Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

We went took a roadtrip to Pittsburgh about a month ago, mostly so I can practice my driving so that I can sit a road test here, and also to check out the town where G spent five years of his life during university. We booked a hotel on a strip that G described as having a lot of shops and restaurants, immediately, I thought it would be like the strip stores in our neighbourhood, or Oxford St back at home. The stores and restaurants G were referring to were Target, Walmart, McDonalds, The Keg, Red Lobster, Dennys and any other American franchaise imaginable. It was more like industrial area Alexandria than it was Oxford. It was difficult to have any doubts where we were, because everywhere you looked, everyone you spoke to, everything you ate was quintissential American fare.

First stop was G's uni… he went to a small university called Duquesne. Much smaller than UNSW, it was actually quaint, with a small community feel. We passed a inter-university football game which was pretty cool coz I've never seen one before. G got all excited about being able to buy new logo tees and sports gear. I don't know anyone who has ever forked out good money to advertise UNSW on their chest!

Downtown Pittsburgh would have been much nicer had it not been pouring rain. Although we saw the entire downtown in a couple of hours, it was much nicer than I had aniticpated. The mixture of old and new architecture was a surprise from the industrial slab buildings I was expecting, but I can understand why G couldn’t' wait to get out of there.

Highlight was a Primanti Brothers sandwich… pastrami (grilled with a hot iron), fries, mayonnaise, relish, coleslaw, provolone cheese all whacked into a rye bread. It was huuge.

 

For dinner, I demanded Olive Garden, another American-Italian franchaise, which I remembered had really good garlic sticks and soup. The garlic sticks and any soup off the menu come complimentary with your main. Better still, it's refillable - as many times as you wish, as with the beverages! No wonder Americans are the size they are! (Another factor why you would not doubt where you are).

Coz there was absolutely nothing to do at night (besides shopping at Target), we decided to see the Bond flick at the local cinemas. Another highlight. The cinemas were so true to what we know from any 80's movies we've seen. One storey building in the middle of a flat carpark parked with very large GMs and Chryslers. The signboard for the movie times was retro black lettering, individually pinned onto a white back board. The candy counter was brightly colored and manned by a teen in a diner uniform. The cinema seating was low back, bright green vinyl, that must have been there since the 70's. It was most surreal.

On the way home, we stopped at the outlets, and I must say, I was very proud of myself. My only purchase was a gift and some socks even though there was crazy sales that I would normally regard as too good to miss.

So I'm all set for my drive test, this weekend. Ofcourse, it's going to be snowing - the only questions I had wrong on the knowledge test was snow related, so this should be interesting!

Anticipating Unemployment

For sensible people, when faced with less than a month left of secure employment, and a roller coaster economy that is yet to feel the incline, they would play it safe.

I have a friend who works in mortgages, who is very successful, and to our friends amusement, quite aggressive in climbing the corporate ladder. A little stressed with the state of the economy, she decided to return a sweater she had purchased, one of many spending changes she's made.

Meanwhile, whether frivolous or foolish, I am shopping for holiday destinations to spend my new found time. So earlier in the week, a conversation on Skype was enough to convince me to book flights to meet a friend on the other side of the ocean, and travel to a country I know barely anything about.

Today, whilst G and I were chilling out at a local cafe, we come across an ad for a sale on Vespas. We've been thinking about it for a while, but with winter coming on so quickly, we dawdled on the idea. But the $2k discount was too good to miss. So we did another impulsive thing and bought one. Mind you, neither G or I have a license to drive our new purchase, and we probably won't get an opportunity to practice and ride until April next year, but who can resist a sale?!

We chose the color coz without electricity in the garage, this will help brighten things a bit:


Okaes, so only this color was available at our price, but we can work yellow methinks.

To my dear siblings, the 'rents don't really need to know about this, k?

Whats for lunch?

This morning, I decided to run into the grocery store to get some provisions for work - flurries yesterday at lunch is enough to prevent me walking down the road for food.

Plus, with 99c frozen meals, it's cheaper than a bag of chips!

So here I am, gym bag on one shoulder, handbag on the arm, and hot tea in hand. I forgot the basket, but figured 'what's a couple of boxes of frozen pasta'?. That was until the pasta fell on me. Yup, one minute I'm expertly juggling my bags and my tea, and the next minute it was raining pasta, and what was in the freezer is now on the floor (ok, little exaggeration, maybe not the entire freezer, but enough to make a scene).

If I didn't feel stupid enough, I must have looked it... frail little granny ran over the help me.

Take heed, frozen meals can kill you.

The conversation

... resulted in a polite decline.

The last time I declined an offer and quit, I was in tears. I remember it being a very emotional experience. Having said that I had great managers who had really shaped and support my growth and offered me opportunities which were a shame to refuse.

This time round, when asked whether it felt like a huge lift of my chest, I gave a shrug. I knew all along I wasn't going to stick with it. But I'm glad I forced myself to think it through and consider it, rather than use my emotions to decide.

My only regret is that I have three trips planned to U.S. outlet malls over the next 3 months, and I'm going to have to watch the spending.

On the flip side, now that it's done and dusted, I need to decide where to go in January! I'm thinking Florida / Central America, Morocco or somewhere else in Africa. Anyone free to join me??

Resorting to a list

With all the venting I have done on this blog and to my friends, I don't think it is a revelation to say that I don't enjoy my current contract. So being offered a permanent position, should really be a no brainer, except that the current market conditions suck.

I have been subtley trying to convince some of my London friends to make the move over to T.O. as I didn't think the job market was suffering as badly. But reality has hit as I monitor the job sites everyday - only a few jobs make it through my loose search criteria, and I will be lucky if one of them remotely resembles my type of work, let alone interest me. So when a permanent offer at my current contract is placed on my table, what do I do? I have less than a day before I have to express my interest, and the responsible, logical side of me warns me not to be so frivolous in giving an answer.

Pros
* Stability (not sure when this has mattered to be before, but I think it is an adult consideration and I'm trying to make an adult decision)
* Better leverage in my Permanent Residency application (which I have not decided to pursue or not)
* More say in what I do as a permanent staff (I think, and within boundaries)
* Easy to excel in this environment (at a cost, see below)
* Employment means earning money to travel

Cons
* I have not enjoyed the project in the last year, what makes me think it will change?
* The people on the project do not inspire me
* Lack of challenge. My learning curve is not very curvy at all
* Risk of being stuck in Telco if I don't run away now
* Commuting out to woop woop - which means car pooling or car shopping, and less sleep
* Huge pay cut, and no billing for over time
* Cut any leads of getting contract work through another Consultant on the project (conflict of interest for them to poach permanent staff)
* Full time work means only 3 weeks to travel per year
* Unemployment means I get to travel and escape winter (this is really a pro for me, but a con against taking the job)

It was actually helpful for me to write this down - I have more Pros than I thought! Although I'm not surprised I still have more Cons. If I'm as geeky as some of my friends, I would weigh each of my points and graph it! LOL

At the end of the day, it really boils down to how much risk am I willing to take in order to get a more satisfying job?

Like my usual non-commital-till-the-last-minute self, I'll leave it till tomorrow.

Sassy Circus Sideshow

As we all know from the movies, Halloween is no casual affair in North America. Not when you are walking down the street past tombstones on the lawn of a lovely home, across the street you see a ghost of a bed sheet, and down the road a fine looking set of skeletons are sun baking.

Out here, they grown a special breed of pumpkins that have no other purpose than to serve as decoration for Halloween! Bright orange, perfectly round pumpkins are cultivated and sold by the truckloads in the months leading to Halloween to sit on people doorsteps... apparently they aren't for eating!

Although excited about experiencing a real Halloween, I was less enthused with having to hand out candy every 2 minutes the doorbell rang. So G and I took the cheats way out and decided to go out for dinner and leave the poor kids disappointed on the only non-pumpkin lined doorsteps in the neighborhood. Somehow, our dinner plans ended up at G's parents place, for which they were unusually pleased to see us. Halloween virgins you see, have the privilege of answering the door bell, and G's family were happy to oblige.

Halloween is the day that you don't even flinch when you are sitting on the subway next to Joker, or across the aisle from a poor woman who had been slashed with a machete. The party organizer in the crew threw a house party with a less macabre theme of Sassy Circus Sideshow - we had fortune tellers, lions and lion tamers, magicians, chicks dressed in very little clothing... and then there were ugly Siamese twins who crossed path with Hannibal Lecter. Let me tell you, being bound to someone might be amusing for the first five minutes, but gets a little testy any longer than that. Here's a few pics of the evening...