I was driving home tonight after Kung Fu when just a few blocks from home I almost ran over a wiener dog. I stopped for him to cross the street and was surprised to see him wander up to my car instead of running away. Guessing that this dog might be lacking a few brains I got out of the car to check him for tags. As I excited my car he promptly rolled over for a belly rub in the middle of the street.
Luckily he did have tags so I called the owner. I got voicemail and decided to bring him home with me instead of letting him wander around lost. Luckily the owner called me back fairly soon, happy to know I found him safe, and came to pick him up. I played with him for a bit while I waited...he really likes belly rubs. The owner thanked me profusely and asked me about my uniform (I was still in uniform from kung fu) so I talked about Kung Fu for a bit. She thought it sounded pretty cool; maybe we’ll have a new Kung Fu student somewhere in Edmonton.
I feel pretty good right now, what a pleasant way to start off my night. I look forward to my roommate coming home and being puzzled by the muddy paw prints in the kitchen.
Turns out I didn’t get that job I wanted. It went to the most unlikely candidate actually, leaving me utterly perplexed. Darn. Well it looks like I have a lot more work cut out for me. I’m going to have to look into some other options, throw some resumes around and hope to get lucky.
In good news I’ve made some progress on the tiger form. I have a few moves down and some good ideas. Picking a theme and getting the general outline done was the hardest part. Now I just have to transfer vague images in my head into precise bodily movements. As Sifu Brinker put it, as I explained what I wanted, it will be a slinky form. I want the form to be consistently fluctuating from close range, tight moves and exploding outwards for long strikes. Of course I’m going to try to be as feral as possible. Let me know if my eyes have too much dragon in them.
It’s that time of year where students scramble to find decent summer jobs, before summer sneaks up and it’s too late. It’s a bit awkward for us first year students trying to get jobs in our field, were all a little half-baked. Half of a program doesn’t mean a whole lot; most people don’t have much experience or skills to bring to the table. A summer job is more like a four month interview; you try not to make an idiot of yourself so they’ll consider hiring you when you’re actually useful to them.
I’m doing my share of scrambling. I turned down a job with ATCO because I don’t want to spend my summer in Grand Prairie. I had a job interview with Suncor last week and I’m really hoping to get it. I’d be working at what used to be the Petro Canada refinery near Sherwood Park. I would be working with a team of electrical techs making sure everything electrical in the plant is working and fixing anything that breaks. Myself and six other guys in the program are fighting over a single opening.
I think the interview went very well; I like to think I’m good at making an impression. I believe I have a good shot at getting it... I should know very soon if I did, maybe even tomorrow. I like to think my resume looks good, partly because I put Kung Fu related things on it. For instance I put down how I’m a black belt and martial arts instructor which demonstrates strong leadership. I even put down my participation in the UBBT programs which I threw down under the title of “Lifestyle Challenges”. I was hoping my interviewer would ask about them actually, he didn’t though, unfortunately, and the opportunity to talk about it didn’t really come up.
I did surprise myself a little when they were asking aptitude questions. One of the interviewers asked me to give an example of a time I had put in allot of effort into completing a large project. The first thing that popped into my head was the 1000 push-ups/sit-ups challenge we do on New Year’s Day. I explained how those participating don’t need to; we do it to challenge ourselves, to push our limits and try to do accomplish a simple goal that many would write off as unattainable. I told them how I set my mind on doing it. How even though I had a late start and was admittedly a bit hung-over, I set my goal, strategized how to get there, and kept with it. Even if I was still doing push-ups up till 11:00 o’clock at night it was all worth it just to get there.
So I used push-ups as an answer to a job interview question. I think I even managed to do it without sounding silly. How cool is that? I wait anxiously to hear from them, if I don’t get it I’ll have to get back to scrambling.
