Katy Klein Has a Chat

So luckily my partner is a computer geek because otherwise I never would have mustered the technical know-how to set up a blog page.  Of course once computer geeks start showing you stuff on the computer they get all excited and babble away not realising they lost you about 14 screens ago. But I’m slowly catching up and the last time we checked my blog page activity I was super excited to find out that people had actually got to my site.  In fact it was coming up pretty high in certain Google searches which made me feel really popular. And I had gone international (i.e four counties outside of Australia).

The interesting part for me was that Google Analytics shows how people get to your site.  You definitely learn a lot from this.  Apparently the Klein spirit level is a type of spitit level and the term ‘crocs avilable in katy’ refers to finding footwear in a place called Katy (who knew that existed). 

I was fairly intrigued by the person who ran a search on Mandytory punishment #25 to life.  Now I’m assuming that they had spelling issues but the question is why would someone be looking up mandatory sentencing periods specifically for over 25 years. I can only guess but this person may have come up with the perfect retirement strategy. Firstly you get to spend everything you earn whilst you’re young and can enjoy it.  Then when you hit about 50, you perform one of the appropriate crimes and off to prison you go, free board and lodging for the rest of your life.  You don’t even need to wait until your retirement age. There’s some minuses of course, you don’t get to buy a caravan and travel around Australia with the rest of the retirees.  But my grandma can tell you (and does every single time I visit) that her retirement home is like being in prison anyway. So you might not lose out too much.

Anyway, definitely something to think about and the way super is performing it’s definitely good to have a back-up plan. In case you are wondering the big three for over 25 year sentences appear to be murder(s), aggravated sexual assauts in company(s) (not sure if this relates to places of work or in social situations) and certain offences under the drug act.  Especially if you have spent some time planning them out (winging it seems to be fine in comparison).

It turns out that like horses and skinny dogs you probably shouldn’t bet on the outcome of  job interviews. You may recall that just before we set sail for Darwin I had racked up two interviews, one of which I thought had gone quite well and the second one I thought had gone remarkably crap.

So it has come as a pleasant surprise to be offered the position from my ‘crap’ interview.  I haven’t heard anything back from the ‘good’ interview so maybe I’m just a bad judge of interview success. In the mean time I had been contacted for a third interview but since they gave me only 24 hours notice and we were in the middle of Kakadu that was never going to happen.  Strangely they called me back a week later to see if I might still be interested in an interview which seems to indicate that the people they had interviewed were fairly dodgey. I’m fairly sure that you wouldn’t go to the effort of lining up an interview panel of four people again unless you had too.  I am also fairly sure that the number of interview panellists does not in any way correspond to making a better choice of candidate.  I was once asked to attend a final interview for a new manager as a courtesy and apparently I was the only person to see that anyone who turns up for an interview wearing a purple velvet jacket is not your winner. I was also the only person not on the panel (another panel of 4). Purple-Velvet-Jacket man turned out to be a terrible manager. It appeared that he may have read a guide to good management somewhere along the line but possibly hadn’t got around to finishing it. He was ‘made redundant’ a year later.

Anyway, it is fairly interesting that I can stuff up an interview but still appear to be the best candidate.  Which makes me wonder what the other candidates were like……..

So we’re back from Darwin having achieved life-long dream #2784 – Crocosaurus’s Cage of Death.  It was more like Cage of Photos in our case since the crocodiles weren’t that interested in working with us. Hence we now have a lot of underwater photos of us doing thumbs up action and riding each other like cowboys.

It was a pretty cool set-up though.  You climb into a plexi-glass tube which is large enough for two and you then moved along sort of like those claw games where you try to win the soft toy.  We were dropped into two of the pools and were wiggled around enticingly but well fed crocodiles really don’t want to know you even when you made appropriate crocodile attracting splashy sounds. What you may have needed was a poking stick to  liven them up a bit.  Being lowered into the pools though, gave you an idea of just how large the big boys are, they could swallow you whole and you wouldn’t even be a bulge in their stomachs.

The little crocs were a lot more keen on tourist action.  You can swim beside the tank of little crocs and they come on over in droves. If they could get through the glass I am fairly sure you’d stagger out with about 14 of the little blighters attached to you trying desperately to do mini-death rolls. On a side note there was more than one tasting platter on offer featuring crocodile spring rolls, can’t get more Australian than that!

Our final stop of the trip was to see the Jumping Crocodiles on the Adelaide River.  This was just amazing and I highly recommend NT Safaris.  We hadn’t even left the dock before ‘Godfrey’ popped up off the port side waiting for his treats.  Godfrey was huge and for a 100-year-old he still had quite a few teeth.  He wasn’t taking any prisoners, when he attacked the bait there was this ‘WHUMP” sound as his mouth closed with 3000kg of pressure.  A human has about 24kg of jaw pressure which is why we’d never win a biting contest against a croc. I was busy taking photos and at one stage Godfrey passed below me, seeing his golden eyes focused on you definitely makes you take a step back.  I’ve never felt more like takeaway.  We were on the only boat on the river which wasn’t double storey and when you see crocodiles that close you realise just how scary they are. I’m currently reading ‘Crocodile Attack in Australia’ (with a foreword by none other than Paul Hogan) and it makes for scary bedtime reading.

Now I like my animals to perform a bit but seeing the little crocs jump over a metre out of the water to get themselves a slice of buffalo was sensational. Then the birds decided to join in.  One recalcitrant croc wasn’t even taking a bite at the bait when it was laid on it’s nose which is when a brown kite swooped in for a quick feed.  The Whistling Kite also got in on the action and whistled continuously until our boat captain threw some meat up for him as well. No matter where the meat was thrown the kite grabbed it with a claw and then stuffed it into his mouth before the next bit was thrown.  I tell you if that kite ever figures out that alfresco cafe tables are a goldmine for treats, that’ll be the end to outdoor dining.

We completed our crocodile experience by channeling our ‘inner-Godfrey’ and taking on Sky City’s seafood buffet. Now if you are anything like me you take buffet as a serious challenge.  I was starving so we had got in early, along with the seniors, who tend to slow you down a bit in the queue.  Pausing too long between platefuls can be fatal as it gives your body time to register it is actually full. I thought I was doing pretty well when a guy sitting by the door laughed when he saw me go back for my fourth haul. And that was before dessert. My partner turned out to be a bit of a buffet-girl’s blouse and rolled around in pain from his bellyful afterwards but I was feeling good – as someone I knew once said, sometimes you just need to get a big plate of food!

Anyway, the NT turned out to be a fantastic holiday spot, even better than what I thought it would be.  The weather is awesome and the people relaxed and friendly.  Icy cold beers are advertised everywhere and the Barra Burgers are so good. But you do need to remember that the only things hungrier than the crocs in Kakadu are the mozzies – don’t forget the Aeroguard.

So after weeks of sending out half-arsed application letters to which ever job took my fancy at that particular moment (several applications went in on the strength of 0.6EFT and one went in to a company that sounded nice), I actually got a call for an interview.  The very first thought that popped into my head was ‘I might actually have to go to work darn it!’. Then I got another call for another interview.  Was this the end of unemployment?

It’s always really hard to know whether you’ve nailed the interview. You always think of the perfect answer well after you’ve left the building and you can’t phone them to update your responses (this could be considered a little strange and you need to appear normal until the end of probation).

Addressing why I left my previous role does make me quite nervous.  I am going with the honest ‘I was bullied’ since pretty much anything else will invariably lead to me appearing shifty as I try to answer further questions.  On the bright side I no longer appear bitter and twisted but there is always that urge to blurt out ‘Oh my lord she was a crazy bitch’! I’ve tried to wrap it up in positives such as ‘It was a great learning experience’ (on how to run from a building when I next meet a crazy lady),’Quite surprising when all my other working relationships were so positive’ (AKA It’s not me it was her – she was CRAZY!) and ‘I tried to improve the situation but her behavior was just inappropriate’ (AKA She was an absolute nutter). Of course you want to give them all the gory details but succinctness is the key at this point.

The first interview actually went quite well and they appeared quite understanding. One of the things that I have learned since the Crazy Lady is that the number of people who have been bullied, harassed or worked with a loony is surprisingly high.  The number of people who discussed it openly however is surprisingly low. They didn’t ask me why I had left my previous role in the second interview and I feel that it may have worked against me but I was very open about leaving the role.

Even now when I think about the Crazy Lady I just can’t understand how anyone could act like that.  Even worse is when you read about bullying and you understand the reasons why it happens, you wonder why  it happened to you. The short answer is that you were simply unlucky enough to come in contact with one of these crazy people. My only regrets after two months of umployment is that I didn’t leave sooner than I did and I didn’t line up a job before I left.

Katy Klein was born two months ago to help a friend out. This friend had serious doubts about a real estate agent he was trying to deal with. He asked me if I could go to an Open For Inspection to check it out.  Of course you can’t go to an OFI and give them your real name and number (unless you are actually interested in the property).  As a wet-behind-the-gills young thing I had initially done that when I commenced my house search.  Getting legions of calls about insurance products I didn’t want quickly led to me becoming a Sharon, Vanessa or something a little more outlandish like Myrtle.  I like to spell them out with interesting spelling variations for a little more authenticity.

I also enjoy signing visitors books around the world with names of famous Australians, it just makes me laugh every single time.  Overhearing a family discuss whether Nicole Kidman had indeed visited a small museum in the back end of Mexico was just hilarious.

So on the way to the OFI I came up with my Nom de Guerre to add a little spice to my undercover work.  Unfortunately the agent was well versed in the duplicitous arts herself and I suspect she was on to me.  I’ve never seen an agent provide so little information before, despite fairly active questioning.  What was interesting is that she did provide a lot of information to another chappie who I guessed was the other party interested in the property.  She even went so far as to disclose my friend’s offer to him.  Something I am fairly sure is completely unethical if not illegal. Luckily Katy Klein has very big ears and my friend got the heads up (if not the property).

I’m not sure if it helped my friend out very much but it did make for a fun afternoon.  And when I decided that I wanted to have a bit of a chat blog-wise, naming it was easy.

So tonight we are flying to Darwin on the red-eye special. I so desperately need a break from unemployment! Anyway we’d been thinking about Darwin for a while to see Kakadu and Litchfield National Park but the clincher was watching one of those travel shows and seeing a segment on Crocosaurus.

Thus arose life-long dream #2784 (actual number assigned completely arbitrarily). My last life-long dream was seeing Tarsiers in the Philippines which are just about the cutest things in the world and they can reallyjump.  Then there was zorbing in Brisbane which was my birthday treat. The best one ever was cage diving with Great White sharks off South Africa, one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

So when I found out you could be submerged in a plexi-glass tube in a pool with a great big crocodile in it, there was never a doubt in my mind.  I even wanted to get married in the tube but the boy was a bit of a stick in a mud about that.  Even after I said I could wear a white bikini and everything.  The photos would have been awesome although I’m not sure any bridesmaids or best men could have also fitted in the tube. You could possibly get a tux onto a croc though but getting him to cough up a ring might be tough.

Croc-diving also completes my diving-with-huge-things-underwater travel monopoly set.  The trifecta being diving with the Great White’s, diving in a net full of tuna off Port Lincoln and now crocs. I can’t wait!

So we’ve hit a bit of a snag in our Semi-Dry-July quest.  In fact the boy is already out of the running with a total of 3 drinking nights but a staggering 10 drinks, breaking the 8-drink maximum.  Seven of these drinks were in one night as ‘No more for me thanks’ is obviously not part of his vocabulary. Considering he bought the dryness into our house I can’t helped but feel a tad miffed.

Unfortunately I don’t have much to crow about as although I am still in the running, I am rather concerned that all I wanted last night was a juicy glass of red wine.  I also cheated and rounded down 1.4 standard drinks to one drink.

But I did manage to attend book club and not partake of the champers (although not without complaining).  We had read Barack Obama’s first book  but we didn’t get around to discussing it until we had first checked on our first intra-book club romance and then heard details of two of the attendees romances: secret-sex-man and not-quite-sure-if-I-am-in-or-out-man. For those of you who have spent some time dating you’ll know who I am talking about, we’ve all met them.  I’m sure there are some female equivalents and I would love to know what they are. 

So I came out of the closet and told the girls that I was unemployed and they were just lovely and supportive.  I told them part of the Snake Woman story.  I’ve stopped talking about it as I found that most people don’t seem to believe me. The worrying thing is is that more often than not people will say that they were bullied too or know someone who was.  It seems to come in a lot of forms and be rather common. But no one talks about it much. Anyway I am finally working through it and are still constantly grateful that I don’t have to work with the Snake Woman anymore. And now I only occasionally think of revenge scenarios like signing her up for a mental health newsletter! Unfortunately you just have to rely on karma for such people.

So my favourite radio station, Joy FM, have been running ads for Misty’s Diner. Being easily influenced I checked out the website and knew instantly that I had to go once I saw the brownie dessert.  

I get very excited whenever I find unknown food items or combinations and I love comfort food. American food is big on the comfort.  With the emphasis on ‘big’. Like most Australians I was constantly enthralled with just how large the meals were when I was in LA.  Two of us managed to split one enormous piece of pizza and still feel entirely satisfied.

Misty’s had menu items such as Carb Coma Platter and Philly Cheese Steak which are possibly not ’slimming’ but gee they sounded good. The Chilli Cheesy Fries sounded like the world’s ultimate hangover cure. You can also get all sorts of American food items such as a bowl of Capt’n Crunch, Cherry Coke and even a deep fried Twinkie.

The Mocha Brownie thick shake was sensational.  I’m not a dunker of cookies into tea (very much against mushy bits in liquids) but having pieces of brownies in my milkshake was awesome. We split the ‘I want what Misty’s Having’ which came out on an authentically American tray.  There were two mini-burgers which you could possibly stick whole into your mouth.  It would be a great challenge but then you might not appreciate just how good they were.

It took us a while to get there but I will definantly be going back. Especially next time I hankering for some dessert.

So as part of my unemployment homework I attended the Re-invent Your Career Expo.  When I first saw an advertisement for it I was pretty excited. I was also at that initial stage of unemployment where all you can see are opportunities.  I was strongly considering driving a bus for a while but was fairly concerned I would crash within about oneweek.  I had toyed with being a bank teller.  And I am still in the process of joining the army reserves (tax free cashola for running around obstacle courses – awesome!).  Of course now, having received numerous rejections, I am back to applying for anything remotely in my field.  I don’t actually want to stay in my field but it seems most employers think I should. Every time I have tried to cross over it hasn’t been terribly successful and that whole malarky about transferable skills? Psslllt! 

Anyway, we shelled out $10 for the Expo which was basically to see a whole heap of stands from educational institutions and  a few trying to lure people to work in the country thrown in (work-life balance in Wangarratta anyone?).  I’ve already worked in the country and I ended up quitting on a post-it note so that was out. I also can’t afford to study which meant there was absolutely nothing of any relevance to me.  At least getting a copy of The Age for free ameliorated the cost of entry. My partner was also pretty impressed with his key-chain spirit level and measuring tape – that is still keeping him occupied.

When I first starting looking for work I had considered a career planning service whose prices vary considerably.  According to one burnt out marketing executive I have spoken to, it cost her about $1600.  From what she told me, the testing sounded remarkably similar to what I had done using a library book (total cost $0).  Now if I paid money for such a service I would expect them to tell me my one perfect job.  The job that makes me feel like I’m not going to ‘work’ each day. You know those people who say that they would do their job for free they love it so much? I can only think that it takes newspaper reporters quite a bit of time to find them. A quick survey of my friends will find a grand total of 0% who would go to work for free.  Anyway, I thought I was the only one who wanted an easy answer until I noticed something interesting at the Expo.  Do you want to know what the only stand with a queue at the Expo was offering? A free 10 minute psychic career reading. Maybe I can check what jobs I have done in previous lives. They might have that at the next psychic and natural healing expo.

I signed up for mystery shopping a while ago but eventually turned off my account after being besieged by mystery shopping opportunities by email.

Thanks to unemployment I have reactivated my account.  It’s quite silly because I could be earning enough money to buy lunch by going to a job each day.  Instead I am getting real joy out of a free lunch with a tidy $7 profit. I also get to try new things.  Although in the case of fast-food-mystery-shopping on Monday it wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped.  But I am repeating the experience today (with a different meal combination).

I was quite excited about my first mystery shopping experience which involved going into a store and trying on a clothing item.  I carefully rated the customer service I received. An unfortunate side effect of this though, was that I found that for the next week I was rating the service I got in every shop.  I even found myself thinking that I wished I had a rating form for one shop – so very rude! 

But it’s very easy to be critical.  On my last assignment I was a little more considerate towards those working in the store.  I remember my days of working to put myself through Uni and sometimes serving customers all day does your head in.  I found that whilst most people are polite and some even friendly, there is that constant percentage of people that range from rude to downright obnoxious.  Unfortunately they are the ones that drag behind you as you go home for the day. So I still give good feedback now but I make sure I am also a lot more understanding.