encourage good web design principles."

And it was at this point my attempts to talk up my meager supply of IT skills slipped.

"In fact, oddly enough, I recently made my blog xhtml 1.0 compliant."
"Oh, you have a blog?"

Why why why? I had the fleeting thought of giving them Short & Sweet's address, but couldn't remember the URL. (In retrospect, this was probably all for the better, as I'm a) not only not Asian, but b) also not pregnant.) After some vague attempts at talking around the subject, they eventually got the URL out of me.

Alice, the manager whose actual position in the organisation I hadn't quite gleaned in the introductions, and who would, I think, actually be my boss should I get the job, had said all of about ten words to me during the course of the interview. She spoke now, crisply and sharply.

"Well," she said, standing up, "thanks for coming in Natalie. We'll be making a decision by the end of the week, we don't like to keep people on tenterhooks for too long, so we'll let you know one way or another by then."

I was outta there. I didn't get the job. Or the next one I got to the interview stage with. Or, indeed, the next one.

Maybe I should just get pregnant, and go on the DPB.