Apt driving pun

Soon to be Colombia to Caledonia when i leave Bogotá in 3 weeks. Strange and horrendous to think about leaving. Ach obviously i canny wait to go home and see everybody and read the papers and eat bacon rolls and whatnot but it's been a long two years here and it feels more like starting again than going home. And the worst thing is this: applying for jobs. I really need to get a (real) job but the whole process is dead depressing.

Observe this obscene but not at all out of the ordinary job description:

Are you the best of the best in sales in your company? Are you always the top achiever? Do you want to earn upwards of £40k+ annually? Then come and speak to me about my city centre client who is seeking business to business sales consultants to join their teams. These roles are 100% outbound telephone sales based where you will be heavily targeted on new business and retentions, growing accounts and revenue with each client . The right person for this role is a hunter, who is extremely money hungry and driven by exceeding their targets.

Christ this sounds like total hell. Phoning folk and selling them expensive and probably unnecessary services while stuck in some grim competitive atmosphere of battle against your colleagues. "Extremely money hungry". Is it naive to want something more out of your job than just money? Sounds preposterous after hours of trawling through the likes of this pish on job websites but i'd like to do something that was of some benefit or at least use to someone else apart from myself. Dosn't have to be full-blown save the world stuff, just something where you could think you were making things marginally better.

Ah, shite office jobs. Probably me thinking that working in the office of the government recycling initiative would be preferable to working in the office of some bland sales horrors is because i've never worked in any office and have no idea about it. Are you a socially-committed, fascinating, half-decent paying employer who provides free coffee in the work environment who is looking for bilingual patter-merchants with expertise in toy shops, high-speed sandwich manufacture and organisation of english-language film festivals to become part of your marvellous team? Aye JOIN THE QUE PAL!

In other news, today i had my first Colombian driving lesson! A bit of background on the system: with a laughable 10 "hours" (actually 50 minute classes) of practice alongside 27 (totally non-existent) hours of theory the Colombian government will gaily slap a driving license into your utterly unfit hands and send you swerving off down the motorway. This explains everything about Colombian traffic.

The interesting thing is that you have to take a really thorough medical exam (had it this morning chaps, passed with flying colours!) including sitting in a soundproof box identifying which ear is hearing high-pitched tones, looking into some 70's metal binoculars reading out numbers and choosing the appropriate tiny shape out of a grid of similar tiny shapes and, most fun of all, a bizarre reflexes test where you press down on pedals when triangles and circles appear on a screen. It seems ludicrous that after such an in-depth test you then go and mess about in a clapped-out banger for a few hours and they give you the license (without a test!), but i'm just putting it down as another reason to love idiosyncratic and preposterous Colombia. Here's another, and go on then, another.

Anyway, the point was that Bogotá is an excellent place to learn to drive, being chaotic and busy and unpredictable. My instructor is called Don Hector and is 5 foot tall with a nice calm manner and an appealing habit of encouraging me to honk back at taxi drivers who aurally suggest that me stalling in the middle of essential transport arteries in full rush hour is not making them happy. Actually i think i've got the hang of this foot off the clutch slowly and carefully business, my days of stalling are (hopefully) behind me!

Despite the fact that it's a special car with separate pedals for Don Hector's watchful wee feet, and the fact that i live in a quiet residential neighbourhood and was only on seriously important roads for about 20 minutes, it still seems farcical that they actually let people who don't know how to drive loose on things like the Autopista Norte.
Next lesson is tomorrow at 8am, should be a joy...

I pure love it though, it's so much fun. Even the constant taxi honking doesn't bother me. Relax, arseholes, life is far too short to be getting stressed about traffic.

Speaking of life, mine is braw although i'm nearly jobless and reversed the car into a hedge. Here i am having a beer in Cafe Pasaje with the mysterious Mr Pedraza who we will be seeing more of in the future...
P.S I really meant it about the job, I actually am moderately useful so if you yourself are a socially-commited and fascinating employer drop us a line, likes.