Spending 7/28-29/08: Interview!

Spending yesterday: $21 for grocery stockup.

Buying for two people really makes it harder to be frugal. BF's paying the rent and a few other things (like my health insurance--$38/mo!), I pay the electricity and internet bills til I get a job. His idea is, I'll pay the rent for a few months once that happens. Fine with me. He pays when we go out to eat, I pay for groceries. Seems to work. It's SO different from how we did things in SoCal, though--this feels more like a marriage than a BF-GF relationship...as well it should, since we're 'partners' in the eyes of the NZ government. I wonder how much more/less I'd be spending if we didn't have this arrangement? I'm curious about it, but I don't think that I'd change things if I were paying more. He gets really annoyed when I bring up these who-owes-who topics, so I wonder if he'd even care if it ended up that he was paying more? Probably not.

spending today: $0

Yesterday I had my interview. ughlugh. They got a bunch of applicants to the ad, but are only interviewing 3 people, me included. I went in all breezy, thinking it would be a piece of cake, since i know half of the office (including the Director of the entire company) already...it was a massacre. When I went in, the lady that would be my boss pulled me aside to say that while SHE wants to hire me, I had to convince the Director and the office manager that I was suited for the second half of the job description. The boss lady is really nice, but i'd only be working for her 3 days out of the week, doing things that i really want to do (research). the other two days, the job ad said i'd be supporting the admin team doing receptionist type work. Not my cup of tea, but i really like the first half of the job.

So that was the challenge--convince the director and the office manager that I could be the 'face of the company,' and greet people at the door and take phone calls, as far as I could tell. I thought that the second half of the job would just be receptionist type work--no biggie, but apparently they want someone with, maybe, PR experience...someone that could be on TV to rep the company. Someone mentioned media coverage and giving soundbites. Oh Lord.

That is my BIGGEST failing. I'm smart, and I can put words down on paper that sound good, but to actually think on my feet and sound intelligent...well, i'm a fumbler, and 'um'-er, a very awkward public speaker. hell, I get nervous if there's more than 3 people around me that I don't know that I have to talk to. And if those people are important, and are judging me, or are recording what I'm saying? Oh, man...I am most certainly NOT cut out for that particular task. And I'm sure that they could tell from my interview.

There were alot of other hard questions asked about my background, my experience, my life. It was hard to tell when they were asking a personal question, and when they were actually interviewing me (for example, when they asked 'What do you like to do? Any hobbies?,' i answered running, photography--, and they cut me off to ask if i could use a video camera, as they were looking for someone with videography experience.).

So, I sent out thank-you emails to all three interviewers, and hopefully i'll hear something soon. I should hear something by august 8.