The inevitable mass email

Hello my lovelies,

I should have sent this email a few days ago but I've been busy enjoying some unexpected time off and some formalities managed to slip my mind. Before you read on, please understand that I'm in a wonderfully happy and optimistic mindset as of late and while the following news represents a bump in my road, I am most definitely still on the right track!

After two wonderful and exciting months with Canada Post, I'm afraid my contract has been ended. As of this past Tuesday, I have been back on the job market bringing with me all the knowledge and experience from my time spent with mailboxes on the brain.

To bring everyone up to speed, a month or so into my position, HR realized that I had yet to be tested for the french requirements (the position was listed for someone with C-levels, which is just one lower than officially fluent) and demanded that the tests be completed as soon as possible.

My fantastic supervisor and I had thought that I would have had until the end of my probation before the testing, but I did what I could - achieving C-levels in reading, comprehension and writing, but missing out on my oral mark. I went on working to the best of my ability while my supervisor fought to keep me on board, as french was the only ability in which I was lacking, but ultimately it was a business decision that didn't turn in my favour. Nothing personal.

Luckily, I have left on extrememly good terms backed by strong references from my former colleauges and management and am very confident in my ability to find another great position in the coming weeks. As my name starts popping up in offices around town again, I figured I would fill all of you in just in case calls for references start coming your way once again.

Thanks as always for your continued support and I'll keep you posted as yet another job adventure unfolds!

Ben

Ben Boudreau, Guest Blogger

I received an email the other day from a MSVU co-op student working for ACOA. I guess the gang over there is jumping onto the blog-bandwagon to promote employment opportunities within the federal government for students and recent graduates. I guess they must have been low on available writers (or, I'm the only author-wannabe that will write just about anything for just about anyone who asks!) because they asked me to write a piece for their site. Regardless, my four months with the Public Health Agency of Canada just won me my first guest-blog appearance! Whooohooo!

There's an excerpt below but be sure to click over to the Halifax Student Networking Café for the full piece tomorrow, September 18. As for their event, I wish them the best of luck - not that they'll need it...I happen to already know at least one of their guest-speakers and she'll rock their socks off. Go Mel, go! And yes, the photo choice will make perfect sense once you read the whole thing. Thanks ACOA!

As for any students who found they're way over to this site, I'll answer any questions you may have. Despite my shining review, there are a few downsides to everything and I'll be just as honest about those.
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“I’ll never EVER work for the government!”

My father, a public servant of almost thirty years, would roll his eyes every time I started one of my well-known rants about what I believed to be a boring, stuffy way to make a living. “Do you even know how long it takes to get a single-paged document approved?”

After twelve months of balancing a variety of tasks and responsibilities with two busy nonprofit organizations in Halifax, Nova Scotia, I had convinced myself that government timelines simply weren’t up to my fast-paced standards. The fact that I was writing off our country’s largest employer offering the widest range of employment opportunities in Canada hadn’t even occurred to me. To make matters even more embarrassing, these conclusions were all made without ever having worked even a day for the Government of Canada.

http://halifaxstudentnetworkingcafe.blogspot.com/

Books stores may yet survive the post-Potter era

Two well-marketed, well-timed books are making their mark on the new world of novels following the retirement of Harry Potter. One, a young-adult romantic vampire novel that is outshining all sales expectations and the second has become the summer break-out hit befitting of all things Oprah and The View. There's still hope for (mainstream) literacy!

"...readers snapped up a hefty 150,000 copies of Stephenie Meyer's "Eclipse," a young-adult novel about a gentlemanly vampire and the girl who loves him, in its first day on sale Tuesday. The book immediately became this week's No. 1 fiction best-seller at Barnes & Noble Inc., knocking the final installment in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," into the No. 2 spot."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118670290131693667.html?mod=sphere_ts

"Then a strange thing happened: The paperback edition of "Eat, Pray, Love," published in January, quickly gained must-read status. Women everywhere, it seemed -- on trains, planes and exotic beaches -- were suddenly entranced, making it this summer's break-out publishing hit. The book has had a 32-week run on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list, where it currently occupies the No. 1 position. Paramount Pictures acquired the movie rights for actress Julia Roberts. The author says a sequel is already in the works."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118972984449527200.html?mod=hpp_us_pageone

A Rosie Post

Read on for one of the most honest and insightful words spoken about celebrity and Hollywood that I've heard in a long time, taken from Rosie O'Donnell's upcoming book Celebrity Detox. While they're making the biggest deal about her confession of self-abuse during childhood to remind herself of her worth, I feel the following revelations have a much larger impact given the way the increasingly rambunctious famous are setting examples for an increasingly influenced youth.

Also, it's important to point out before we go on that all the profits from this book are going to Rosie's Broadway Kids, a charity providing children with music instruction in schools that would otherwise go without.

“As I slipped back into celebrity land,” Rosie writes of her return to daytime TV, “the tasks multiplied a thousandfold, and the letters addressed to me but having nothing to do with the real me — the mother me, the married me, the friend me — the letters addressed to the celebrity me began to pour in again. … I had gone four years living alone and now my mailbox was overflowing and people were telling me I was fantastic, the funniest, the happiest, the brightest. ...

“How best to explain this? It is a shift that happens in the head and that very few celebrities will ever really speak about. … One begins to believe in the specialness, and a dangerous sense of entitlement takes over. … When celebrity addiction starts, you become impatient with, and even angry at necessary obstacles. You think could run a red light or two. And then you do.”

For more, click here. Sorry...it's FoxNews. (booooo! hiss!)

It's all over [excerpts from a success!]

I can tell I'll be running at half-capacity this week in an attempt to recover from the busy weekend at Neptune Theatre. As I crawl back into bed, however, I'll still have my Play in a Day-induced smile plastered on my face.

We had a fantastic group of participants, dedicated and wonderful Neptune experts and front-of-house staff to make event coordination a breeze, great catering from Soho and Julien's Bakery, a 10-minute reality show capturing the 24-hour madness by Pink Dog Productions, and a hysterical performance of The Gizard of Id to top it all off. Huge thanks to actor/director/producer/reporter/brit Jeremy Webb for his patience and expertise (re: drinking before acting - "No no, two or three drinks is fine.)"

Read below for some of the testimonials posted by event participants throughout the course of the event. Hope to see you all there next year!
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"Friday night was a crazy night of wide-eyes and surprises as the participants in the first ever PLAY IN A DAY event discovered what they were going to do. "Surely we can't be doin' it all!?" Oh, yes!" - Producer cracks whip

"We are having a great time while developing a new appreciation for all the fun, as well as hard work that is envolved in this entire process.....can hardly wait to see the finished product ... yet, hate to see today come to an end." - CREW

"Our "Dorothy" is allergic to curry and she unkowingly took a large bite of a chicken curry wrap. She seems to be fine. No signs of her throat closing over. She's such a trooper.I take back all of the "Diva" comments I made before." - Director's Note

"...our run-throughs today, mere hours before curtain call, resulted in dramatic script changes and cuts. Lines have been swapped for dances, handcuffs have been dropped, a whip has been added in...wait. What are we doing here??" - Director's Whim

"who wrote this crap. "Ding dong diddly"???? That Rick Woodburn needs to be punished severely. I may never recover. Thanks for the memories everyone.....with counselling, I'll be okay." - A moochkin scorned?
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If you would like to be a part of this event next year .... contact Gwen at the Legal Information Society of Nova Scotia (development@legalinfo.org) to be placed on the email list for notification.

God help us...

It's day two. I put in six hours last night after work. I arrived back at Neptune at 8:00 a.m this morning. I'm trying to convince myself that I'm not in the least bit tired...good luck to me!

Numerous posts will be made per hour throughout the day by participants, organizers, Neptune Theatre staff, and Pink Dog Productions at the Play in a Day blog. Check it out and don't miss out next year!

Ralph Klein's bad first impression

Here is the report of his first words to 250 first-year journalism students in his new position as the first endowed chair of Mount Royal College's Centre for Communication Studies:

Former premier Ralph Klein kick-started his new role as lecturer in media studies Thursday by branding most journalists "lazy" and admitting he doesn't currently watch TV newscasts or read newspapers.

"The media were lazy," Klein told roughly 250 first-year journalism, broadcasting and public relations students at Calgary's Mount Royal College, reflecting on his dealings with the press. "I can say it now because I am out of politics.

"A sound bite a day keeps the editor away."

Ummmm....where's the positive part where he inspires with talk of revitalizing a profession? A passion for truth?? Anything nice??? C'mon Ralph...at least try to give your students a reason to stay in class...

For the full story, click here.

Killer inspiration [a book post!]

Ahhh...now to live up to the bookish standards of my colleagues and cobloggers at All Rights Reserved, I'm finally writing a post about a book! That's right! You heard it here first, folks: Ben reads!

But seriously, I DO read. I'm actually reading two books simultaneously right now, which is probably why they're both taking so long to finish. Okay, that's not important. What I'm here to talk about today is a book I haven't even read - one that I couldn't read even if I tried. A polish book called Amok by Krystian Bala. This one's so fresh that Wikipedia hasn't even touched it yet.

From the sounds of it, the book follows a group of bored, affluent professionals who grow weary of their charmed lifestyles. One thing leads to another and they end up torturing and killing a woman, throwing the body into a river, as crazy professionals so often do. The interesting, and largely disturbing, aspect of the story, is that Bala has just been convicted for the torture and killing of bored, affluent professional Dariusz Janiszewski in 2000. Apparently Bala's inclusion of secret crime scene details known only by the police and the killer tipped off the chief inspector five years after the crime was committed.

This story, (the real-life one - not the fiction-turned-nonfiction one), fascinates me. Supposedly, killers often find the need to either gloat or absolve themselves through thinly veiled public admissions of guilt. In this case, the popular author could have learned a lesson or two from the equally creepy If I Did It project by more widely known author (killer?) OJ Simpson. Clearly he missed the memo that explains real murder confessions are only profitable if they DON'T get you thrown in jail.

Let's hope the money made by the book (about to see a spike in sales) will get sent to the victims family and that the scary fiction category of novels is soon reclaimed by brilliant imaginations rather than crazy killers.

For the full story, click here.

The next epic trilogy

'Run, Fat Boy, Run', the latest britcom featuring one of my favorite funny men Simon Pegg, has just been released in England. No sign of a Canadian release just yet but I will be anxiously awaiting another hilarious romp with the genius behind 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz'. However, I'm worried that this one will not live up to my expectations.

For one, Pegg was not the primary writer. He grittied up the script that had already been written by Americans to make it more real London rather than postcard London. As much as I want success for Pegg and his masterful comedies, I'd hate to see them ruined by North American mass-marketization (ahem...Mr. Bean classic shorts versus his two full-feature movies). The differences are already apparent: the film is being directed by David Schwimmer and for the first time places a purebred babe opposite Pegg in the form of Thandie Newton rather than wonderful british unknowns and Love Actually alumni. Also, Pegg is missing his partner-in-hilarity, Nick Frost. But fear not! Pegg is once again slated to team up Frost to finish off what is already being called The Cornetto Triology. See below...

As for me, I'm booked for the weekend volunteering for Play in a Day taking place over the course of Friday and Saturday at Neptune Theatre. Tickets are available for about $40 so give me a shout if you're going and need a pass!


"Pegg is also eager to complete what he and his co-writing collaborator Edgar Wright call "the blood and ice-cream trilogy". Each film, he explains, "will feature a Cornetto in varying flavours. Shaun of the Dead has strawberry, Hot Fuzz has the original Cornetto flavour, and there will be a mint-choc chip in the third film. We don't quite know how or why yet, but it will happen. It's like Krzysztof Kieslowski but with confection. It's Three Colours: Cornetto." You can see the box set already: "With free ice cream."

Read the rest, click here.