Interview with a Non Vampire

After the absence of several decades I have made the momentous decision to document my precious thoughts and heroic actions on a daily basis. I have of course experimented with the online blogger phenomenon but only sporadically.

My lovely little alarm on the San Francisco android smart phone welcomed me to a new day and for once I didn’t ignore it. I had an interview in Hendon at 9am and the London underground website had kindly estimated it would take 1 hour and 38 minutes to arrive at my destination. It only took 1 hour and 15 minutes but it was bloody cold. I departed from little India and arrived in the heart of Jewish Central (Hendon next to Golders Green) .

The interviewer was called Marc and I guessed he might be Jewish so I was tempted to ask what he thought about Kabbalah as I have just finished reading ‘The Way’ which discusses the subject. However even I deemed it not the appropriate occasion for such a question. I will have to wait another day to find out about mystical aspects of Rabbinic Judaism especially reincarnation.

I was asked to recount some major achievements from my previous jobs. I didn’t want to admit there hadn’t been any since I first entered the world of I.T. back in 1983 so I made some vague statements about some of the projects I had worked on. The job was advertised as a DBA position but it seems they want someone with Excel VBA and Access skills. I tried to big up my SQL Server 2005 skills but Marc being the co-owner didn’t have any interest in technical stuff.

He then said the words that I have come to dread:

‘I would like you to take a technical test’

‘Oh no my total lack of VBA programming in Excel will be exposed’ I thought to myself. I was then introduced to Tom the Operations Manager who would do the grilling.

He said he had run a query which had returned no rows and asked me to investigate. Luckily I’d looked up Excel VBA last night so when I saw the ‘debug’ option I naturally clicked on it. Before my eyes was a simple VBA program that got a connection to Access DB and a simple select statement.

The statement seemed simple enough so I couldn’t see anything wrong with it. On closer inspection I noticed a syntax error as the ‘from’ table clause was not separated by a space. I pointed this out and was asked how I’d correct it. I said I would add a space before closing quote would fix the error.

So that was the big test. I’d been expecting something along the lines of ‘what is an outer left join or what is the difference between a clustered index and a unique index or something along those lines but no; just a syntax error in a simple select statement.

So the job is to extract data from Access DB and display in Excel. Not a particularly interesting or complex task but I need to earn some money so tried to convince them and myself that I would love to do the job. Second interviews next week should they be impressed by my great VBA skills.

I then headed to Charing Cross Road the location of Foyle’s the Bookshop. There were 4 books (at least) I would have purchased if my financial health had been better. They are:

1. God Bless America by Piers Morgan
2. The Rage Against God by Peter Hitchens
3. Apathy For The Devil by Nick Kent
4. Proving God by Edward F. Sylvia

I have read Piers Morgan’s two previous diary style books recounting his sacking from The Mirror where he was the editor and the aftermath of that event. They are very readable and entertaining and he actually comes across as a likable person though he has a reputation as a big mouthed arrogant tosser. I like his honesty, self deprecation and willingness to own up to his own faults and failings. I read the first 60 pages before returning it to the shelf. The Rage book is by Christopher Hitchin’s’ brother Peter. He too was an atheist but converted to Christianity and his book explores this as well as answering some of Christopher’s criticism of religion. The book ‘God is not great’ should be re-titled ‘People are Stupid’. Apathy book seems to be by a NME music journalist recounting his adventures in the 1970’s. The last book Proving God is about finding links between Emmanuel Swedenborg’s explanation of spiritual laws with current theories on physical law and quantum physics.

I then headed to the Chelsea library to see if I could get any of them and was pleased to be able to reserve the first 3. I then saw a traffic warden whilst heading to school to pick up the boys.

‘Could you kindly place a ticket on my car, third one on the right’ I politely requested to no response.

I then collected Samuel and we eventually went to collect Pablo at 4:30 pm. I stepped into the corridor as it was freezing outside but the official told me I had to wait outside. He is the same one who yesterday told me I couldn’t wait in the office for more than 5 minutes. I complained thus:

‘Sorry for using up your precious oxygen yesterday, Is it possible you can provide a heater if we are not allowed in your hallowed grounds?’

He took it all in good humour so I asked what his name is:

‘Adolfo’ he replied ‘just doing my job’.

‘I thought the name Adolf had been retired since its association with Mr. Hitler’ I replied.

‘What exactly is your job function?’ I inquired

‘Concierge and security’

‘I see, combined role’ I articulated.

On returning home I had provided some entertainment in the form of a DVD called ‘The Hole’ which is supposed to be a children’s film. It wasn’t long before Mama Bear said to switch it off as it would give Pablo & Sam nightmares.

#28 January 2011