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06/30/2006
The Job-Hunting Circus: Part 3
As a sequel to Part 1 and Part 2 of the Job-Hunting Circus rants, here we are for Part 3 - Job-hunting Government-style!
On Monday, June 26, the major headline on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen was "PS [Public Service] faces critical loss of workers". The subtitle below it was "As boomers leave, young people don't want their jobs, new survey suggests". (The rest of the article can be read here.) The premise seems reasonable - after all, everyone knows about the boomers who are starting to approach retirement age. The subtitle makes sense at first glance too, from what I know of my friends' government jobs, namely, that none of them liked their jobs.
However, the article is a bit confusing, both literally and figuratively. Check out this quote in the last paragraph:
"They have to recognize that the market is so different now and will be for a long time to come, and the problem is that public servants are an attractive source of labour especially the older workers and Gen Xers so they will get nabbed and the young ones may go for a year or two to get it on their resume," she said.
*boggle* What exactly did she say? "They" are the Gen Xers from what I gathered from the previous paragraph, but then everything stops making sense about halfway through the quote and goes downhill from there. Anyway, I think what's going on is that they're concluding that the Boomers will retire, the Gen Xers will leave the gov't to make loads of cash in the private sector, and the Gen Y (28 and under) will dabble in gov't jobs for a year or two to get it on their resume, then follow the Gen Xers to the private sector to make loads of cash. Gen Y is the key to solving the long-term problem, but we're barely mentioned in the article.
There were a couple more problems with the article that were more than just the necessity of heavy-duty grammatical parsing. First of all, the subtitle said that young people don't want the gov't jobs, but concluded that young people would get gov't jobs to spruce up their resumes. So in a way, they do want gov't jobs. They just don't want to keep the gov't jobs. Really, then, the problem is not that no young people want to work for the government, but that in general, the job quality isn't very good (which was quite nicely described in the article) and that translates to a retention problem.
The second problem is that, well, it's news to me that they're looking for young people to replace the loss of Boomers. I think they must mean young people = Gen Xers (baby bust), not young people = Gen Y, who are in their 20s. I've given up on applying for government jobs, because as far as I can tell, the resumes and applications go into a black hole. If they are really that desperate for people, they have an odd way of showing it!
In any case, I'm not losing sleep over it. When it takes 8 months to go through a job selection process, and even the chances of them reading the application are about as remote as Harper actually having a plan to replace the EnerGuide and One-Tonne Challenge programs, who would want to apply for a government job? And then, for those who miraculously do get hired, and then usually end up hating their job, while getting raises/promotions only if they threaten to quit, who would want a government job anyway?
I think that's about it for now on the government topic. They have issues, and finally an article has outlined the problem, as long as you can follow the roundabout logic!
I'll conclude with this cute little gem I found in a (non-government) job description recently:
You will be analytically inclined and able to meet aggressive timelines in a multi-disciplinary environment focused on teamwork. You will also have demonstrated an ability to work independently with a great attention to detail while maintaining a high level of initiative.
In other words: we set an impossible deadline. Then you and your team members must have the initiative to figure out how to make us as much money as possible and then have the determination (or stupidity) to work 24/7 to make it happen. (and what’s up with “focused on teamwork” and then “work independently”?) No wonder Dilbert comics are so popular these days...
14:26 Posted in Job Hunting | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Concert #2 went well, thanks!
The second concert, which was this past Sunday, went quite well. In particular, the Saint-Saëns violin concerto went a whole lot better the second time around! This time, we didn't rush things like crazy, so the soloist actually had time to turn on the charming musicality rather than race through the motions at breakneck speeds. I think it was possibly because as an orchestra, we were getting tired - too tired to rush, and not nervous enough to accidentally rush things. In an ideal world, it's the orchestra that follows the soloist and not the other way around, but in our case, as with many (or most) amateur orchestras, once we're going, that's it! It's like a speeding train with broken brakes. :-)
Overall though, we did pretty good the second time around, and it was really cool to be sitting in the front where I can actually see what's going on with the conductor and soloist!
13:42 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
06/24/2006
One concert down, one to go
I've just come back from one of two performances of the OCO's latest concert, which features von Suppé's Poet and Peasant Overture, Wagner's Siegfred Idyll, a modern piece called Akasha by Glenn Buhr, and the Saint-Saëns violin concerto #3. For this last one our soloist is Donnie Deacon, a very talented violinist with the NAC (National Arts Centre) orchestra.
The Poet and Peasant Overture went extremely well, as did the Buhr piece. Actually, most of the Siegfried Idyll was about as good as we've every played it, right up until we hit that one passage that's skull-and-crossbones for the cello section and boy, did we screw up. It kind of sounded like you were listening to a recording, and then all of a sudden, the signal got scrambled for about 4 bars, and then it was fine again. It's a very exposed passage (i.e., nobody's doing much of anything except the cellos, so if we screw up, it's obvious), it's very fast, it's all over the fingerboard, and to top it all off, we have 16 bars rest right before that so we end up in this nervous state where we're trying to make sure we count out 16 bars (and not 15 or 17), and trying to visualize how we're going to hit the ground running and preferably, play the right notes at the right speed while we're at it. I always get the impression it's like standing next to train tracks, seeing a speeding train coming, and trying to somehow get on that train without getting flattened in the process. If you stand there and don't see it coming, you'll get killed. If you're at a standstill and try to just jump on it, you'll still probably get killed. We have to figure out how to catch this "train" in the Wagner piece, and we have til tomorrow to figure it out.
The other eyebrow-raiser was the Saint-Saëns concerto. Until today, our problem as an orchestra has been that we've been dragging our feet. In other words, we're somehow always going slightly slower than what the conductor wants. The other day in dress rehearsal, the conductor asked Donnie what he thought about the orchestra dragging a bit, and Donnie said he didn't mind it, because he could play the piece slower [than the speed the conductor was trying to go], but he couldn't play it faster. We all had a good laugh at the time. (Backgrounder about this concerto: there are some slow, lyrical passages, but there are some downright scary-fast crazy things in there too.) Anyway, today, we had a few problems, but dragging our feet was, apparently, not one of them. I'm not sure if nerves got to people or whatever, but all of a sudden the orchestra was going significantly faster than I've ever heard before, and I felt bad for poor Donnie busting his butt to keep up! (However, his playing was beautiful anyway. As I said before, he's an amazing violinist.) Hopefully tomorrow we won't have the same problem.
On top of it, our principal cellist won't be around for the Saint-Saëns part of tomorrow's concert, so I'm going to move from the back to the front and be the temporary assistant principal cellist for the half hour or so when we do this concerto. I'm pumped! Hopefully all that practicing the B-major stuff and listening to the recording over and over will pay off, and the temporary principal cellist and I can get the cello section through this concerto in one piece. Wish me luck! :-)
Hopefully the concert will be as good tomorrow, if not better, though I tend to find that it's harder to get in the concert "mood" in the middle of the afternoon (as tomorrow's concert will be) than in the evening (like tonight). We'll see how it goes though, and do our best!
23:10 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
06/23/2006
Fire parsley and other garden surprises
About three weeks ago we planted our garden, and this year, we planted herbs in all our planter pots. We have the following eight herbs growing: rosemary, curly-leaf parsley, chives, greek oregano, thyme, basil, savoury, and sage. The parsley and the rosemary each have their own pot, while the rest are in groups of three in two rectangular planters. It's lucky in particular that the parsley has its own pot, because it's been growing like mad! We started using it in our cooking the other day and discovered that this is not, despite all appearances, your ordinary garden-variety curly-leaf parsley. According to the Cook's Thesaurus, this stuff isn't supposed to have much flavour. Ours looks like the picture, but it's definitely not like the stuff you buy at the supermarket. This home-grown parsley is potent!! Yikes! I guess it's true when they say fresh produce from the garden has so much more taste. We've now officially nicknamed it "fire parsley", and learned the hard way that it should be used sparingly!
My beautiful little pepper plant actually has a couple of baby peppers growing on it, and it looks like a few more will be coming too. I'm so happy!
We have a linden tree growing in the back yard which is getting quite tall now - it's probably about 10-12 feet high now. We've only got one minor problem - the tree can't stand up on its own! I mentioned a while ago about the horrible clay (and clay+gravel) in our yard, and it looks like the linden just can't seem to get its roots through there. The trunk of the tree is about the size that you can circle with your two hands, so it should be solid by now, but the tree would fall over without external support. We're just not sure what to do about it.
As an aside, we discovered why there's so much gravel in the clay, and why everything is so compacted in the back yard - as it turns out, when they were building the houses, they hadn't put in the street which runs in front of the house. So, they used a gravel makeshift road which ran behind the houses (right where the back yard is). I guess when they finally did put in the real street, they just put some sod over the clay and gravel back road, and made yards out of it. I don't know why they didn't just make the gravel road where the real road was supposed to be, but now doing any digging (and apparently, root-growing, if you're a linden tree!) in the back yard is a real pain because of all that gravel and rubble in there!
To add to our back yard problem, we have some drainage issues. We have a beautiful flowering almond tree which gets covered in beautiful pink flowers every spring, and then grows leaves. This year the flowers and leaves came out... on half the tree. The other half appears dead. What gives?
21:18 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
06/19/2006
World Cup, Stanley Cup...
So it's World Cup season! I actually haven't been watching all that many games, but I've seen parts of a few. As usual, I root for France during the World Cup, since Canada doesn't have a team in the World Cup. In general, I like watching soccer, though at times it drives me crazy when the players turn on the I'm-in-agony-rolling-on-the-ground theatrics every time any opposing player so much as grazes the sleeve of their shirt. It totally ruins everything!
However, the other day, I was watching the Germany vs. Poland round-robin game, and I (and my two friends) were absolutely glued to the TV screen. As I mentioned before, I root for France, so I didn't really have a preference at the start of the game. Then, however, my propensity to root for the underdog kicked in, so by the end I was rooting for Poland all the way. It was an intense game, still nil-nil near the very end, and Poland was down a player for the last 10 minutes of the game or so, and it still looked like they were going to hold off Germany. It even looked like divine intervention when German shots went off their crossbar not once but twice in a row! Unfortunately, just as it looked like Poland might be able to hang on to their tie, Germany scored... in stoppage time! How annoying! I guess life's like that. It was like a St. John Ambulance first aid shift I once had. We were covering a soccer tournament (U12 girls or something like that) and the entire day went by without anything major happening - handed out a bandaid or two and some ice here and there, and that was about it. Until, that is, same deal as with Poland - in stoppage time of the last half of the very last game of the day, one of the players was flattened in a rush on goal and we had to call an ambulance! Needless to say, that was the end of that game...
I'm not sure why it is that I tend to root for the underdog, but I guess, as I mentioned before in another post, I tend to be the underdog enough that I suppose I relate to them!
And, speaking of serious come-from-behind action, the Edmonton Oilers have managed to hang in there for game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals!! (BTW, that's hockey for those who may not know) Even though Edmonton's not really my team, I would love to see the Stanley Cup back in Canada. Go Edmonton!!
16:00 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
06/05/2006
Why it's a bad idea to borrow money
My philosophy has always been, don't spend money you don't have. I hate borrowing money, I hate being in debt, and I wouldn't dream of going thousands of dollars into credit card debt just to live a life of luxury (which I don't aspire to, anyway). Now, my family is discovering another good reason why borrowing money can come back to bite you.
My cousin, who now owns the house my mom grew up in (small-town Quebec), wants to move and is trying to sell the house. But as it turns out, part of the property (namely, the decrepit workshop beside the house) is theoretically owned by some other guy (who's likely dead by now), so my cousin can't sell the house. As it turns out, my grandfather at one point needed money and so this other guy lent him money, and the way it looks on paper is that my grandfather gave this workshop to the guy in exchange for the money, with the idea that once my grandfather paid the guy back, the workshop was his again. That was in 1943. My grandfather died in the late 60s (long before I was born) and somehow this didn't get resolved - none of us knew about it until just now. Since more than 30 years have passed, apparently the whole thing is a moot point and the property is ours again, but still my cousin can't sell the place until either a) it's discharged by the guy or the family of the guy who lent my grandfather money, or b) it's straightened out in court, which will cost us a couple of thousand dollars. We're hoping to go with option (a), but there's a minor problem. The guy's family name is Côté, which is an extremely common surname in Quebec, and the Côté guy's family isn't in my mom's town anymore, so it could be a major pain in the butt trying to figure out where the heck they went. My cousin is going to ask the oldest person in the town to see what he knows. If he doesn't know (or God forbid, this Côté guy moved to Montreal or something), we're in for a lot of detective work! All this for borrowing some money 70 years ago!!
Let's just pray we don't have to pay it back... $1500 in 1943 + compound interest + inflation over 65 years could get ugly!!
So, to all of you out there, the moral of the story is, it's better not to borrow money, and if you must, pay it back before you die! :-)
23:20 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
06/03/2006
Healthy Again!
This past week I discovered, the hard way, what an NLV (Norwalk-Like Virus) is. Usually referred to as the "stomach flu", let's just say it really, really sucks! It hit surprisingly suddenly, too - Monday night I came home from dance class at 10:30 pm, feeling fine, and by midnight I had settled into the bathroom for an all-nighter with the big white telephone. For the next three days I basically napped on and off, feeling like I'd been hit by a Mack truck, and putting my stomach through baby steps of water, applesauce, and crackers to try to get things back to normal. Today I'm feeling quite good, and Mom and I did some gardening. We've planted a whole bunch of herbs, so hopefully we'll have something nice to cook with, assuming the bunny doesn't get to it first.
While bunnies are cute and popular (and populous) on the UVic campus, they're cute but not so popular here in suburban Ottawa, mainly because they eat all our hard work in the garden. Forget pansies - we tried that one year and had beautiful flowers, only to wake up one morning to find nothing but rows of stems with no flowers on them. Crocuses, another favourite, well, they don't even last long enough to sprout because the squirrels dig up and lunch on the bulbs. At the nursery yesterday Mom and I saw a little romaine lettuce plant and thought that would be cool to grow our own lettuce, but might as well burn our money because the rabbit is sure to eat that just as soon as we plant it. The bunny's already killed one crabapple tree (they eat the bark during the winter, which kills the tree), so our new crabapple has its trunk wrapped in a plastic protector, and in the winter it gets a maximum security snow fence around it. Sooo... some of the bark on our linden tree went missing, as well as some on the ash tree out front. The squirrel, who's in cahoots with the bunny, must think we're hiding something because we have a row of potholes in our front garden (and in the corner of the lawn) even though we haven't even planted anything there yet!
Another plant we bought at the nursery yesterday was a yellow pepper (like, sweet bell pepper or capsicum) plant. It's my pride and joy! I've never so much as seen a pepper plant until yesterday, and it's just the most adorable little thing. I'm not sure how easy it is to grow these things, but we're about to find out. And boy, if the bunny eats THAT plant, I'm going after it just like the farmer in the Peter Rabbit stories!! Maybe then I'll plant some Jalapeño pepper plants for revenge. (fire-breathing bunnies... could be interesting...) Anyway, planting that pepper was quite a chore, because we had to dig a hole for it. The hole only needed to be big enough to bury, say, a soccer ball, but it was a LOT of work because, go figure, Ottawa is built on clay, and that particular spot is clay + gravel, the nice cement-like combination that's nearly impenetrable. Today I got a pitchfork and went to loosen it up, so I placed the pitchfork in the hole (which was ground level minus the sod at that point) and jumped with both feet on the pitchfork to try to sink the tines into the clay. Well, what happened was I (and the pitchfork) pretty much bounced off. (Hello, pogo stick.) Anyway, with Dad's help, we finally got the hole dug, filled it with nice dark potting soil, and put the apple-of-my-eye pepper plant into the ground. It's flanked on either side with tomato plants (1 plant each of two different varieties) so we've got a mini garden going. I'd love a much larger veggie patch, but this and the herbs was about all I could convince my parents to plant. I can't wait to get a place of my own and have a garden and so on!
Speaking of places of one's own, I found an entry for "McMansions" in the Wikipedia (via Google). I don't really use the Wiki much for reference, but I decided, out of curiosity to see what it said. The interesting thing is the slant the author of the article obviously had - that people who diss McMansions do so to cover up their jealousy. ("In effect, criticism of the lifestyle epitomized by a larger home is little more than jealousy or envy.") All I can say is that, as someone who also dislikes McMansions, it's definitely, definitely not jealousy. (Pity, maybe.) When we dissidents say we're disgusted, we mean we're disgusted! I would hate to own one, even if I could afford it, even if it was given to me free. There's something to be said for the Not So Big House. Anyway, I'm sure I'll touch more on that later!
18:20 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this