Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

When I was little the entire family including grandparents, aunts, uncles and all the associated children went to Portrush every Easter Monday but it’s been quite a long time since that procession set off and with the grandparents dead and most of the children having their own children what used to be three or four car loads of people was cut down to just one.

Quite surprisingly, for me anyway, the traffic wasn’t anywhere near as heavy as it had been when I was younger. In those days, whatever the weather, the end of the motorway signaled the start of the traffic buildup and there was always a tailback of several miles going into the town itself. Yesterday though there was relatively traffic the whole way and we were able to drive right into the town, parking just a few hundred yards from Barry’s, the amusement park.

For old times sake, we followed the traditional pilgrimage route from the car park, passing Barry’s before heading on down to the main street as far as The White House. The weather ruled out sandcastles on the beach but we had the usual session in Barry’s.

In these days of computer gaming everywhere, Barry’s has changed surprisingly little. The ghost train, dodgems and big dipper are still there and still in the same spot within the complex from the days when I was a child.  If I could dig out an old photo of the place I suspect that the only way you’d be able to tell the difference would be from the clothing for little else seems to have changed. It’s the same for the town too. Not only the mix of the shops remains the same but the names of them too, or at least so far as I can remember.

Of course, that’s part of the reason for the lack of traffic jams. Sure, the kids loved Barry’s but, really, there was very little of interest for the adults. For a family resort, there needs to be attractions for all the family and that’s just not the case these days. Even worse, whilst the majority of the small shops don’t take cards, both the cash machines had run out of money by 11am.

Nice for a nostalgia trip, but it needs to do something if it wants to remain as a successful resort town.

I’m rather uneasy about the job offer that I quite unexpectedly received earlier in the week for a whole host of reasons.

The job description requires experience in four software products of which I’ve limited experience in only one of them. Moreover, it requires one to work 60 to 80 hours per week when I’m aiming for 30 to 37. I made all that very clear at the job interview so I was quite amazed to put it mildly when I received a phone call to say that they’d offered me the job.

The call was from someone in personnel who had spoken to someone two levels up from the people that I’d spoken to. They obviously couldn’t be expected to know anything about the software product requirements but the call was to clear up the number of hours to be worked. Somehow the people they spoke to understood that 30 to 37 hours was enough to do the work along with 1 weekend in 3 oncall. Yet, the job specification was very clear that oncall (ie being available on the phone and to come in) was required 365 days a year with regular weekend work. In fact, at the interview I clarified that this was the case and in fact the “regular weekend work” actually meant every weekend and that the weekly hours weren’t the 60 or so that I’d estimated but more like 80.

Last time I heard of such a discrepancy was when a colleague went for a job some years ago. The people several levels up assured him that it was basically a fantastic job that he’d love. In reality, when he took it on that basis it turned out that it was the worst job he’d ever had and in fact the one that I’d told him it would be. That discrepancy is just as extreme for this job offer as it was for him.

So I have an offer for a job which I know I can’t do without a fairly substantial chunk of prior training and one which almost certainly requires substantially more than the legal maximum of 48 hours a week. Actually, even the personnel people would be requiring me to sign away my right not to work more than 48 hours a week and that’s something I also made very clear at the outset that I wouldn’t do.

Why the offer at all though? Well, I suspect that the management who made the offer have made some commitment to their own management that they’d get more people into the branch pronto and will basically take anyone they can get, regardless of fit.

We go to our local library twice a week for the kids Kumon class and it’s quite noticeable how different the mix of people in it are.

On Tuesday afternoons, the place is packed with school children. So packed, that it’s difficult to find a seat and indeed today we couldn’t find a seat at all. On Saturdays it’s more of a quiet library atmosphere. Fairly full alright, but there are always seats to be had.

The difference is down to it being used basically as a child minder service during the week. School age children use it basically as an after-school club and in a number of cases parents simply drop the children in and go off on errands or whatever. We’re talking down to fairly young primary school kids too.

Still, at least it hasn’t reached the extremes that Wendy experienced in one Australian library where the library had to bring in a rule that kids required an adult to accompany them. Somehow I can’t see it being long before that happens.

We’re all getting older and, thanks to the baby boom generation, there are more and more products to deal with that on the shelves these days and increasing number of medical treatments too.

But do you really want to stay young looking forever? I imagine that most peoples’ first reaction is a very definite “YES” and that would certainly be the answer were staying young an easy thing to do. The problem is that it isn’t easy and takes up increasing amounts of time as the years add up.

Those age spots that may be starting to appear will increase in number as your years add up thus it’s gonna take more time to cover them up as the years mount. Likewise for other treatments to cover up the cracks and wrinkles not to mention the hair to be dyed.

The alternative is to aim to gain a distinguished appearance gradually which is going to be much less time consuming I suspect.

Over the last week or so we’ve woken to a white landscape but, so far, the white is only frost with perhaps a very light dusting of snow.

That frosty covering makes for rather slippy pavements of course yet you don’t seem to really get the pleasure that proper snowfall can bring. No snowmen to built, no snowball fights. Just slipping and scraping the windows on the car.

And, yesterday, an unannounced closure of the school for the day. Instead of a final lie-in before school started we’d everyone up early to make sure we weren’t late with the slippery roads and found ourselves in front of a closed school. Oh, sure, if it had been way out in the country we’d have expected that but there wasn’t any big problem in getting to it so it was just closed for no apparent reason.

Still, with the weather forecasts continuing in winter mode for the remainder of the week perhaps we’ll get a proper snowfall one of these days.