Interviews, interviews, interviews

That's all that has been on my mind lately - Interviews
Mentioned earlier but to re-cap for the hell of it:
I've applied for a position as a "Technology/Technical Support Officer" for the Aussie Govt's 'Digital Education Revolution' (DER) program where every student in NSW will eventually have a netbook each - A Lenovo S10e - I'm guessing the 'e' means edu model/version. ie: dumbed down hardware specs

So far, I have applied for 3 regions of Sydney: Western, North and CBD schools
Each region has allowed each applicant to apply/try-out for 5 public/govt schools of their choice.
As for my choices...... I've completely forgotten what schools I chose... ^^"""""

So far, I've already had an interview for the North region and I think I did pretty successfully for that - The interviewers were the North region manager and the principal of Cheltenham Girls High - Both were really nice people and were great to talk to.
That interview would officially be my first interview EVER!!! - The region manager commented that I did pretty well for a first-timer. There were 3 questions and they were pretty general and easy to answer:
1. "How do you handle problems"
2. "How do you organise time"
3. "What do you require to work?" Context was along, personal requirements: Do you need an egro chair?, table height?, wheelchair access?... those kinds of 'personal requirements'.

And there's todays interview - At the prestigious Sydney Girls/Boys Selective High School.
There was a panel of 4 interviewers: The IT manager from the Boys section of the school and one from the Girls section of the school, the CBD region manager and this one other guy... I never figured out who he was; our introductions were limited to handshakes and were very brief. He probably was a principal of either the Girls or Boys school - I guess he had a 'wise' look to him.

Compared to the first interview, I was definitely much more nervous - Saying 'umm' alot and making those classic 'beginner mistakes'. *sigh*
There were 4 questions which were much more 'business styled' which reflected the kind of high calibre person that they're looking for:
1. "What kind of professional skills do you have/can/will you bring to our school(s)"
2. "How would you prioritise these tasks" (3 immediate tasks, reorder to importance and why)
3. "High Schools have people on many different knowledge levels of computers. What kind of strategies would you make to cater for the less 'computer literate' people out there" (paraphrased)
And the 4th one... I forgot again.

For question #3, I don't think I gave a satisfactory answer as one of the interviewers asked "What other strategies can you think of?" - That really hit me at the time and afterwards, as I could only think of one strategy at the time. I could only kick myself in the head while driving home - I guess it happens alot after these kinds of things. You think of awesome answers to questions only AFTER it's all over and done.

All that's left so far is 2 more interviews: One at Sydney Technological High on Tuesday next week and one for the Western region on Thursday next week also. I'm still hoping that the "Conservatorium of Music High School" will call me. I really want to go there...

Oh well, all I can do now is prepare my best for the next coming week!

頑張れぞ～～～！

Cyberchaos

Jobs, Sickness and Xrays

Wow. Nearly forgot I had a blog for a while. Please brace for long post ^^"
So stuff that's been happen/ing/ed:

• Job
• Sick~~.....
• Doctors

Job
Well for starters, I've applied for a job as a L4L 'TSO' (Laptops-4-Learning 'Technical Support Officier') for the Dept of Edu
It's the way of saying: "Hey, lets give every kid in Year 9 a netbook so we don't have to spash out on expensive full-sized laptops every year". And to make sure things run when stuff blows up or breaks down, they need a couple hundred IT dudes to take care of each government (public) school when things happen to go south.

Finding the job was far easier than applying for it. A good TAFE mate of mine contacted a whole bunch of us students and broadcasted that these positions were avaliable JUST THEN. It's like he's always got an eye on the government job website. We were all celebrating when he told us of the news. Most of us were at that point either newly unemployed or just freshly fired due to eco crash.
The announcement was made right before the exam weeks. 2 weeks were given till the appliciation deadline/cutoff and I was standing beside a tower of assignments and exams - Which spanned 2 weeks....
Studies had absolute priority and so I put all my hope in that I'll finish early so I could deal with the job application.

2 weeks rolled by pretty fast. Exams during the day and assignment completion at night. It was a pretty insane 14 days with nearly no breaks. I had finally handed in all my assignments 3 DAYS BEFORE JOB APPLICATION DEADLINE
I knew already the post would take at least 1 day if I used 'Same-day-delivery' and by that time, it was afternoon already. In other words, I had only 1.5 days to get it all done and sent... crap.

I needed to do a complete re-do of my CV/Resume, Write a 'challenge' to the job requirements, and about 4 other long winded documents. Getting it done was no problem, but figuring out what to say... is another matter.
In this Eco weather, I know that there'd probably be a million other people applying for the same job. So, in all conciet, I made it look like I was the most qualified dude out there... I hated writing those documents. I'm not usually the one to 'show-off' my skills since I'm the more 'quiet/humble' type of person. It was an unpleasant but very interesting experience.

And so I waited... for maybe a week, when suddenly at 815pm, 2 nights ago I recieved a phone call from the 'North Sydney Regional Manager' telling me to "I want you to come in for an interview... blah blah blah... Lets make an appointment... blah blah blah... 2pm on Tuesday okay? blah blah blah... *click*"

tl; dr: Lets just say I had (and still have) the worlds biggest grin on my face.
------------
Sickness

Well, all I can say is that I caught it from my Dad, who passed it to me, then both of us passed it to my Mum... goodness knows who passed it back to me. If a family needed to be quarrantined, my household would be the best candidate.
So my 'holidays' have been filled with sleep, anime, eat, rest, anime, sleep, shower, eat, anime...
The rest is pretty easy to figure out.

Xrays
Well, that would be todays 'event'. Woke up with a headache, took a shower, left the house on empty. When I got to the xray clinic, there was barely a line. So I waltzed right up to the counter and handed over my authorisation slip, and health card. Turned out to be the wrong card. I had grabbed my 'private health insurance card' (Medibank) instead of my 'government health services card(Medicare). So, I drove home again to grab it and came back to a queue that stretched the length of the practice.
( _ _||| )

Turns out that that card had expired...
Anyway, they contacted Medicare services and authorised my xrays.
The 'shots' took less than 2mins but the wait was 30mins. Not bad for a TOTALLY PACKED clinic. Although, it took 3hrs to develop the plates...
I went home, surfed the net for 3hrs, went back to get my xrays and headed straight to the doc for his analysis. Turns out that my Pectus Carinatum has reduced but my heart... was not found.
My heart was eventually found neatly hidden behind the Sternum bone. It was quite... lets just say I've been healthier than I am now... ^^"
Also had a blood drawn for testing. The nurse had no problems at all finding a vein as I have a plethora of highly visible veins up/down my arm. Yes my skin is that thin... I swear, she could've done it with her eyes closed and by touch only.

What else?

Cooked dinner tonight, sleeping every morning, load of meds, loads of anime...

In summary: フリーダムです！

Cyberchaos