Job hunting and oversized chess

I had a callback and an interview today! Hopefully, the first of many. The callback looks promising; it's a technical support job at a Shaw call centre. Just your usual IT support kind of thing. The job is interesting and should be a nice stepping stone into more technologically-based employment, as my previous employment experience has been mostly customer service based. Anyway, I'll have an interview tomorrow, and we'll see how that goes.

As mentioned, I had an interview today, or rather an intake appointment. A month or so ago, I applied for a job through Randstad (an anagram of standard if anyone likes that sort of thing), a recruiting agency, and got a callback almost immediately. I explained that I wouldn't even be in Edmonton until the end of May and since then we've been in communication. The appointment went well, and it was nice to finally meet someone from her company. So, while it may not be a job, at least now she's keeping an eye out for positions for me as well, which is nice.

In order to get there, I had to take the Edmonton Transit System, which is still very new to me. I mean, I've lived in Toronto long enough that it wasn't so novel, but still, I left nice and early just in case. I ordered my monthly transit yesterday, about $20 cheaper here per month than Toronto's, and made my way to the station this afternoon. Well, first off, the train system, at both ends and presumably elsewhere, seems to use the honour system when it comes to paying fare. You enter the 'proof of payment zone' and there's no booth, no stall, no one checking. It's kind of nice actually, I mean, if it's still going, it means that they don't have a problem with people stealing rides, or at least that's how it seems to me.

The next funny thing about the transit is that you have to push a button to open the subway doors. In Toronto, all of the doors for the appropriate side just open and close at all stops, but in Edmonton, you have to push a button to open the doors. After some initial confusion/coupled with my high perception skills, I figured it out, haha. Guess it'll save some time and preserve the temperature in the winter. I find little engineering things like that interesting.

The ride was quite nice and pretty much exactly what you would expect from riding on a subway. The view, at one point, was very cool, as we rode across the northern Saskatchewan river. Remember my blog post about Edmonton with the pictures of the bridge? The photo taken to the left of the bridge shows a track running across the river, that's for the subway.

Sorry, rambling. After the intake appointment, I decided to just wander a bit. I was in Churchill Square, and there were a lot of people just hanging out, enjoying the summer. Some were playing in fountains.

And some were playing table tennis. Some, apparently, had started and ended a chess game:

How cool is this!? I mean, sure, it's just a mat with some oversized chess pieces on it, but it's an oversized chess game, sitting in the middle of a city square! I really wanted to sit down and play, but I was still in my full suit, it was too hot, and I didn't have anyone to play with. My obsessive personality inspired me to put them back to the way they started...

...and as I was doing so, some people came by and asked me if I worked there, haha. This is not the first time I've been mistaken for working somewhere because I happen to be cleaning up, or have a better handle on things than most. The suit obviously helped/lead them to that conclusion as well, haha. But, no, after assuring them I didn't, we chatted a little about how cool the area was, and I bid them good day and was on my way.

Coming back to the subway station, I took note of this...

...otherwise known as the Art Gallery of Alberta. It looked pretty neat, and reminded me of the concert hall made in The Simpsons, inspired by a crumpled up piece of paper, which was inspired by the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

I'll have to go back and play chess sometime, and check out the art gallery. For now, it's back to looking for work, and blogging/writing/reading/watching TV when I can.