Tra-la-la-la, la-la-la-la! No, it's not funny really - particularly when a job offer transpires to be worth somewhat less than the pixels it's written on - but things are on the up, the future is bright, and other such go-to phrases for the terminally underused.
Yes, a job offer did materialise far sooner than I had anticipated (which is to say prior to 2012), which was a rather pleasant surprise: an interview, a skills test, a second interview. Bonza. I even acquired a comfortable pair of slip-ons and an olive green vest (read: tank top) in order to settle into a comfy chair in a comfy office at "one of North America's largest producers and marketers of craft yarn" (they shall remain otherwise nameless; this isn't an exposé).
Yet it transpired that the nice HR lady didn't play by the rules, pursuing (unsuccessfully) my references without any notification whatsoever ("The email is bouncing" "Oh... Does this mean I'm getting the job?") and then sending me an offer in writing on the Thursday before a proposed Monday start date.
Cushty, right? Not necessarily: having stated my salary expectations at interview, I was rather disappointed that nothing further was discussed prior to an amount appearing in print - and it was an amount significantly below the typical wage for said job title (Web Content Coordinator) in Toronto. So I was left with a balancing act: the terms were, I thought, pretty poor - two weeks holiday seemed especially harsh - and the commute was a killer, but it would have been a job sharpish and Canadian work experience.
I assumed it wouldn't hurt to very politely inquire about the terms of the offer, asking for the "opportunity to discuss" a couple of issues I had. I was otherwise "very excited" to be joining the company (a slight exaggeration, but mostly true). As it happens, my request was a faux pas: Friday brought an email explaining that the manager in charge of such decisions was off until Monday, but that I'd get a response then. Fine, I thought, but Monday brought the whole affair to a rather abrupt end: "We can't do that. Thanks for your interest, and good luck in your career."
A bit off, right? I replied explaining that I wasn't actually withdrawing my interest in the offer - I had never suggested that in the slightest - and that I was extremely disappointed there had been no room for discussion throughout the entire process. Why would my stated expectations be met with a nod and smile at interview if the offer was always going to be more than $10,000 short?
But you live and learn. I'm happier to be continuing my hunt than to be traveling three hours a day to a job where I felt undervalued/borderline exploited (a true immigrant story). The last few days have passed with applications flying off to exciting-sounding roles at places like Roy Thompson Hall and the Harbourfront Centre, the disappointing job offer debacle signed off with a defiant cry: "I DON'T EVEN LIKE YARN!"
On a happier note, enjoy this seasonal gem from Funny Or Die: Drunk History Christmas, starring Eva Mendes, Ryan Gosling and Jim Carrey. It's loltacular.
Thursday 22 December 2011
Tuesday 20 December 2011
Desktop Wallpaper Giveaway Spectacular!
It is the season of goodwill to all men - or words to that effect - so I've very selflessly created a desktop wallpaper for the literally dozens (okay, maybe not literally) of AMATB readers. Or is it simply that the sun is shining and I've had enough of typing after the morning's job application endeavours? No, it isn't.
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| Click pour le pic |
Monday 12 December 2011
PICTURE SPECIAL: Toronto Christmas Market
Look, mate, it's not that I've got nothing to write about; I just prefer pictures this month, especially having spent an entire Saturday at one of the world's most extraordinary visual spectacles - the (sort of) world famous Toronto Christmas Market!
Okay, so it's a lot like any other Christmas market - stall after stall of garish knitwear, festive bell ringing piped through a tinny PA and the obligatory enclosure of miserable reindeer - but one subtle distinction makes the TCM unique: free booze. All you have to do is line up for 20 minutes for 30ml of Tyskie, 10 minutes for a miniscule cream liqueur chaser, rinse and repeat. Supplementing one's intake with a $6 cup of mulled wine/hot cider is optional, but either way you're on the road to Buzzville. Eventually.
Other highlights: stopping in at renowned ale pub C'est What on the way home for a pint of "Northumberland" and a pulled pork sandwich; beginning the next day with a Swiss Chalet Festive Special before taking in a 3D screening of Arthur Christmas (actually very good); eventually acquiring and watching Hitchcock classic Dial M For Murder; and making tenuous New Year plans (Perudo, tequila, Doritos).
Okay, so it's a lot like any other Christmas market - stall after stall of garish knitwear, festive bell ringing piped through a tinny PA and the obligatory enclosure of miserable reindeer - but one subtle distinction makes the TCM unique: free booze. All you have to do is line up for 20 minutes for 30ml of Tyskie, 10 minutes for a miniscule cream liqueur chaser, rinse and repeat. Supplementing one's intake with a $6 cup of mulled wine/hot cider is optional, but either way you're on the road to Buzzville. Eventually.
Other highlights: stopping in at renowned ale pub C'est What on the way home for a pint of "Northumberland" and a pulled pork sandwich; beginning the next day with a Swiss Chalet Festive Special before taking in a 3D screening of Arthur Christmas (actually very good); eventually acquiring and watching Hitchcock classic Dial M For Murder; and making tenuous New Year plans (Perudo, tequila, Doritos).
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| World's Most Acute Building (TM) |
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| Christmas monster |
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| Spot the error(s) |
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| Taking refuge in a warm corridor of art |
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| Out through the in door |
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| Getting a little worse for wear... |
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| See above |
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| The GO Train: double-decker Metro |
Thursday 8 December 2011
Monday 5 December 2011
2011AD in Music
We're no closer to hoverboards, self-drying jackets or hyper-accurate weather forecasts, but the contemporary music scene is throwing out classics left, right and centre as 2015 approaches.
For me, 2011 has been the best yet: augmenting my musicOMH album writing with the award-worthy Tracks column, this year I've felt more in touch, more up-to-date and more informed than ever before. Upon being asked to vote on the musicOMH top 50 albums of the year (part one here), I totted up my favourites; before I knew it, had a list of 39 in front of me. In no particular order, you understand.
The pleasant surprise was that I seem to have shaken the nasty habit of listening to an LP, rushing through a review - positive, more often than not - and never giving it a repeat spin thereafter. Hypocritical? Probably, yes. And I've initially felt the same with entries here, I admit - Memory Tapes, Papercuts and Lykke Li - but I can honestly say that I've gone back to each listed album time and again (Memory Tapes, in fact, is playing now; I'm pleasantly surprised to be on humming terms with every track).
Okay, so it's not particularly glorious for a music writer to claim a new-found sense of satisfaction at being familiar with a range of music in a given year, but I'm very pleased to have finally shed my skipping vice (as in skipping tracks, not skipping rope; I still love that) in 2011. The rewards are... rewarding.
And so what of the albums themselves? I encountered most by reviewing them, others through 6 Music, and others still through good old word-of-mouth. Particular highlights for me include Wye Oak's Civilian, Yuck's Yuck and Cymbals Eat Guitars' Lenses Alien for sounding like they're from the best music decade ever (the 90s, obvz); Stephen Malkmus' Mirror Traffic because it's his best solo effort yet, and an album I'm yet to tire of; Chilly Gonzales' The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales because it's so clever on so many levels; and, of course, Metronomy's English Riviera, which is my top, top, top (copyright Jamie Redknapp) album of 2011, hands down.
I've very thoughtfully made a Spotify playlist made up of one track for each of my 39 albums of the year - you're welcome - and I'd encourage anybody without Spotify to otherwise check out a few of these songs as healthy representations of some of the best LPs 2011 had to offer (IMHO, as they say on the internet). I've also linked to each of the 39 I happened to review for, er, posterity's sake. And do keep an eye out for musicOMH's top 50 rundown this week: I may just have had a say in it's number one... (clue: I definitely did)
For me, 2011 has been the best yet: augmenting my musicOMH album writing with the award-worthy Tracks column, this year I've felt more in touch, more up-to-date and more informed than ever before. Upon being asked to vote on the musicOMH top 50 albums of the year (part one here), I totted up my favourites; before I knew it, had a list of 39 in front of me. In no particular order, you understand.
The pleasant surprise was that I seem to have shaken the nasty habit of listening to an LP, rushing through a review - positive, more often than not - and never giving it a repeat spin thereafter. Hypocritical? Probably, yes. And I've initially felt the same with entries here, I admit - Memory Tapes, Papercuts and Lykke Li - but I can honestly say that I've gone back to each listed album time and again (Memory Tapes, in fact, is playing now; I'm pleasantly surprised to be on humming terms with every track).
Okay, so it's not particularly glorious for a music writer to claim a new-found sense of satisfaction at being familiar with a range of music in a given year, but I'm very pleased to have finally shed my skipping vice (as in skipping tracks, not skipping rope; I still love that) in 2011. The rewards are... rewarding.
And so what of the albums themselves? I encountered most by reviewing them, others through 6 Music, and others still through good old word-of-mouth. Particular highlights for me include Wye Oak's Civilian, Yuck's Yuck and Cymbals Eat Guitars' Lenses Alien for sounding like they're from the best music decade ever (the 90s, obvz); Stephen Malkmus' Mirror Traffic because it's his best solo effort yet, and an album I'm yet to tire of; Chilly Gonzales' The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales because it's so clever on so many levels; and, of course, Metronomy's English Riviera, which is my top, top, top (copyright Jamie Redknapp) album of 2011, hands down.
I've very thoughtfully made a Spotify playlist made up of one track for each of my 39 albums of the year - you're welcome - and I'd encourage anybody without Spotify to otherwise check out a few of these songs as healthy representations of some of the best LPs 2011 had to offer (IMHO, as they say on the internet). I've also linked to each of the 39 I happened to review for, er, posterity's sake. And do keep an eye out for musicOMH's top 50 rundown this week: I may just have had a say in it's number one... (clue: I definitely did)
Taken From The Album... (Reviews What I Wrote Linked):
- Papercuts - Fading Parade
- The Strokes - Angles
- Anna Calvi - Anna Calvi
- The Joy Formidable - The Big Roar
- Bon Iver - Bon Iver
- Wye Oak - Civilian
- Cults - Cults
- Metronomy - The English Riviera
- Austra - Feel It Break
- Gardens & Villa - Gardens & Villa
- The Goldberg Sisters - The Goldberg Sisters
- Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
- Gruff Rhys - Hotel Shampoo
- M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
- Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Hysterical
- Little Comets - In Search Of Little Comets
- Radiohead - King Of Limbs
- Claudia Brucken - LA Noire OST
- Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lenses Alien
- PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
- Dustin O'Halloran - Lumiere (tweeted by Lauren Laverne, innit)
- Feist - Metals
- Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Mirror Traffic
- TV On The Radio - 9 Types Of Light
- Pete And The Pirates - One Thousand Pictures
- Tapes 'n Tapes - Outside
- Memory Tapes - Player Piano
- Danger Mouse & Danielle Luppi - Rome
- SBTRKT - SBTRKT
- Wild Beasts - Smother
- Sparrow And The Workshop - Spitting Daggers
- Arctic Monkeys - Suck It And See
- Foster The People - Torches
- The Lonely Island - Turtleneck & Chain
- Chilly Gonzales - The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales
- Summer Camp - Summer Camp
- Wilco - The Whole Love
- Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes
- Yuck - Yuck
Sunday 4 December 2011
Snow, Art Attacks and The Aquarium Channel
Now Is The Winter Of Our Discount Tents
Since there's no place to go - and not much on TV, and fewer job applications to work on, and it's a bit too nippy for a jog - let it snow, let it snow, let it snow... And it did! Glorious white snowflakes fell this week for all of an hour before melting into a soggy mess in double-quick time. We've now reached December 4 with barely a cold day registered; today it's nine degrees, and I'm about to go to Mandarin - buffet chain recently targeted by food-poisoning terrorists - in just a sports jacket and chinos. Incredible. I did, however, manage to capture the magical 60 minutes prior to the depressing thaw that immediately followed. More convincing wintery shots to follow, I hope:
Since there's no place to go - and not much on TV, and fewer job applications to work on, and it's a bit too nippy for a jog - let it snow, let it snow, let it snow... And it did! Glorious white snowflakes fell this week for all of an hour before melting into a soggy mess in double-quick time. We've now reached December 4 with barely a cold day registered; today it's nine degrees, and I'm about to go to Mandarin - buffet chain recently targeted by food-poisoning terrorists - in just a sports jacket and chinos. Incredible. I did, however, manage to capture the magical 60 minutes prior to the depressing thaw that immediately followed. More convincing wintery shots to follow, I hope:
Bring On The Wall!
On a more productive note, we've begun crafting potential Christmas gifts/chintz to sell to unsuspecting bargain hunters in the form of PADDED NOTICE BOARDS! A simple mash-up of board, padding, fabric, ribbon, thumb tacks and about twelvety-million staples, the PADDED NOTICE BOARD is the perfect seasonal gift for the pensioner/hoarder/faux-vintage aficionado in your life.
How much does such an impressive construct set you back? You can adorn your bedroom/kitchen/toilet wall with a PADDED NOTICE BOARD for the low, low price of... $10? $15? We really don't know yet; I'd like to stick a $100 price tag on them and see what happens. Maybe come up with a fancy slogan like, "Your walls are only worth as much as the tat you stick on them," so people would feel better spending hundreds on a PADDED NOTICE BOARD rather than a few dimes, nickels, and other currency slang I don't understand.
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| This is an Art Attack... |
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| ..This is an Art Attack... |
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| ..This is Art Attack! |
Cool For Cats
Incredibly, here in Canada there are entire TV channels devoted to particular species. Well, sort of: we've recently stumbled across The Aquarium Channel, which, like the station showing a burning log fire, is presumably aimed at people who can afford HD TVs but won't invest in any real life-affirming objects... like a log fire or an aquarium.
As a side-effect, such specialty transmissions can engross our animal friends, as well as stoners (The Rotisserie Channel), frustrated poets (The Sunset Channel) and sado-masochists (Fox News). Our furry friend Fiesty - aptly named, I assure you - is a great fan of The Aquarium Channel, though we were perhaps a little disappointed when he tried to investigate behind the TV after we'd changed channels: it's as if his 16 years of experience have not taught him that no, there isn't an aquarium in the basement. Now get out of there before you electrocute yourself.
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| Funny, I've never noticed this aquarium before |
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| When was it installed? |
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| What sort of fish are these? Look expensive |
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| Stunning... Truly stunning |
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| What if I just... touch one? |
Miscellaneous
- Part one of the musicOMH Tracks column's round-up of 2011 (and stay tuned for the Top 50 albums run-down; a particular favourite of mine is headed for the top spot... I think).
- A mini-blog type-thing I was asked to make for the hotel we stayed in during our trip to Albania this summer: Hotel Novaj. Falum derit shum, mate!
- Fin.
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