More Mama Mayhem, The Fringe Frolics

Good Evening My Dears,

When last I wrote, my Mama was visiting and I had a job interview.  I took my Mom to Rosslyn Chapel and we wandered around Edinburgh as well.  We had some really bad food experiences while she was here.  In fact, I can't say that any of it was really good.  I also wasn't very good at picking Fringe Shows.  The Fringe is the eclectic answer to its more staid counterpart the Edinburgh International Festival of the Arts.  Whatever your heart's desire, in terms of the arts, can be found here.  I booked three with my Mom: a performance of French Baroque Music, a flamenco, and a candid cabaret.  In true Tina-style, I booked the Baroque performance because I met the soprano who was singing at the performance on the bus, and promised to go.  Now, I like Baroque music quite a lot, but not when it focuses on coffee and gallstones.  What does coffee have to do with gallstones, you ask?  I didn't see the connection either until it was explained that coffee was thought (rightly so, it appears) to cure gallstones.  Who knew?  It is certainly more than I ever wanted to.  The flamenco was good, but it wasn't dancing, it was guitar.  I must say, it was not very stimulating watching a young Scottish man play flamenco while ignoring the other people on the stage.  There was a little bit of dancing and that was excellent, there should have been more of it, but on the whole, the performance was quite boring.  The candid cabaret was so bad that my mom and I walked out during the first intermission.  All the acts, save one, were unprofessional.  We should have gotten a clue when the performance started nearly 45 minutes late.

I did not learn my lesson regarding the Fringe.  Stephen and Patrin (WIS wisdom), came up from London and we saw 7 shows in two days.  In great Fringe tradition, some of the shows were better than others.  One was so good that I actually went back a second time.  The good thing about the Fringe is that most of the performances are about an hour long - not long enough to rue purchasing a ticket.  We saw a Chekhov play, a play about Britain's 1987 hurricane, A play about an Edinburgh Tour Guide giving his last tour ever - I really liked that one, and a stand up comic called Jen Brister is British-ish - she was the one so good I went back.  That was yesterday, I ended up seeing her at a bar and having a conversation with her, without letting on that I knew who she was.  In the show she ended up using me as a straight man.  It was hilarious.  If any of you come to the UK, you must go see her.  You can check out her website www.jenbrister.co.uk.  Right, on with the Fringe Frolic.  We also saw Showstoppers, improvisational musical theatre that is a not so veiled allusion to High School Musical meets Glee.  I must say there didn't seem to be much improvisation going on but it was fun.  Next was The Dumb Waiter, which is a play by Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize winning British Dramatist, who wrote the Screenplay for The French Lieutenant's Woman.  Pinter plays do not seem to have much of a resolution but, if done well, are very good, indeed.  Last of the Fringe Frolic for The Three Musketeers, was The Three Englishmen, a quartet of musically inclined sketch comedians, who proved amusing but not as amusing as Jen Brister.

I sent Stephen and Patrin back down to London, and was contemplating my lonely jobless life, so in a flash of inspiration thought, let me go spend more money I don't have.  I went to see two shows with Giselle: The Pajama Men, rather incomprehensible sketch comedy, not really that funny, and I dragged her to Jen Brister.  She loved it.  I have just come back from listening to my all time favorite dancing band in the world, the Jive Aces.  They were wonderful as always, but it is so much more fun to dance than listen.  Alas, no one to dance with.  Tomorrow, I am off to try and see You Once Said Yes, at Stephen's insistence, but as it is sold out till Festival End - I am going to have to go to the venue and see if there are any tickets.  More on that if I actually see it.

In other news,  my interview with the Software company was a no, which is a shame as the job was really rather interesting.  More operations than accounting.  However, I have gotten a temp job with a Scottish Investment house in reconciliations that starts on the 5th of September till 31 December.  So I am in Scotland for 4 more months.

Right, that is all she wrote, folks.

Next Up: Work begins and I contemplate a bit of travel.

Cheerio for now,

Tina

Mama Mayhem

Good Afternoon My Dears:

When last I wrote, my employer and I had parted ways relatively amicably.  What that means, of course, is that they love me, I am a great girl, highly capable, very bright, super nice, a great addition to any firm.  Blah, blah, flippin' blah.  Just not for them.  As we parted so amicably, they are going to give me a a very positive reference, should anyone come callin'.  Since I am the one who controls that...not bloody likely, mate.  So now I find myself back to pinching my pennies.  I am not particularly happy with this current state of affairs but all is not lost.  I have an interview with a Software firm on Wednesday, so once again, fingers crossed please.  Are your fingers getting tired?  It seems that I have been asking for a lot of crossing of fingers since I left to come live the dream in Scotland.

In other news, I am a published writer.  What, you say?  This is news, you mutter?  Hello, the blog, you huff?  Well, yes, that is true.  But I mean writing for someone else.  I have begun writing for an online magazine called The Indie Pedant, which I mentioned in my last post.  I wrote a review of a play called 201 Objects that I saw last weekend, with some new friends.  True to WIS form, these friends are not Scottish.  Giselle is a friend I made through my writer's group and is from the Philippines though married to a Scot.  Johanna is from Germany by way of Polish ancestry, a friend I made through Giselle.  I am not going to post the review here.  If you want to read it you can find it at theindiepedant.com.  It seems I made page two.  I have promised further reviews of festival events: I am going to a cabaret - there should be lots of juicy things to write about for that, and a flamenco performance which I am not sure translates well into a review.  Must do more research.

My mama has come to Scotland.  She hasn't seen me in 5 months and the first thing she says is - what is on your face?  It is of course a commentary on who has picked out my foundation and concealer.  She claims it makes me look like a transvestite.  Yeah, as if.  Well, if she doesn't like it she can just take me to Harvey Nics to get other, more appropriate powder if she feels that strongly, because, goodness knows, I don't exactly have disposable income to be spending on frivolous girlieness like make up.  All of that now comes under luxury not necessity.  Someone once pointed out that I will never lack for a place to live or food to eat, whether I am working or not, but I will look like poo in the process. I blithely responded that they in contrast will live under a bridge and be the best looking troll out there as they will never skimp on make up.  Anyhoo, enou' bletherin', the plan with my mama, is to attend to fringe performances, wander through Edinburgh, visit Roslyn Chapel, and perhaps visit Glasgow.  My mama wants to see all the Templar sites of Scotland.  Somehow, she got it into her head that Scotland is this big repository of Templar lore.  Well, it isn't.  Thankfully, there are only three Templar sites in Scotland, of which Roslyn Chapel is one.  The others are the village of Temple in Midlothian, and Templars Park in Aberdeen.  Is it just me, or does the last one sound like an amusement park?  Actually, it is a campsite.  Thankfully, Templars Park and Temple Village are inaccessible without a car and too, too far out.  So one Templar site it is.  We are invited to Laura's for dinner tomorrow.  That will be interesting as they have not seen each other in 20 years.  My mama has woken up and we are off to town.

Right, that is all she wrote, folks.

Next up: More Mama Mayhem and WIS wisdom arrives.

Cheerio for now,

Tina

Unemployed Again...I just can't wait to be unemployed again...

Good Afternoon My Dears:

It seems that I am not quite as good at bookkeeping and admin work as I thought.  The job that I got a few weeks ago is not for me.  If I am to work in accountancy, I need to be part of an accounting team, with the ability to ask questions of someone higher placed that I am.  Unfortunately, the job that I took with the recruitment company was running their back office and accounts without anyone to ask questions of.  On the one hand, I felt that if I had had a month's training with the accountant tat I replaced, I would have seen all the pieces of the job and been able to carry on as he had set everything up quite nicely.  My boss did not agree and so their was an amicable parting of ways.  They have agreed to give me a good reference and in fact, they called me yesterday with a position for a bilingual customer services agent.  Unfortunately, there is not much call for people with Greek and French speaking skills in Customer Services.  I think that's because both of those nations are rather puffed up with their own self importance and probably feel they don't need language help.

On the other hand, perhaps accounting is not for me.  Yesterday, I rewrote my CV so that it sits rather low on the experience totem pole and sent it out to agencies to start looking for work that would have me as part of a finance/accounting team rather than the whole kit and caboodle.  I also went to a really cool bookstore to see if they were hiring, but alas it was not to be.  Today, I decided to switch gears and I have started looking for work in writing.  I applied to write for the Indie Pedant, a magazine that publishes online.  I also applied for a writing job that deals with Search Engine Optimization.  That is when you go through web site content to make sure that it has all the key words needed to place the website at the top of a list of search results.  I am hoping that my blog is writing sample enough.

I am not quite ready to give up yet but I will admit it is a close thing currently.  I may have to come home earlier than Christmas as I originally planned but I still have 3 more months on my lease so have to try and survive until then.

Right, that's all she wrote, folks.

Next Up: My mama comes, the fringe, and friends.

Cheerio for now,

Tina