At Dawn

Who knew it was this cold at 5:30 am?

Right now I’m on a large double decker bus, heading from the big city Wellington back to the small home town. The frost is still thick on the mountains of grass beside the road, but at least the sun is clear in the morning sky.

At Dawn. At Dawn.

My father isn’t doing too hot. He is having urine in his blood and is feeling rather faint. I’m really hoping it’s nothing serious. I’ll be taking him to the doctor, hoping it’ll all get sorted out with an assortment of magic drugs or antibiotics. And we all know how much they can knock about an 80-plus year old!

I’m still seconding guessing my decision to leave him living on his own as I pursue new opportunities in the city. I really did need to get out of there. Being a live-in caregiver in a small town did severely limit the opportunities I could get. And yes, by that I mean all the opportunities.

I’m typing this out on a new low cost laptop I imported, the Chuwi LapBook 12.3. It’s basically a MacBook Air clone running Windows 10. All Aluminium shell! I’m liking it so far, may have a detailed review soon.

The employment front is going well. I’m after a good job, not a right now job. I’ve actually been asking people that I meet casually where the best places to work in IT are. Many people are quite willing to slag on their own employer, describing in great detail how horrible it is to work there.  It’s enough to put off even the desperate from applying. But in terms of good working environments, three businesses are regularly mentioned:

  • TradeMe, a large and popular New Zealand eCommerce and auction portal
  • Xero, a hip and trendy accounting firm that is proudly born and bred here in New Zealand
  • Weta Workshop, yes the place that makes blue guys and and King Kongs. Weren’t they also working on the live action Evangelion movie? That could have been fun.

I’ve applied for positions at each of these places. Aim high! While doing my best not to come across as desperate, I do mention in the cover letter that I’d willing to do on site work experience for a week or two just to prove myself and get my foot in the door. I’d be perfectly happy doing a job I just didn’t hate, but I would really love to dive head first into a role in a great working environment that I felt really passionately about. Plus I’d be willing to start at the bottom of a very long and intimidating ladder to work my way up.

I’m great at getting coffee; I would even bake cakes and pies for my wonderful boss and co-workers! How is that for a value added incentive?

I’m sure once I get that five star job I’ll have much less time to worry about all the unimportant and small things. That’ll be good for me!

On the personal front, things are going good. I’m getting out there more and more! It’s great. Despite family health problems, I’m feeling a bit more positive that I have in quite a while. I’ll be using all my strength and will power to try and get that trend to continue.

And if YOU, humble and generous blog reader, have any employment opportunities, either based out of Wellington, New Zealand or something that can be done remotely, you won’t regret dropping me a line!