Central St. Martin's

I'm finishing up my first week of full time work again and it's been great to be back in the game. I feel quite at home in my new job. The people I work with are fun and interesting. My boss is from France and she has a cute little accent. I work with one guy from South Africa, he's Afrikaans and will occasionally (meaning often) answer his cell phone and speak his native tongue, which is apparently a mix of Dutch, German and French. How much more messed up could you get for a language? (j/k, I love all languages) There is another girl from London working temporarily, she's a free lance photographer and quite nice. I picked up some fun words for the English lesson of the day from her.

The work itself is not terribly difficult, just a lot of it. Basically if you take all the inquiries that DU admissions (on both sides) get and process them, that is what this one office does. My boss also heads the Marketing department, which consists solely of herself... so she's quite busy. It's crazy how antiquated this place is, considering they are still using FileMaker Pro 6.O for their database and one of the computers I've seen still uses Microsoft Office 1997! (Gasp! from the computer geeks, such as myself.) Beyond that it's really fun to watch all the hoity toity art students milling about. The fashion students are the greatest, because they always look like they are walking down a Milan or Parisian runway, crazy encoutrements included.

The other interesting/down right weird thing about this place is the seemingly total lack of "customer service" or even "professionalism". I put those phrases in quotations not to suggest that no such things exist but that perhaps I'm seeing the British version of each and interpreting them with my American eyes as deficiencies. For instance, the South African guy, who is normally quite cheery and polite to me and the other girl, will upon answering the phone become outwardly distraught, like it's a trouble for him to pick up the telephone and answer the questions of the general public (as is his job description I imagine.) He sighs, rolls his eyes, gives out our email address in such a tone that denotes the offensive caller should've already known it and not bothered to call us. Disclaimer: Do not think that I'm demeaning my co-workers or their manners. Again this seems to be a trend across the board that no one is "polite" and "friendly" as in the American sense. At least as far as my observations have taken me. There are of course other little "quirks" such as this, but for now I better get going, I'm running out of time, yet again.

Newsflash ---- (not really, I've already known) ---- Newsflash for you:
I'll be getting DSL internet next Monday, once BT comes over and sets everything up, so the blogging and emailing should becoming a regular (and probably cheaper) habit starting next week. I'm so exited! One more step away from my highly technologicalized life. (I'll be copywriting technologicalized by the way, right after Trump gets "Fired!", so hands off!) Now the last thing is getting cable television, which Alastair and I will be doing - him for the sports channels, me for... sorry... Scifi - so that'll be a very exciting and fulfulling time, but it'll have to wait until we both get paid.