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Jan 24 2012
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journalism, library, school, tech, vancouver

a job i am totally applying for

Today, moments after I hung up from Skyping with my mom, I found a job I really want. I mention Skyping with my mom because in that conversation I’d been talking about how when I graduate I’ll be looking for work all over the place, and how one of the upsides of being unattached is being able to be mobile, and all that jazz, but also how I’d only try working in the U.S. if it was a great job. We talked about places I’d be more or less interested in. At no point in this conversation did Alaska come up.

Of course, Alaska is where this job I found is.

But I think I’d be a pretty excellent New Media Producer for the Juneau NPR affiliate. Here’s a snippet of the job description:

… an individual with experience and skills in journalism and online content management, including writing and editing for the web, graphic design and site management.

I could completely do that. And do that really well. And it would actually integrate my journalism side with my digital librarianish side (you know, content management kinds of things).

Anyway, I’m putting together an application for them. It’s probably a bit of a long shot (I am a foreigner and all), and it’d mean I’d have to finish my MLIS with a couple of web-delivered courses (which wouldn’t be a big deal), but it could be neat.

Sorry this didn’t happen an hour before you called, Mom. I might have been more excitable.

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Jan 19 2012
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library, school, vancouver

two bits without a segue

I did not get the job at the Art, Architecture and Planning library at UBC. Selah. I did get a very nice phone call from the librarian who interviewed me (along with two other staffmembers) saying that I did a fine job in the interview and he was sure my experience would be great for somewhere in the future, but they were going with a candidate who had a lot of experience with local art. Which isn’t something I could have made myself be, so yeah. It’s the kind of situation where their priorities were just things I couldn’t fill. I hear that happens sometimes.

The shitty thing is that was probably the last formal GAA position I could possibly have gotten at UBC. I don’t think they do those just for the summer months, and come September I won’t be a student any longer. So that means I won’t have any academic library experience on my resume when I’m off looking for work. I’ve been trying to diversify through this degree, not focus, but we’ll see how much that helps, or if I’ll just be every employer’s second choice when the real jobhunting comes around.

When I was coming home from school yesterday (on the bus because I don’t feel like biking through slush and snow with my fenderless bike) the second bus I got onto wafted with the aroma of weed. It was incredibly strong for a place where no one was smoking. I sat down and another guy got on and as he walked towards the back he just started grinning. “Now this is a Vancouver bus!” he said to no one in particular. A conversation began between a bunch of the people in the back about the guy who had just gotten off the bus, who had been the source of the smells. It was all very friendly and good-natured, about the blessings of being in Canada. Eventually the guy who’d been grinning and who’d started the talking wound it up with “All right. Enough of that. Everyone can go back to their iPhones now.”

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Jan 16 2012
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books, library, school, vancouver

the difference a phone call makes

My weekend was spent working on an annotated bibliography, a topic briefing, and reading. There was reading involved in the first two parts as well, but well, yeah. Yesterday I took a break from my indoorsyness and went for a walk down to the water to watch the seaplanes land and take off again. I enjoy how Canadian that feels, with the mountains and the water and the trees, right here in the city.

My weekend was also kind of crappy with my lack of being called about the most recent student librarian gig I’d applied for. On the posting it said the interviews were going to be today, so when I didn’t hear anything by 5pm on Friday I figured that was yet another job missed somehow. I dwelt on what I could possibly have done to make my application better, brooded on the possibilities of ever finding a job when I graduate without recent library experience, and generally buried my head in books.

And then this morning I got a call saying I’ve got an interview tomorrow. So that’s all right then. I still might not get the job, but I’ve got a chance. A little bit of income, and the experience in a university library setting, would be so very excellent.

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Jan 10 2012
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books, library, school, vancouver, whining

the studenty life

Today I gathered texts for assignments all day. Woo. Our management class has its first assignment due in a couple of weeks, and that requires a whole hell of a lot of books on management and economics and libraries to be annotated for a bibliography. Don’t you wish you were in library school?

Doing this kind of thing is much easier than I imagine it used to be when you couldn’t lie in bed with your laptop all day, reserving books from all over the area to be delivered to places conducive to being picked up, or just getting the documents loaded onto your computer. I did go out to the VPL to grab a stack of books. Just for the thrill of going to the library and hurting my shoulder by overloading my bag.

And I did laundry and bought groceries. Wee. Exciting. Aren’t you glad I’m writing about this?

So many of my classmates seem so much more busy than me. All with their multiple jobs and things. I’ve just got my classes and the assignments, which I might as well do now since maybe I’ll be getting a job at some point to cut into my schoolwork time. This term I don’t have any pressing reason to get my school stuff done early, but I’ve kind of gotten the habit started so it seems better to be working on that stuff than not. It’s basically procrastination from writing or thinking about the future to be working on homework.

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Jan 04 2012
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library, school, vancouver

cycling to school can now begin

I kind of wanted to bike to school today, but didn’t because I couldn’t find my red flashing light. There isn’t very much of me that wants to be riding around in the dark without something telling vehicles not to hit my fragile little body. Now I’ve got that sorted so tomorrow I shall set out to regain my fitness. Be prepared for a couple of weeks of me complaining mightily about this city’s stupid hills.

Classes began today and I think this Children’s Literature course will be good. And I know more people than I’d expected to be in the Management class. As it stands right now, since I have to take a course and a bit in the summer anyway, my data visualization class which starts tomorrow is a provisional class. It’d be some interesting stuff, but I’m interested in a bunch of the summer offerings so dropping it wouldn’t be too terrible.

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Dec 23 2011
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food, library, movies, travel, vancouver, winnipeg

we haven’t watched miracle on 34th street yet

I’m in Virginia with Holly’s family for Xmas. We got into Dulles airport yesterday morning after taking the redeye from Seattle. Tim and Krista, Holly’s brother and sister-in-law, picked us up at the airport and drove us the couple of hours to Harrisonburg and Holly’s home.

Holly’s family (including parents Nancy and Harry, sister Amy) is really comfortable to hang around with. Everything’s real relaxed and Holly’s Virginia accent is strengthening by the moment. They have cows wandering the property. Yesterday after our (much-appreciated) naps we went up on a hike through the woods up the ridge behind their house. Out on the neighbours’ property they have a firing range set up for shooting at targets from a hundred to a couple of hundred metres away down a hollow.

Today we drove into town to run some errands and it’s kind of weird how spread out town is. It’s a bunch of scattered little settlement areas around hills from each other with farms in between. We went to visit Holly’s grandmother, got eggs from a dairy farm (I suppose there are also chickens around somewhere and these weren’t artificially-shelled cow ova), and got cinnamon buns at a place Holly might get a job. We also saw the town’s library, which was pretty decent, in a nice new building with friendly staff who recommended decent movies when they saw our stack of DVDs we were getting.

I think what I like best is seeing how happy Holly is to be home. I’m never this excited about being in Winnipeg. She’s enjoying the smells of her town and how beautiful the different drives out to her parents’ house are and running into people she hasn’t seen in a long while and being able to tell them she’s staying indefinitely.

The weirdest thing about being here is the lack of snow. It’s like 11 degrees Celsius and there’s no snow. I expected it to feel like fall in Vancouver, but this is a bit odd. The days are still pretty short though, so I don’t quite feel like I haven’t left Oz.

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Jul 27 2011
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australia, library, teaching

getting out of the office, seeing new things

I walked through the CBD this morning to the NSW Parliament library. It was hard not to notice that Darling Harbour was full past the chocks with boats, but I made it past most of them before I did. There’s a boat show going on.

Then I climbed a hill and followed a man with a slightly shiny suit and expensive shoes but who complemented that with a green and yellow soccer scarf (that appeared to say England on it, though the green and yellow were exceedingly Australian) and ratty fingerless gloves. Oh how I wished I’d gotten a look at his face.

At Parliament I did some work that will hopefully be published in a UN handbook, so that’s cool. I got to mix my journalist skills with my library opportunities in a way that meant I could be boring for Holly in so many ways over dinner! Frabjous day.

When I got to Parliament early there was a bus full of school kids arriving for a tour. One of the teachers must have been Maori because he had a full-on facial tattoo to go with his teacher jeans and teacher blazer. It was pretty awesome. I wonder if it’s the first thing he talks about with a new class, or if he waits for a student to ask or if Australian kids are so culturally sensitive and aware no one would even think there’s something remarkable there. (I’m betting it’s not the last one.)

We went out for lunch at work because of the completion of a big long project and then I spent the afternoon troubleshooting as per usual. Home to make dinner and for Holly to set off the smoke detector with her bucket of foot-soaking water (I don’t exactly understand it either).

And now we’re sitting here on the bed. Side by side. Blogging. Because that’s what we do. Not a new thing, but still something I enjoy.

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Jun 24 2011
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australia, games, library, travel, 中国

travel days ahead

I’m heading off to scenic Gippsland, Victoria tomorrow for some Koha training. I was talking to Sean the other day about how weird small businesses are. I mean, these librarians are paying for me to go out and teach them about this software I’ve only been using since April. I feel like at a lot of places I’d have needed more training than I have had (which is actually pretty extensive since I’m helping people with their Koha problems all day). Whatever works, I guess. And it means I get to see more of Oz while I’m here.

I’ve been pretty bad about going out to see stuff recently. A lot of hunkering down here in front of the internet. My friend Jamie is off to do his practicum in London (the real one) and got scolded by another of our classmates for solving internet puzzles while he’s supposed to be on vacation. But dude, I completely get that. I’ve been spending far too much time planning out Blood Bowl teams (speaking of which, I found an unofficial Blood Bowl client for playing online which almost works completely well apart from me not being able to simply stand up prone players – let me know if you’re interested in playing).

Of course, a week from today all of that will change since that’s when Holly arrives from China. I’ll engage in a tiny bit of understatement to say I’m looking forward to being in the same city as her, especially without an end-date.

Finally, if you miss my voice, you can now listen to me read Firing Squad, my Machine of Death story whenever you want. Though the magic of reading (and recording) it’s my voice without my innumerable hesitations, filler words and false starts that litter my real speech pattern, so it’s probably more pleasurable in every possible way. You can pump that story through your speakers and pity the poor shmucks who have to deal with me speaking without a script at them.

Like the librarians in Gippsdale next week.

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May 01 2011
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australia, comics, games, library, travel

lazy sunday

Today I woke up to the snores of an Irishman. From across the room in the hostel, but still. Very loud. The Americans who woke up to the noise were vocal about their displeasure. I merely lay there waiting and figuring out how to spend my day.

See this is the thing about being in a country that isn’t cheap when you have no real money, you can’t just head off into the void and do whatever, confident in your ability to make it out financially unscathed. Relatively I mean. If you go ahead and crash a scooter even in a country where they’re as cheap as Armenians well yes you do have to pay a bit even then. You need to plan out your day so it’ll work.

Having not a tonne of money in Sydney means I’m spending a lot of time in parks and libraries. It seems a waste to just hang out here at the hostel reading, but too expensive to justify going to have afternoon beers by myself. It’s nice out, 20 degrees during the day, so it’s no great hardship to go sit in the sun. Today I found the local branch of the city public library (as opposed to the state library I was in yesterday) and read some comics.

Also, I got a SIM card and now have a phone number. Not that I use the phone part of my phone very often, especially when I don’t know anyone in this city, but it’s probably good for my future employer (assuming the visa comes through eventually) to have some way of contacting me.

Yesterday I found a really swank comic shop and a decent game store. I’m going to wait until I have an apartment before I start buying books/comics/games, but gamers are the only community I feel any confidence in dropping into. My first forays in Vancouver were to game stores too.

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is that I’m really looking forward to when Holly arrives in a couple of months.

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Apr 29 2011
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books, library, travel

a saturday of acquainting

I’m slowly getting things together here. And by getting things together I mean, haven’t dissolved into a gibbering wreck just yet. In some ways it’s crappy that my work permit hasn’t come through, since it means I’m not, you know, earning money to pay for living here. But this enforced delay is giving me a bit more time to get acquainted with Sydney.

I went out walking again this morning. I read for a while and watched some birds in Hyde park. Then I took an excursion around the long way to get to the Rocks, the touristy harbour zone where the opera house is. While I was sitting on a bench watching a “sail” boat leave the wharf, I saw a crowd of nicely dressed (probably for a wedding) people running for cover. I got my rain jacket out of my bag just in time to get caught in the pissing rain. I went to share the wedding-folk shelter for ten minutes and then it eased off and then stopped and now it’s sunny and beautiful out.

I’m in the State Library reading room which is quite nice. It’s a huge old building with wooden shelves lining the walls three floors up, but the centre is completely open, with tables and computers and a couple of information desks. There’s a passage way down to the reference library which is housed in the neighbouring and more modern building, but I’m kind of a fan of this space.

Soon I’ll have to set out again. I need to get a SIM card to phone my boss to see when I should show up on Monday to meet people (and definitely not work because that would be illegal). There’s also a game store a not unreasonable distance away. I’ll keep busy.

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