Two months on

It's been a while since I last posted, and yes, I'm still at home. Except now I'm also looking for a job. I spent a month working from home on the same project that I was in Korea and Taiwan for. Then in July, I went to Australia to settle my brother in at university in Melbourne before going to Sydney for a 2-week vacation. I always seem to go to Australia in the winter, but for some reason, this time it was really cold. Maybe my thick cold-resistant skin from New York has been dissolved by the hot Malaysian sun? Nevertheless, it was beautiful as always. I spent a lot of time just walking around Sydney, doing the Coogee to Bondi walk again, doing the supposedly 2-hour Mosman Bay to Taronga Zoo walk in just half an hour, Oxford street, and of course, The Rocks. No pictures this time around, I'm afraid. Not until I figure out how to get the pictures off the big clunker of a PDA phone that I inherited from my dad, anyway.

I also stuffed myself silly in Sydney. What did you expect? haha... Half a rack of lamb ribs from Hurricanes at Bondi, with a baked potato that was bigger than my fist, pancakes with roasted bananas and chocolate sauce at Pancakes On The Rocks, a dizzying plethora of Asian food from Jerson's favourite places, including Korean hot pot, Chongqing hotpot, Japanese ramen, Vietnamese pho, Malaysian laksa, and to cap it all off, a HUGE pot of mussels and a mug of peach beer at this Belgian bistro. Sigh, my belly was really contented :)

But now I'm back home and I'm busy revamping my resumes, rediscovering best practice cover letter-writing techniques and trolling through job sites. I'm thinking environmental/sustainability consulting or the old fallback, management/strategy consulting. Locations? Sydney, preferably. I do love that place. Melbourne and London are also on the list. And Singapore is a distant fourth choice.

I've got an interview coming up next Wednesday with the London branch of NERA, and economic consulting firm. See how that goes. They're one of OW's sister companies, and my HR knows their HR, which is how I got the interview. But there are no preferential practices, I can assure you. I even had to go for a finance assessment when I was in Sydney! Had to buy a copy of Corporate Finance Demystified to brush up on my formulas :P Apparently it works, because I did pass the assessment, after all. Did I really pay for a Princeton education when all I had to do was buy a USD19.90 dummy's guide to pass the test?

Haven't heard back yet from any of the companies I applied to in Sydney, but I only started on Wednesday last, so it'll be a while yet. Sigh... applying for jobs in the real world is challenging! Seems like applying for experienced positions boils down to HOW MUCH experience you have, which, in my case, is precious little. Still, hopefully having the good alma mater on my resume will open a few doors.