How deep does the Rabbit Hole go?

It's been a while.

That's all I got to say on the subject of my tardiness.

Now on to the main course.

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Firstly, the update. For the last 3.5 months, I was working away at a search firm / recruitment agency / headhunter (choose your description) interacting with a lot of people and generally getting a handle on the recruitment industry in Singapore. Also, I started seeing signs that the famed 'Employees' market' is back again: candidates show up with multiple job offers and companies are getting pressed to hire as quickly as possible (to stem outflows and offer rejections). What has not changed though were the salaries: they do not accurately reflect this demand.

So, that fun time at the search firm lasted until a kickass consultancy offered me a 3-month contract with them. It was not the most lucrative offer that an MBA can get, but it was good enough to entice me to join them. I had talked to them since last November and the expectations were rather clear in terms of compensation and work (the work is exciting stuff - strategy consulting always is). Thus, I took the plunge: I ate the red pill and took a dive down the rabbit hole to see how deep it goes.

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It goes deep south, far enough for me to be currently in Melbourne. Today (30 Apr) happened to be my first day at work (not counting the 2-3 hours at the project kickoff and that office party event, which were before my official start date). I had barely left the search firm (last Friday) and found myself on a plane Sunday night headed towards Melbourne. There was the inkling of an idea what the project was about (a Market Research thingy), but largely, all I was doing was heading to Australia with little idea what I was meant to do there.

Sitting pretty in the hotel room now, I can't help but wonder if this is what my worklife is going to be for a while: travelling at short notice to strange places and seeing a lot of airports, the inside of taxis, and intimately knowing the interiors of the hotel room (oh carpet, you're so fine!). The consulting life is going to be like this for a while... which is great! I never got to travel much at my last job.

Melbourne also affords me the opportunity to see my sis. It also afforded my dad and mum the opportunity to pile my luggage with stuff they want me to send to her (at last count, this was a headset with microphone, a couple of MicroSD cards, and some baby stuff for her bf's niece). We haven't caught up yet but I reckon I might take part of the weekend to do that. We shall see.

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On another note, I'm not sure I will be able to write much anymore. The following reasons are all why I haven't updated this blog for the whole month of April (btw, this post is backdated to 30 Apr so I have something in April... it was written on Labour Day... which is NOT a holiday in Australia):

1. Anime - Spring's offerings have intrigued me: I started on about 7 new animes that came out for the Spring season and have followed every one of them up until at least episode 3 or 4. Each anime takes up about 25 mins and this meant that time lost to anime amounted to around 3 hours every week.
2. TV - There are two programs I've followed throughout this recent period (let's call it greyscalefuzz's search firm times): The Amazing Race and Heroes. Whenever possible, I download both shows from bittorrent sites and collectively, they amount to almost 1hr and 40 mins away from more productive work as well. I still like TAR's reality show concept (comes from my travel bug syndrome) and Heroes is just simply mindblowing for its plotlines.
3. Interviews - and the preparation for them also took up time in April. While the 1st two months of the year were a drought where interviews were concerned, March and April brought a bit of a windfall in interviews. I met 5 companies for interviews (some leading to a 2nd round) even while juggling the possiblity of accepting the rabbit hole job. :) It was good to be desired, but only one other job came to a conversion. There is no way to estimate the time spent here though.
4. Other distractions - I surfed voraciously in April (my search history shows this) and this also meant much of my downtime (while not at work) was spent reading stuff off the Internet. Topics ranged form Spartan history on Wikipedia to recaps of TAR on Television without Pity. Engaging content on the web abounds - I will never read it all!
5. Oh yes, there is also The Gym. Since I signed up for a gym membership, I've been working out twice a week (almost religiously). This is a new thing on my calendar and has amounted to 3 hours in The Gym. The Gym is a noisy dancefloor music haven with hunky dudes pumping iron and gym bunnies in 2 piece attires prancing around. Eye candy aside, it also has too many gay guys (getting checked out in the shower room is the usual norm, especially when it came time to wrap the towel around the waist).

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So the rabbit hole goes deep: I know little about what I've gotten myself into, but it is a reality I am happy to explore for a while (if just for 3 months, so be it). Beats the uncertainty of recruitment. :)

PS: Give me a shout if you're are in Melbourne!