I am in my friend Scott’s place now. Just had a 12 hours slept because I was awake for almost 40 hours yesterday. It was impossible to sleep in the night coach from Durham to London, plus one day intensive interviews and talking with companies in the career forum, plus wearing black suit and running around in London under the temperature of 25C, I was totally exhausted!

So, how was the career forum? Apart from the fact that most of them are really looking for Japanese students who studying in UK, which I was told by a few friends who had been to this event before, there are also quite a few companies are happy to take non-Japanese students.

I had an interviews with a company call Fullcast, it’s a technical hardware design and production company. They are very friendly and one of the presenters there is from Taiwan and we communicated in Mandarin. She studied IT and Japanese in a Australian university and got employed by them, and she said there are a lot of international employees in this company as well. Unfortunately the people they are looking for is major in science subjects, especially for non-Japanese students. I also had interviews with Toshiba and UBS, they were very friendly too and I felt they don’t really care whether you are Japanese or not, but they are looking for talented and hard-working people. The TOSHIBA guy told me I was a bit too early to apply, as I still got one more year before graduate, but it’s always good to think ahead. The UBS interviewers were very lay-back and I was asked a few random questions like “How much money of chocolates do you think English people spend every year?” and “Do you think you ar e a good liar?”. The second one still make some sense because the interviewer was a the manager of sale department, but the first one was totally random and I had to make up a random number. Then he asked how did you get to this number? I answered “randomly guess”!

There were quite a few people got a jobs there, two of my friends were even invited by Bosch to have dinner together. I know one girl got a “nai tei” from Fullcast. “nai tei” literally means “internal confirmation”, which is the company offer you a place and you can start working right after graduate. And another girl went through exams and interview and got employed in the last stage of interviewing with president of company. So basically it’s also a one day interview and there is are possibilities that you could get a job there on the spot.

After all, I think it was good and worth to attend this event. I had interviews with most of the companies there even though they specified “Japanese as native level” in their requirement. It was all about getting experiences and get to know those companies. I had learned a lot yesterday, which I think it’s definitely worth and will be beneficial for further job hunting. As I said, this is eating the first four bowls.

I am going down to London tomorrow for the London Career Forum 2006. I will be going tomorrow night by night coach and spend two days there. Coming back on Sunday night. It’s going to be quite challenging to take night coach return, but this is the most economic way I can do as a poor student.

This Career Forum thing is held by Japanese companies and those who are looking for Japanese-English bilingual people. Bloomberg, which I had been their recruitment event before, will also be there. As well as some giant companies like Toshiba and UBS. It’s a two days event and I think they will interview people there, so I had been trying to prepare for it, but didn’t get much done :(

It’s time for me to seriously start thinking my future career now. Although there is still one more year to go, but time just goes by while you blink your eyes. Some of my friends had been to this forum and they found companies are more interested in Japanese students in England rather than students who are major in Japanese, they reckon it’s not really worth to go. But I still want to give it a try anyway. There is a story goes like this: One boy is so hungry and ate four bowls of rice, when he started eating the fifth bowls he feels not hungry anymore, so he complained he could just had the fifth bowl instead of wasting the first four bowls of rice. Unfortunately there is not “the fifth bowl” in normal life, there is less likely to have one-shot-to-success, so I need to have my first four bowls - experiences - first!

I got a job from from a agent about two weeks ago, because they came to university’s career advice center and wanted some students to work for them quite urgently. So last Satruday I started my first sheet, but guess where did they take me to? Elton John’s concert!!!

There were quite a lot people working there, and they had hired several agents. This was the first time I saw so many different agents working together, because when I was working in Oxford for another agent before, normally they just sent 10~20 people at once. The concert was set in Durham County Cricket Club and I heard there were about 13,000 people attended. People from our agent were split into several groups. My friend Jon, me and another guy were put into the drink supplying section, where we had to help stocking up with other staff who sell drink inside the concert, which means we got very closed to the stage and partly enjoyed the concert as well, what a good job!

I am going to work in Oxford this summer, if I could get enough money then will go traveling around Europe.

After planning for almost one month in advance, finally we had the annual AJS boat party in Prince Bishop last night!

Let me tell you what happened in the boat. Super Mario brothers were probably the best guests, the Matrix couple were also the digital memory killers of all the camera, although at some point Trinity seem dialed a wrong number and couldn’t get out of the Matrix but lost in a country side. Then we had Ninja couple as well. Another couple wasn’t quite perfectly match as the way they dressed - a farmer and a school girl, but it was still very funny. But more than that, two sexually unclear guys with sexy dresses also became spotlight of cameras. And Harry Potter, Zorror, cowboy, a guy who supposed to be David beckham and a lot of attractive ladies and gentlemen joined the party and made a great memorable night!

I don’t my English is good enough to describe how much fun we had last night, maybe take a look at the photos I have been collecting from all the people last night will tell more about the party. I have to thank all the execs of AJS as well, the party can’t be so successful without their efforts!