I’ve been feel­ing a bit low since I caught “the ill­ness,” so I whipped out my copy of Syrup, the cover bat­tered from the many hands that have touched it. It’s the first book by my favourite author, Max Barry and tells the story of a mar­ket­ing grad­u­ate who’s only ambi­tion is to be rich and famous. How he does this, with the assis­tance of a girl called 6 and Coca-Cola’s mar­ket­ing area, is lit­er­ary gold.

Syrup never fails to re-energise me. I feel bet­ter for read­ing it and it unblocks a lot of my cre­ative out­lets. The silly adven­tures of the main char­ac­ter are the per­fect antithe­sis for any seri­ous funk I may have got­ten myself into. Includ­ing being run down by a virus of the stu­pid kind.

With his first book Max has been able to show me that what­ever back­ground you might have, be it sales, mar­ket­ing or IT; you can get a book pub­lished that’s funny, sad, excit­ing and mad­den­ing all at the same time. And It’s what I want to do.

Hence num­ber six on my list “Write a novel.” I’ve got a few ideas float­ing around in my head, a few I’ve even I’ve fleshed out with char­ac­ters, sup­port­ing char­ac­ters and the like. I do need to just need to sit down and start writ­ing, as there’s only so much plot­ting one can do. I need to set goals. 200 words a day should do it. Just to be cute I’ll start in 2007.

Con­fes­sion time: In my nearly ten years of dri­ving I’ve never once owned a street direc­tory. Sure there’s always been a copy of Mel­ways in my car, but it’s never been mine, just the result of a hand-me-down from the old man when­ever he chose to upgrade. I’ve never actu­ally forked over the cash to pur­chase one.

Up until now that is. And up until now I’ve never had a Mel­ways that was younger than my car. This, of course, has been the cause of more than a few prob­lems. A few months back I had to go visit my cousin out in Pearcedale, the Mel­ways (a 1993 vin­tage) showed only huge tracts of land out in that gen­eral direc­tion. I even­tu­ally got there after mak­ing a few phone calls to get myself pointed in the right direction.

But no longer. No longer will I rely on guess­work, phone calls and whereis.com.au’s ter­ri­ble nav­i­ga­tion ser­vice. For you see, today I bought a new street direc­tory. And not just any old street direc­tory. A 2007 edi­tion Mel­ways. Full of the mir­a­cle of urban expan­sion all bound in a clear plas­tic slip.

If I can hold off long enough I won’t even need to update this one. The fly­ing car would’ve made street direc­to­ries all but obsolete.

The chesty sick­ness that claimed me the other day has slowly got­ten worse. After a quick trip down to the doc­tor yes­ter­day I’ve been diag­nosed with pharyn­gi­tis, or in layman’s terms: an upper res­pi­ra­tory infec­tion. As it’s viral there’s noth­ing I can do about it except rest up, drink plenty of flu­ids and wait for it to run it’s course.

It’s also con­ta­gious, so I’m effec­tively in quar­an­tine in my house.

An inter­est­ing side effect is that I’m not allowed to talk. My once mighty voice has been reduced to a croak, so it’s not even worth try­ing. The nov­elty of hav­ing to ges­ture at things wore off really quickly though.

As a lot of you know, I’ve spent the last few weeks apply­ing for a new job out­side of the pub­lic sec­tor. One that would have me man­ag­ing con­tent on one web­site, rather than the six I cur­rently manage.

What I’ve had to go through can only be described as one of the most drawn out expe­ri­ences I’ve ever gone though, and I’ve been putting up with the gov­ern­ment for six years.

I ini­tially found the job through SEEK and had called the adver­tis­ing agency to ask a few ques­tions. They asked that I come in for a more in depth inter­view. After that, the inter­viewer (a HR rep) had expressed some hes­i­tance at my suit­abil­ity to the role. Explain­ing that while I may have the cre­ative side won, I might not have the strate­gic side they were look­ing for. I coun­tered with the notion that I could quick eas­ily fill any gaps in my skill­base and that it wasn’t an issue. A few days later the HR rep, sport­ing a much more cheery atti­tude, called back to let me know I’d got through to the next level: an inter­view with the com­pany itself.

My spir­its bol­stered, I headed down to Myer and grabbed a new shirt and tie to impress my poten­tial employ­ers. Yes, that’s right. For the first time in about three years I wore a tie. Scary, scary stuff I know.

Now, want­ing to fur­ther impress these peo­ple, and on advise of the HR rep, I reviewed the entire web­site, wrote up two pages of com­ments and changes and even ran a stan­dards com­pli­ance check over the site and col­lated that in a folder.

The actual meet­ing itself was more like an hour long infor­mal chat with the girl who would be my super­vi­sor. I learned a lot about what would be required from me and impressed upon the inter­viewer the skill and knowl­edge I could bring to the role. She was impressed with my Folder of Ideas, and sug­gested that if I was to get through to the next round I should bring it back with me. We really hit it off in the pro­fes­sional sense and I was start­ing to have high hopes about the job. At the end of the inter­view she let me know that they’d be get­ting back to me the next day, so I was pleas­antly sur­prised to get a call from the HR rep that very day say­ing that they wanted me back for round three.

As things were begin­ning to heat up it was time to step things up and grab yet another shirt and tie. So off I went to Myer to grab another shirt/tie combo. Well the next big day rolled around and I got the cus­tom­ary visit from the Nerve Fairy in the hour lead­ing up to go time. Then the HR Rep called to ask if I minded push­ing the inter­view back a day. The boss of the area had wanted to meet me at this third inter­view and couldn’t make it. Of course I said it was fine to resched­ule. How could I not? It’s around this time that I begin to get the signs of an impend­ing head cold. I’m run­ning on cof­fee and Codral from this point.

Fast for­ward to the next day and I’m in the same gear as I was for the sec­ond inter­view. There was no way I’d wear the same shirt as the day before. Only because I didn’t really want to have to deal with my cur­rent cowork­ers. They were already tak­ing great delight in the fact I was suited up. Sure enough I receive another call from the HR Rep, ask­ing if the inter­view can be put back an hour. I’m fine with that. What’s an hour between prospec­tive work­mates anyway?

I arrive at the place and am intro­duced to the boss lady. She seems nice enough, although she explains that she can’t stay in the inter­view very long due to other more press­ing mat­ters that needed attend­ing to. The inter­view is a lot more for­mal this time around. I’m asked a lot of high level ques­tions, I assume to test my abil­ity to think lat­er­ally and what­not. Once again I get along rea­son­ably well with this boss lady. Spir­its are soar­ing. After she leaves I have another infor­mal chat with the super­vi­sor that goes well. At the end I’m told they’ll get back to me the next day. The next day (a Fri­day) rolls around and no phone call. Think­ing they may still be think­ing it over I resolve to call them on the Mon­day. That morn­ing I gave the HR rep a call and left a mes­sage on her voice­mail. I hear noth­ing back until yes­ter­day morn­ing. And it’s not the news I want: I didn’t get the job.

So what went wrong?
While I was a hit with the super­vi­sor and got noth­ing but green lights across the board, the boss lady was con­cerned I didn’t have the skills needed for the role. She came to this con­clu­sion after 30 min­utes of inter­rupted con­ver­sa­tion. Not that I’m bit­ter of course.

The head cold I’d been bat­tling for a cou­ple of weeks finally got the upper hand and ren­dered me bed rid­den for a goodly por­tion of today. Once I’m back on my feet I’m charg­ing right back into the job search arena. There’s a job out there for me. I know it.

While lying awake at 4am this morn­ing I got to think­ing about num­ber seven on my Things to Do Before I Die list: Cook a three-course meal.

For the entree I’d driz­zle a thin zig-zag of truf­fle oil into a bowl, then place a poached egg in the cen­ter. Around the egg I’d place a few ravi­oli. Six seems like a good number.

The main course would be a medium-rare eye fil­let sit­ting on a round polenta cake and cov­ered with a mush­room ragout.

The meal would be served with a side of mashed potato and a green salad.

I hadn’t begun to think about what the dessert could be before I was finally reclaimed by sleep. After such a big meal I don’t think it would need to be that out­landish. Maybe small pud­dings or some sort of panna cotta. I’m tempted to try and make a blood orange creme brulée, but that might be tak­ing things too far.