It's about that time.

There was always going to be a day where I'd start a blog with, "apologies for not blogging for so long... but I've been busy," and this would be the day. So, for all those that actually read my blog and have been malnourished for interesting reading here it is... sorry.

Ok, now that that's out of the way let me catch you all up on what's been happening. First, I got a job - an unglamourous job, but a job all the same. Second, I've moved from my delightfully quaint and fiscally prudent house, which could have possibly been the reason for the song Dominion Road by The Muttonbirds - but from all research undertaken by me seems unlikely - to a rather cold, yet nice house on Franklin Road. I moved a month ago and have only just come to grips with the added costs involved with living very centrally, running into celebrities, musicians, actors and other personalities whilst grabbing a coffee on Ponsonby Road or simply grabbing some milk from New World.

So, that's what I've been doing, fairly unexciting, fairly vanilla, fairly unworthy reading really; however there has been some interesting things happening in Auckland over the last couple of months: the film festival, an art festival or two, the smacking referendum, road works on Symonds street bringing traffic to a standstill most days, a rape in Victoria park - which is about five minutes walking distance from my house - and my own personal story regarding the 90 day fire at will bill.

I won't bother talking about the film festival except to say if there is one documentary you see this year, make sure it's We Live In Public, it's an incredibly interesting look at a particularly nutty man who was one of the first Internet pioneers. The referendum, of course, was an absolute joke and I feel there has already been far to much ink spilt in regards to that topic, so I won't weigh in, but I will weigh in on something which hasn't been in the media since it was first announced and that would be the 90 day fire at will bill.

As I said previously I'm gainfully employed in a job with a cringe worthy job title: telesales. Since I have been working there I've learned many things about corporate life and culture (will probably blog about this later) as well as seen first hand the ramifications of the fire at will bill. Since starting my job nearly three months ago I have seen five people fired, two people leave, and four new people start each week - the company I work for seems to have a revolving door policy in terms of retaining its staff. My own personal story is somewhat of a success story, in that, A, I haven't been fired, B, I've made a decent amount of money from my toils, and, C, I'm about to be offered a full-time contract; however it's not as easy as one would expect, before even discussing the contract, the pay rate, the hours, the leave, holidays and other stuff, I've had to undergo a myriad of psychometric tests - you know filling out forms answering questions about how I would react if someone lied to me, or if someone arrived late to a meeting, to determine whether I'm the right personality type to offer a contract.

Hopefully, the tests show me as a fine upstanding member of society and not the marginal alcoholic slash opinionated bleeding heart liberal that I am. Anyways, cross your fingers for me because if I have to stay on a casual contract I could go the way of many other staff members who have been fired within two days of starting work because they had a bad day or week. So, the 90 day bill works exactly how the National government wanted it to work, keep the workers in fear of losing their job so they work harder, take reduced pay, no holidays, no leave and of course if they prove themself to be worthwhile they can keep their job - hooray! - otherwise it's a new soul destroying job somewhere else where the whole process starts again. But it's doing even more that that because not only does it undermine your job security at the start of a job, it has a roll-on effect when you're actually under contract, meaning that when you sign your contract to get that job security that you've been wanting for so long, all that you really get is a piece of paper, your rights as a worker have pretty much already gone done the gurgler and so all you end up negotiating is what rights you have left, and in this current economic climate you can imagine just how many of those rights you'd give up for that piece of paper.

And with that, I'll leave for the time being, my laptop is about to die.