$2.65 per hour!!

Now recovered from a pretty crazy Halloween party at the weekend (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders galore!), I took it upon myself to sort out the mess that is my Inbox. I think it's part of the two day cleaning spree that's been taking place that has restored our flat to a liveable and shinier than ever place of living.

While doing this, I stumbled across the first scrap of evidence that AIESEC Edinburgh did actually exist: an e-mail on US-Voice on July 15th from someone in Ecuador talking about Jen - a CEEDer who had just arrived from Edinburgh. The very same Jen who is now VP of Outgoing Exchange at Edinburgh now! If only I actually had time to read US-Voice, these would be the kind of things I might have spotted earlier. I really must make more time to read that mailing list - there's a lot of interesting and inspirational stuff on it. Once you get past the occasional rainbow-coloured drug-fueled hyper-enthusiastic advert for the next great event happening across the pond. So: read more of the e-mails I get, and at some point send e-mails to all those wonderful people I should be keeping in touch with. That's my changing to (or is it away from?) daylight-saving-time resolutions. I should probably add to that "do a lot more work on my project" and "apply for some jobs".

Time and money I seem to have problems with. Probably thanks to wasting time writing blog entries like this very one. I have realized it is ridiculous that I am so crap at saving money. There are people who barely earn enough to survive.

Last night I watched an episode of 30 Days, Morgan Spurlock's (Super Size Me) latest documentary. It's a series of shows about people who transform their lives in some fundamental way for a period of 30 days to try and better themselves or gain a different perspective on something.

In this episode, Morgan and his fiance spent 30 days living on minimum wage. They stayed in a completely run-down apartment somewhere in Ohio, struggling to maintain a relationship, stay healthy and just get by on a ridiculously tiny amount of money. The minimum wage in the States has not changed seen 1997. That's 8 years ago. In that time cost of living has sky-rocketed but the senate keeps rejecting bills to increase the wage. They of course take the side of businesses over people as seems to be all to common with American government. I think the rate is something like $5.15 (about £3) in most states, even less in some states ($2.65 in Kansas for example!!) and there is no minimum wage in others. To me that sounds like a shocking state of affairs. People barely have enough to even pay rent. If they have any kind of medical problem they're basically screwed (even a short trip to the ER will cost about $500) and if they have children it must be almost impossible.

I admit I don't know all the facts about this, and maybe it's not my place to critisise, but things need to be changed. This tiny minimum wage coupled with a terrible healthcare system and a bank system that likes to make lots of charges just totally disadvantages the poor.

In California the rate is slightly higher at $6.75. I think my experience of America was seen through just slightly rose-tinted glasses. As is probably the case for the many Americans who can blissfully ignore this kind of thing.

What does everyone in America think about this issue? I'm actually talking about something slightly important on my blog for once so let's have some comments please...

Scariness

The hunt for a career has begun. It's all quite exciting, but very scary at the same time. I'm really not sure what I want to do, but I do have a few ideas. What I don't want to end up doing is just sitting in a room programming boring applications. Obviously. I want to be working with new technology, doing stuff people haven't done before and doing things that matter in the real world. Things that are important to people and pushing the boundaries.

The big corporations are shoving everything they can down our throats at the moment and I'm starting to come back around to the idea of them. Graduate schemes, high quality training, flexibility, options to travel, working with diverse groups of people - it's all quite enticing. Of course these things look to be fiercely competitive. But that's a good thing I think. I want a job I will be challenged in and motivated to excel at.

One company on my list to apply for is Accenture. I was at a presentation by them the other day. They are a huge Consulting firm with a big Technology division. I really like the sound of it - working on projects for different clients, travelling lots and what looks like a really good graduates programme. Doing consulting means looking at the bigger picture, deploying things in the real world and getting to work with lots of different people.

They seem like a good company ethically as well. They have a programme called Accenture Development Partnerships where you can go off and use your expertise in developing countries or with charities. To be honest, that sounds like it might be better and (bizarrely) easier to get into than doing an AIESEC Development Traineeship appears to be. Hopefully I'll still get to go on one of those too.

Hello anyone from AIESEC Edinburgh reading this now that my contraversial-sounding post is dominating Google :-)

Anyway, lots more careers presentations coming up. Application forms and interviews are looming ever closer now. It's time to decide what I want to do with my life!

Pizza explosion!

Ready for the oven

About 6 months ago Declan and I made a pact. That we would one day live together and make pizza for the masses. One week ago that dream was realized. As well as making a gigantic mess in our kitchen and significant holes in our wallets, Declan, Tom and I (to varying degrees) managed to summon up not one, not two, but THREE fantastic pizzas AND a tirimisu. This was completely from scratch too - no pre-made bases or sauce or any cheating like that. Raw ingredients, man power, a little bit of creativity and a pinch of narrowly-avoided disaster were what went into these babies. We were very proud of ourselves indeed.

The plan was to have Fliss, Lucy and Bill - the friendly bunch from across the hall - over for dinner to repay them for the lovely dinner they made us a couple weeks previously. But unfortunately all but Lucy forgot about this. As well as the extraordinary feast, they missed out on the Craig Charles Funk Show (things got pretty "funked up"!) and the kind of religious debate that can only be had at 5am after several bottles of wine and several (too many) hours of funk. It's like being a student again!

Also being a student, I've rediscovered, means lots of practical work, late-night lab sessions, late-night drinking sessions, far-too-early-mornings and having to spend small fortunes on course books. This is what I did today in preparation for reading week next week. I really am going to buckle down and make some progress on Graphics, Databases and my Project. All to the soundtrack of the seven new CDs I had to buy from Amazon whilst buying course books.