On Idling and Writing
Yesterday I drove to Tottenham from Edgware through morning rush hour hell, to work in a pharmacy for the day. It was 12 miles, on the meter, and on the RAC routemaster website, but it took one and a half hours. Through Totteridge, Southgate, Bounds Green, Wood Green, and then I was probably stuck less than 1 mile away from my final destination for a good 15 minutes, where the traffic mysteriously refused to move any quicker than 0.1 mile per minute. I was half an hour late for work. The whole time driving there I kept thinking wasn't there some other way for all these other people to go to work?! Couldn't they somehow just all use the bus? Look at them! One selfish person per car! What was I doing here?
I had waited for months for work in London to turn up, and then moments like this make me think why do I want to stay here anyway? But then, after having thought about it, I have to admit it. There's no place in England like it, it is just fabulous. All the fun courses, all the fun classes, theatre, movies, clubs, social groups, on gumtree.com the London section is the biggest and most happening, the best restaurants, variety of food.

But still, no work. In a mark of what I would consider near desperation, I agreed to work in this Tottenham pharmacy, which took the 1.5 hours to drive to in London traffic hell, for 3 weeks. £20 an hour, the going rate, I think, but it's funny, it never feels enough.
I woke up early this morning, before the pre-dawn, and found myself calculating my theoretical year's salary if I worked 5 days a week at £20 an hour. About £800 a week pre-tax, 800 times 52 is... well look at that, my calculator calculated 41600. In my semi-awake state I kept on rounding down and calculated just over £30k which I felt quite depressed about because I had been so certain it would be more around the £50k mark. I don't know why I care, I hate working and hardly ever do it, so my yearly income is more like £16k. I think in my depressed states I look for validation in my life and try to find it in how much I could earn.
I think I get depressed at times particularly when I've been idle for awhile. I have been reading Tom Hodgkinson's How to be Idle, and I applaud it, it's given me a whole new perspective on loafing. But nevertheless, I find myself getting restless. I've been leading this idling lifestyle, all my life now, I realise. Recently though, when I find my CVs being rejected because they look weak, and I struggle when people ask me for references, I can't help wondering at the options I've chosen, and how they will affect my future, something I honestly didn't think about when I was in my 20s. But I have chosen, even if I've chosen in my own annoying, wishy-washy, I can't make up my mind way. I've chosen not to do the 9-5 job structure, and besides which, the jobs which involve the real money definitively do not work anywhere within this time frame. If I'd really wanted to, Really Wanted to, I could have applied for a real job the minute I finished my training. And even when I was rejected, which I usually was, would have kept persevering, until it would inevitably have happened. What I Really Wanted to do was a PhD, which was another 3.5 years of blissful idling (I guess I might not have been one of my supervisors most shining gold star students). Considering I've mostly had rejections in my job applications, to have gotten the PhD was almost like divine providence. But yet again, when I finished it, if I'd Really Wanted to, I could have pestered my supervisor to getting me a job, stay in academia, wear brown shoes and head bands over a frumpy hair style. But I did not. So why do I complain about my life now? All the choices I made myself to get me to this point, why can't I just be happy?
My current effort to validate my life is a writing project (there's something about the word project, just sounds so much better than hobby). The only actual thing I have ever Really Wanted to do is write. I actually always thought I was good at writing - until I was shot down quite a bit at a job interview for a writing job for the Pharmaceutical Journal. Not only that, I really can't seem to come up with stories. When I was younger, I started one story after another, then inevitably abandoned them as soon as I got bored with them, usually when I couldn't think of how to continue or end them. But even that hasn't deterred me, as now I am embarking on a travel journal, an account of my travels around Australia. Now that, that I actually have a chance of seeing to the end. I started it over a year ago, and has been very prone to fits and starts. A few times I hadn't worked, or looked at it for weeks, months, and I've honestly thought I would probably never return to it. But funnily enough, this time it's been different. This time this manuscript has been sitting there on my computer, waiting for me to come back to it. Always. Sometimes it feels like a job, sometimes it feels like a comfort blanket. It definitely fulfills a certain requirement in my mind which needs itching time to time.
But then again, not always.

Hellish day in the Pharmacy from Hell, Dunstable
Yesterday I got up at 7.50am, looking forward to my one day of work this week in a pharmacy in Dunstable which is so quiet I spend most of my time there just reading. It's great, it's easy for me to drive to, 9am-6pm, and the shop even closes for an hour for lunch. All the customers are old regulars who are used to the odd eccentric foibles of the understocked shop, and it is virtually a walk in the park, plus I get paid per hour.
Unfortunately, when I got there, I found out that another pharmacist had turned up to do the day there, due to some double booking misunderstanding. There was, however, a solution to this dilemma, which was a second pharmacy owned by the same man, which was now waiting pharmacistless, for one of us to go there. The only problem was, was that this pharmacy was also known as the pharmacy from hell, open from 9am to 9pm, with a clientele which included some 20 methadone addicts, as well as just addicts, and was currently understaffed due to people leaving from bad working conditions imposed on them by the boss.
Me and this other pharmacist stood there looking at each other, and it took less than a minute to realise that neither of us wanted to go there, but apparently least of all him, a hospital bred perfectionist who apparently freaked out at mere dispensing details, even in a pharmacy as quiet as this. So thus I felt obliged to be 'the man' and go to the Hell's pharmacy, which I couldn't help feeling was kind of unfair, after all I was here because I was booked by the boss himself, whereas he was here because his friend, the usual pharmacist who is himself just a locum asked him to come. Plus, why should I have to be the man? I'm a woman, I'm not cut out for stress of unusual cruelty that I always seem to find myself in busy community pharmacies.
So my day quickly turned into a trial of mental and physical endurance, beginning with driving down to the Hell's pharmacy and spending 10 minutes finding somewhere to park, then having to wait with the other staff out side the shop for the boss to come down and open it, because nobody there had the keys. Right from the minute I stepped into the pharmacy and took my coats off I had prescription after prescription to churn out, interspersed with surly methadone addicts looking ill and borderline cold turkeyish trooping in and drinking their dose in front of me, which is the requirement to stop them from the selling the stuff. One of them downed the stuff into his mouth, and I could see that he hadn't swallowed it, because he couldn't reply when I asked him if he was alright, and ran out of the shop (with his partner's methadone, because she doesn't have to drink it in front of us) with his mouth bulging. Apparently they've been known to spit the methadone back out of their mouths, and then sell that on, which just makes my mind boggle. What a world they live in. I barely had two minutes together to sit down and eat my sad coronation chicken sandwich, which I couldn't finish.
Just as the evening was coming to an end, and I dared to think I had gotten away with doing an entire day at Hell's pharmacy without any incidents, then wouldn't you know it. A woman came in to pick up a prescription that she had left in the pharmacy the day before for us to process, and guess what, it hadn't been done. My God, her fury was cold and cutting, if she had slapped me it would have been less painful and humiliating. The pharmacist on duty the previous day had promised her that it would be ready for her by the following evening, and then left it abandoned, without any message attached to it, with a stack of other prescriptions which looked like they'd been there since time immemorial. If we'd known we would have done it, but although we saw it there, we didn't know what was going on with it . Being new to the place I had little idea of their filing methods, there were prescriptions everywhere, lying around like dead bodies. Then to cap it all, we couldn't even do it then, because the most crucial item on the prescription, for Parkinson's disease, had either not been ordered or was unlocatable, with the stress of her screaming at us that she needed it for her sick mother straight away and that if anything happened to her it would be our fault, the pressure was almost unbearable. So what else could I do, I had to grovel for forgiveness, and admit there was nothing I could do, and then I prayed that she would go away. Right after she went away, a methadone addict came in requesting his dose, only when I went to find his prescription, I found it in the 'done' pile. But I couldn't for the life of me remember whether I had seen him already that day, and disbelievingly I told him that he'd already collected. 'Have I?' he said innocently. My God! I thought, what if he denies it? I really couldn't remember myself, what if I'd accidently given it to someone else? What if I had given it to him, but he pretends that I hadn't, and kicks up a fuss? Then saints be praised the counter assistant spoke up, 'That's right, I remember, you came in already today, I was wondering what you were doing back here again!' I walked away almost gagging with relief.
But I wasn't to get away with it scot free, some one was determined to get me tonight, and sent my nemesis in the form of a young Asian drug addict, who was there to pick up his daily tablet for Subutex, which his precription clearly stated should be taken in front of me. When I held out the unwrapped tablet, he took a look at it, and then spent the next 5 minutes trying to convince me to let him take the tablet away with him instead. 'Oh, but the other pharmacist has been letting me do that, it's much better for me this way, because I can adjust it myself and take less it I want, one whole tablet it too strong for me, it'll knock me out.' On and on he went, and when I refused, he became unpleasant. 'You obviously don't know what it's like to take this do you? If I take this in one go, I might pass out, then I'll come back and blame it on you, you don't care anything about my welfare do you?'
And just when I thought he'd finished and was finally going to take another tablet, he looks at me, and then accuses me of smirking at him. 'Do you think this is funny? I don't think this is funny at all!' and off he goes on another tirade, accusing me of looking sanctimonious and smug. The worst thing was that I couldn't walk away until he had taken his tablet, but he had provoked me so far that I was arguing with him like an alley cat. Even when he had taken it he was still provoking me, and the counter assistant was trying to get me to walk away. I did, in the end, back into the dispensary, after which he still prowled around the counter for a good minute, still insisted on accusing me of smiling, to which I couldn't stop myself from screaming back at him, 'So what? Am I not allowed to smile? AM I NOT ALLOWED TO SMILE?!!' Then I went back to some paperwork pretending like nothing had happened, trying to still the tremble in my hands and ignoring the flush in my face.
Even when he left I couldn't relax, I found myself worrying over the methadone scripts, hoping that I'd processed and recorded them all properly. And then I found out that there were still 5 prescriptions to be delivered which were waiting for me to signed off by the dispensary girl, who was also new there, and with all the closing procedures and checking, I didn't manage to leave the shop until 9.30pm. I was so wired I almost forget that I hadn't had dinner, and my stomach was tied up in knots. I bumped the back of my car into the car parked behind me when I drove off, which I'm normally so anal about, but my nerves were so frazzled I didn't even care.
When I got home it was 10pm, and after eating the dinner that my amazing mum had saved for me, I went to sleep not long afterwards, and didn't get out of bed till 11am the next morning.

Wow, I had almost forgotten about this weblog I had here. For days I had been dying to send some words out into the internet cosmos, and now that I can... I don't know what to say. Because I have so much to say. But I think all the stuff I wanted to say I said to someone else, so it's like now I don't need to say them again. But enough of this waffle crap!

update
I have not worked for 3 months. How fuckin' scary that sounds. The days are however going by remarkably quickly, for this seasoned loafer. I am spending me days doing stuff like cruising the internet, on my brother's new broadband subscription. SOCIALISING WITH FRIENDS and strangers, yay! And not least having an inordinatley large number of lunches out with MUM, in Oriental City in Colindale, London, UK. Because I'm back living in my parent's house.
nodule
I am have spent the last couple of months worrying about and having a nodule on my thyroid investigated by Mr Fleming at the Hammersmith Hospital, which the last time I saw him had left me to decide whether I should leave it there or not. I will be going to see him at the end of this month, and will probably decide to leave it and have it monitored for now, because I've had two fine needle aspirations (FNA, kind of like a biopsy) which have come back benign, plus if I did have it removed he would have to remove half my thyroid, which comes with not only the risks of surgery, but also the possibility of going hypothyroid. The reason he's not ruling out surgery is because FNAs are not 100%, and they are naturally cautious with large nodules, which mine is.
applying to work in the USA
I am applying to work in the US, specifically Seattle, because of a gorgeous man I am seeing transatlantically, despite my better judgement, because he has not proposed marriage, plus the real possibility that the US is being dragged into Hell by Bush. Still, it's not likely that I'm going to actually get out there before the end of 2007, as the application process has turned out to be curiously awkward, and I haven't even sent off my first application form yet. I am talking about the National Board of Pharmacy (NABP) in the US, and the Foreign Pharmacy Graduate Equivilancy Exam (FPGEE). Problems that have happened in the process of just completing ONE form include:
- getting someone to notarise the thing without having to pay over £50 to get an actual notary to do it, things I tried were going to my friend's sister who's a solicitor, and going to a magistrates court to get a magistrate to do it. Unfortunately I found out that neither of the latter two were GOOD ENOUGH for the FPGEC. And so had to cough up £55 to get a dodgy solicitor to sign my form, and he managed to smear ink over it.
-getting a foreign draft to pay for the application, $700, almost £400, the fuckers. I waited a week for the draft to be posted to me, and when I didn't get it, I phoned up the bank who then found out that due to some glitch my order never went through, and so they've had to reprocess it again.
I also have problems with a SECOND form that needs to be sent off to a second body, even though its for the same application, which is I that my school has not been able to do me an official transcript, even though I requested it a month ago. Every time I phone I'm fobbed off by some arsy secretary who says they're short staffed and overworked.

I can't help wondering if this is not a sign. Cosmic voice: 'Forget about Bill, it'll never work out! Don't go to the US, it's going to become the new hub of evil!'