Sunday, May 9, 2010

sayings/ flashback/ The Perfect Assistant

May 6 Sayings: I was looking for a job as usual and Safeway advertises: "Your future starts now" and "It's not about work, it's about working your way up."

May 7 News: Did you know that Nate Berkus is going to have his own show? He's the guy who gives interior decorating tips on Oprah. I was watching it today and anyone who's been with Oprah, they get their own show. For example: Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, and Suze Orman. Dr. Phil also shaved off his mustache for the first time in 38 yrs. Well, I'm still not going to watch Dr. Phil.

Motivation: Dr. Oz did say: "People think you need to get motivated, and do something. You should do it first, and then you'll feel motivated afterward." Good advice.

Rant: When I'm stressed out, I dance. When I'm angry, I write. I'm still mad that I didn't get hired at the call centre. What do I want to do? Throw an egg at their office window. Of course, I'm not going to do it. That's stupid. Instead, I will do the passive thing and wish the place would close down.

I'm mad because it's the best job that has come to me after I got laid off. I didn't care about the two restaurants I worked at because I didn't really like it. This job was at a call centre, paid $11/hr, and it was in downtown. I must focus on the negative things about it. Well the guy who trained this woman and I. He said there used to be a woman who got great flow rates, until he listened in on a conversation. It turns out that woman called up a house, got someone who didn't speak English. Then she started filling out the survey on her own. She was falsifying data. That is so bad. She got fired on the spot.

At least when I got let go, it's because I'm not good enough, not because I did something bad. I have to use this as motivation. When I thought I got hired there, they gave the usual night hours of 5-9pm, and it's part-time 20hrs a week. I must push myself to get a full-time job and do well at it.

EdmontonJobShop.ca: I was going through the listings of 700 jobs on that site. It took me a week. A lot of it was from staffing agencies, and I have to stay away from them.

Lyric: I was thinking about that song "Superhero" by the Canadian pop duo Sky. The lyric was: "It was easy then, it ain't so easy now." That applies to my job search.

Flashback: Back in 2006 when I got laid off, I managed to get a job within 9 days. Back in summer 2007, I managed to get 5 jobs in downtown. It was kind of a rough summer with poor choices in jobs. I job hopped a lot that summer. Yeah, well at least I didn't take one more job because it required me to wake up really early in the morning.

In 2008, I got a job at a store within a week. But then my dad told me to not take it. Then 3 weeks go by and I still couldn't get an office job. Then I got the store job. Then I was let go after 3 weeks. That's fine because it led me to go and work at the Soup place. I passed out 20 resumes in 1 day, and got the Soup place job.

Then the recession hit in late 2008. I then started looking for an office job again in Jan. 2009. It took me 10 months to get a call centre job in Oct. 2009. In Nov.2009 I started looking for an office job again. I'm 7 months in and still didn't get hired. I have been looking for a regular job since Jan. 2010. I managed to get 3 jobs, and work for one day. Now it's 5 weeks of unemployment, and I can't get a steady job.

Simplyhired.com: I went to this site as I was going through my desk when I found an old Globe and Mail article I clipped out. If I put "writing" in the job search engine, I get a bunch of listings. I need to specify "writer" and I get 2 pages. None that I qualify for.

Good: My friend Chamnouer emailed me on Facebook and told me about a call centre. Alright, I'll go apply there.

May 8: This morning I woke up at 9am and went to downtown to pass out my resumes to cafes. I emailed my friend Jessica because she told me she'll be making and selling jewelery. She had to turn me down because she got 3 people that she's working with already. That's fine.

The really good thing is that I passed my resume to that call centre, and I got hired. It pays $9/hr, and the call centres I've worked at or know about pay a couple bucks higher than min. wage. The others ones I work at are where I call people to do surveys. This is the one where I call people and ask for donations to charities.

The guy who worked there said I seemed "assertive." There are 3 days of training, and I get paid for them when I start working. It's like that time at Call Centre #2 and they pay you when you show up for work. I can also get full-time.

Abortions: I read this in The Journal. You can get abortions at the Women's Health Options in Edmonton. There are also two places you can get in Calgary. The article was about lack of places to get abortions in Alberta. If you don't live in these two cities, it will be harder to get one. The woman is supposed to spend her own money to get into the city.

May 9 The Perfect Assistant: I saw this TV movie a couple weeks ago. It's like Fatal Attraction, Swim Fan, and Obsessed about a woman who's obsessed with her boss. It stars Josie Davis as Rachel, the stalker. The movie got a 4.2/10 rating from 274 votes. It probably got a low rating because the lead is the stalker. The movies I listed above are about the man or a woman, and the stalker is the antagonist, not the protagonist.

Sure, some movies have the lead as the bad guys like Shattered Glass. The lead was about Stephen Glass who made up fictional stories for the magazine The New Republic and got them all printed as fact to further his career. It was based on a true story. The audience doesn't feel sympathy for the lead in both these movies.

I have seen Josie Davis on CSI: NY and an ep of Fear, Itself. You know this woman's crazy because in her closet she has the "wall of crazy." It's newspaper clippings of her boss David played by Chris Potter. CP was on Heartland, playing Amy's dad. I had a nitpick because the movie starts off with David's wife going to the hospital. It turns out she is terminally ill. When she does wake up from the coma, she isn't going to be the same as she was before. 20 min into the movie, Rachel the stalker then injects penicillin into her which kills her. Where did she get the penicillin? R then puts herself further into D's life, by being like a mother to his daughter.

R lives with her cousin, and it's revealed that her aunt and uncle took R in after her parents died. Later R ends up pushing her cousin down the stairs in a fit of anger which ends up killing her. I kind of predicted that earlier in the first half of the movie. It didn't happen until the second half of the movie.

Former supermodel turned actress Rachel Hunter is in it playing an executive. There was a good climatic ending. R is scheming and manipulative. In the last quarter of the movie, the people start figuring it out, and D fires her. I recently saw the movie One Hour Photo where the lead character loses his job. When someone loses their job, things get really bad. That is what I should put in my script. I kind of do, but I should structure it into the end of the movie. Then R confronts D in a private room in a restaurant. The other employees are there eating dinner. R pulls out a gun, and D tries to calm her down. Someone manages to call 911.

R shoots Rachel Hunter's character in the shoulder. The waiters hear the gun shot, and get through the locked door. The end is R in a mental institution writing a love letter to D. It's a mediocre to average movie. It loses points because the lead isn't a sympathetic character.

It gains points because it's creative that it's through the stalker's point of view, and not like the other movies where it's the stalker's victim point of view. It cuts both ways. The characters took a long time to figure out that she was bad, because she was so good at hiding it. It doesn't undermine the good characters and make them look stupid. It's still a entertaining movie to watch if you don't have anything else to do.

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