tech

So, firstly, a couple of cringey graduation pictures (as promised):

Secondly, technology. So excited with recent updates to Facebook and Google(+). Facebook in particular actually (surprisingly) - if you haven't seen the plans for Facebook Timeline, you should. I literally clapped my hands with glee when I watched the respective videos - it feels like Facebook has finally got its act together in terms of design and being imaginative with its own possibilities. It's kind of felt like Facebook has been this massive half-tapped source of mint internet interactivity for a long time, but has been resting on its laurels as the dominator of social networks.

I guess it's kind of unsurprising that they haven't made any huge changes to their layout, as any time they make any kind of tweak there are floods of thousands of people going "WTF??!! Whys fb keep changeing evrything?!?!" It must be pretty wearing if each time they try and be innovative they come up against a wall of people keep clinging to the old, less user-friendly version, as though Facebook's effectively trampling over their rights as users.

It seems as though Facebook are making a very clear choice in their marketing for this new Timeline layout, which I find interesting. The advertising video is framed around a married, middle-aged man with kids: very middle-class, very conventional. Markedly absent in the "apps" video were the likes of Farmville and Mafia Wars - replaced with cooking apps, running schedules, and The Guardian. 

Are Facebook trying to phase out of their post-MySpace and -Bebo status as, like, the only social network worth using? What started as a clean, simply-designed, self-consciously middle-class alternative to MySpace and Bebo and the like has since (inevitably) become littered with "vampire requests", poorly-made and corrupted Pages linking to third-party websites, and PoStS TyPeD LiKe ThIs. Is this Facebook reclaiming their original concept of simplicity and connectivity? Are they (finally) branching out into user-directed design that was previously the realm of MySpace, and which I feel has been lacking in Facebook until now? Exciting times, people!

search

So, it's been an age since the last post. Well, almost a month - not quite an age. Still, it's been an eon in my imaginings, so it's high time for an update.

It's been a pretty big upheaval-y kind of few weeks, I have done the following:

• Moved house (new house is delish).
• Been to London. Twice.
• Worked at two of the Great Swim series.
• Stayed at two lovely hotels (neither of which I could afford but gratefully was able to stay there courtesy of the company I was working with at the above).
• Officially finished uni with a 2:1 in English Literature (graduation set for 14th July - cringe-worthy pictures will no doubt follow, fear not...).
• Applied for jobs. A lot of jobs. Kind of running out of ways to say "hire me". But very excited at the opportunities.

I've spent most of this morning doing those little niggly jobs that have needed doing a while - like divvying up the remaining money in the secondary bank account I set up for the bills for my house last year. Kind of feel like a fiscal Father Christmas, telling my ex-housemates "Here, have 94 quid". Quite nice really :)

Also, have to renew my passport (this one's of a fairly urgent nature, given I'm meant to be going to Italy avec la famille - or however you say it in Italian - at the end of July...) - to get the fast-track service I have to go to Durham to specifically ask for it, so will make a day of it with the chap. Huzzah for that!

Right, lunch break over. The job hunt continues...

pep

So, I'm really rather excited for three reasons.

1. Last week I availed myself of one of these. This has revolutionised my coffee-consumption. Coffee-making now feels like more of an event - crack out the ol' percolator and away we go.
2. Seriously considering the future and what I want to do after uni has led me to the possibility of a job so exciting that I'm still trying to convince myself that it's within my reach. So I'm sat here giving my CV a wash and scrub-up and pondering thoughts for a cover letter. More on this when there's more to tell.
3. Purchased the soundtrack to this film that I went to see a week or so ago (twice, actually). Well worth a watch/listen:

Marilyn

Listen to this as you read, it'll convey the mood.

So, this is what I was listening to as I was walking down the street today. Or, rather, what I was listening to as I did my best Tyra-esque hips-swinging foot-stomping model walk down the road. It was, may I say, sublime.

Or that's what I thought. It happened to be quite a windy day today and I was wearing a dress, which meant that I had more than a slight Marilyn Monroe situation going on and had to keep hold of it to maintain any scrap of dignity. Given my generally jubilant mood I was grinning away and sashaying my way down the street without a care in the world - I giggled coquettishly as I struggled to keep my dress in place and my hair was windswept and sexy.

Or that's what I thought. I happened to catch a look at myself in an office window as I swept by. What looked - in my head - like a fresh young thing flirting with life, looking chic and waltzing her way to work, actually resembled some deranged and bedraggled dowager clutching at her petticoats and chortling madly at some imagined lover and leering wildly at passing traffic.

Of course, then I imagined how I'd blog about this tonight, so then I got the giggles even more and ended up literally cackling my way down the street to the utter bewilderment of the surrounding businessmen. Women with children were actually backing away from me.

Other than that, nothing much else to report. Bon Jovi tomorrow morning I think.

pinstripes

So, for the last almost-5 weeks I've been working in an office in the business district of the city (in a very beautiful building, if I do say so myself), and I've come to a somewhat surprising realisation. I like the whole "business person" thing. Weird, eh.

Like, walking from my bus stop to the building with all the other suits in the city (not that I've been wearing anything particularly close to a business suit - hey, I'm an English student, I'm doing my best). Dunno, I just like it. I have to walk through this tunnel under a railway overpass (it's nicknamed the "Dark Arches") to get to the building, and there's just something quite nice about walking in a big line with other people - feeling kind of... Important.

And the bizarre thing is that it's not something I've ever imagined myself doing. The image of my future life in my head involves graduating uni, stumbling into some delightfully creative and bohemian job - probably through sheer chance - then meeting a nice chap who finds me charming and my love of old tobacco tins and teacups endearing, he'll propose to me in a creative way using an unusual and interesting engagement ring, we'll have a wedding with a red velvet cake then live together in a house with mismatching crockery and shelves and shelves of space for our books and films. We'll scrape together enough money to live on and we'll have flowers in milk bottles on our mantlepiece. And that's my plan so far really.

So this is why I was surprised to find that I liked feeling all businessy. It's not what I want to do for the rest of my life, but just for this short while it's felt good to feel that I can do something. All the worries about the recession, and lack of graduate jobs, and student debt, and my non-vocational degree, have made me worry a little that maybe it doesn't happen that way. Maybe I won't just fall into something I can imagine doing for the rest of my life. Maybe I won't meet a bloke who loves Withnail and I as much as me. Maybe we really will have to scrape enough money together to live on, and perhaps there won't be as many books and films as I imagine. Maybe.

This sounds miserable, but really it's been reassuring these past few weeks. It's made me think, yeah, even if it doesn't go exactly as planned, even if all these things don't fall into place, even if we have to build our bookshelves one year at a time, maybe it'll be ok. Because here I am, working in the last job in the world I could ever have imagined myself doing (hopeless with numbers as I am), and I've enjoyed it.

It's made me feel hopeful. As though as much as I think I know my plans, and as much as I imagine it all out in my head, maybe things won't work out as I thought. They might even be better.

excuses excuses

OK, yes yes, I know. Utterly feeble blog-presence of late. OK fine, virtually nil presence. Yeah I know, trying to fob you off with little YouTube video summaries was a fail.

HOWEVER! I do have a fairly (fairly...) reasonable excuse. Drumroll please...

I have a job! Oh yes, that's right - job search was not completely fruitless after all! For the last 2-and-a-bit weeks I've been working at a chartered accountant's. Oh yes, it is exactly as grown up as it sounds.

Of course, truth is I know zilch about bloomin accounting, but thankfully they're all very friendly and sympathetic towards the numerically-illiterate and have given me nice wordy things to do. AND they're wanting to do pretty much a full corporate re-brand and hopefully I'm going to be involved in that. Which is, needless to say, excessively exciting :)

So, in short, everything's rather sunny at the moment. And as if things weren't going well enough, I'm off to see Eclipse tomorrow night (*cough*...). Perhaps won't be the visual feast that was Inception, but... well, you know.

ach ach ach

Update on the job thing. No go. The place I was hoping I could work called me today saying that a guy that used to work for them has come back so they're taking him on instead. Blllleeeeeeeuuuuuugh. Back to the drawing board.