Wrapping Things Up

It seemed like today was a bit of an admin day really, I normally get Wednesdays off but had to go into town to finish off my ISA application. Before that though, the graduate recruitment fair was in town and taking place yesterday and today. What I didn't realise was the reason for it being held over two days was so that they could fit all of the companies in. There were seventy in total so I got to see thirty five of them at least but missed out on a few key businesses in my field which was a shame. Also I was disappointed with the freebies because normally if you make the effort to speak to someone and seem genuinely interested then you get to take away some of the promotional items - pens, pencils etc but this time only one company gave me something. I didn't see many people because most of the exhibitors were either finance based or charities but I did get to see 3M - whose name I had seen on a diskette so assumed they were technology related but it turns out they are "so much more than that" and I was lectured for five minutes on the wide range of products made by the company. I won't bore you with the details but apparently you come into contact with about 30 3M products every day. Who knew? I got to see IBM who are obviously key players in the IT field but I also got to see someone I didn't even expect to show up to these sorts of things, GCHQ.

At first I wasn't sure quite who they were. I knew I recognised the name from somewhere but couldn't quite place it. I was trying to get clues from the information that they had on display but all I could see was an obscured view of the URL, www.careersin????.com. Bummer! Then I overheard one of the staff talking to a girl about the company and it finally clicked. They are the people who work in that really high-tech building in Cheltenham, that ring doughnut shaped building. Anyway, this got me a little bit excited, I had never before considered working for the government for fear it would be too boring but this sounded great. Working with some high tech equipment and the job would rarely get boring. So I spoke to the lady and she told me that they were actively recruiting IT graduates at the moment and gave me a load of information to look at.

I came out feeling pretty pleased that I'd now got a bit more of an idea about what it is I might want to do when I graduate and headed down into town. I managed to hold up the bank for about fifteen minutes whilst the poor lady behind the counter had to input all of my details into the computer. She couldn't exactly type very quickly so when a queue started to build (three people) which was a lot for this small branch which was empty when I arrived I felt a bit guilty. Even more so when the couple behind me knew the counter assistant personally and were obviously regular customers. The silly thing was, there was what appeared to be a new girl who was standing around looking pretty bored really and she could probably have typed all the details in in half the time.

A bit of an experiment with the dinner this evening and I managed to slice half my finger off in the process. I decided we needed to start eating the flour tortillas that we have been collecting in the cupboard. We have about five packets now and haven't used a single one since being in this house. So I went for a Mexican theme and as I was making the tomato salsa, I was chopping the basil a little too carelessly and managed to cut a wedge of skin off my left ring finger. It took blooming ages to stop bleeding and I had to change the plaster after two hours because the blood had soaked through.

I watched the latest episode of James May's Toy Stories and was amazed at the final result of his plasticine garden. I went through a plasticine phase after sixth form and put a couple of animations up on YouTube. They aren't brilliant and they're lacking sound but it kept me busy over the long summer and I still have a lot of respect for those who can create good stop motion films because I now know how much time and patience it takes to get it right.

I also watched NMTB and thought Claudia did a fairly decent job really, not sure how great it would have been if it wasn't for Jamelia's crazy outbursts but thankfully she was there to keep things flowing. I never really liked any of Jameia's music but as a contestant on a panel show, you cannot fault her and if she does decide to make that her profession then I am more than happy to watch. If I had one criticism of Claudia's presenting it was that she was a little bit attached to the Autocue and it seemed a little bit unnatural. I also thought that Little Boots was a bit reserved although she did come out with a couple of comedy gems. She even sounded bored during the next lines round when she had to complete the lyric to Remedy which was odd.