I’ve been to visit money today.
The non job interview was in a private school high on the hill overlooking Barcelona in a ghetto of private school institutions nestling among other moneyed establishments perched on some of the one-in-one slopes of this rich mount.
I found a parking space which threw me a little. My previous experience in the rarefied car packed narrow streets of this area was akin to a motorised nightmare with my eventually parking space for a school being in a not so adjacent underground car park of a hospital.
My entrance to the school was questioned by the teacher on duty at the gate but she accepted that I was arriving for an interview on my say so and allowed me to wander off into the school buildings unsupervised.
I eventually found a very helpful teacher who tried to find the person I had come to see and when that didn’t work she directed me towards an older part of the school which housed the administration.
The school is a mixture of ferro-concrete and plate glass at one end and elegant town house at the other. I stepped across artificial grass surfaces on which the children were playing to ascend the short flight of steps to the old glass doors which gave access to the secretaries and their reception area.
I was early, having left an hour to travel the twenty kilometres to my destination and settled down in the reception area on a Sheraton style chair to wait for my interviewer and to study my surroundings.
The reception area was small but solidly comfortable. A small but nevertheless impressive flight of steps curved upwards to the first floor; the walls had above average artworks by past pupils including a heavily worked scene in mosaic. Most impressive was the dark wood pair of heavily panelled doors in a dark wood alcove which housed the Director and the Library. They looked like something from one of the more pretentious banks when the Manager was able to lurk in opulence hidden from common view by a carved door of imposing magnificence. This was of course in the days when bankers were regarded with some degree of awe and not seen as the criminally irresponsible charlatans that we know of today.
It must cow the pupils if they are sent to the Director and have to wait outside such exclusive pieces of woodwork.
When I eventually got inside I was ushered to a low sofa in an elegantly furnished room and I half expected to be offered tea in exquisite porcelain cups with miniscule handles. But I wasn’t.
The interview was reasonably informal and hardly searching. They were courteous and informative, but the job that might be there would not appear until next year. As I am not working in The School That Sacked Me they offered the expectation that there could be some supply work which could be used as a way of getting to know each other.
I will have to get my qualifications ‘recognized’ by the Spanish government. This means dreaded paperwork and, as one of the interviewers explained, “The government is not helpful.”
I have downloaded the simple looking form which is necessary for the process to be completed but as the interviewer explained that was just part of their diabolic cunning. What they actually want and what they say they want are two different things and, when you don’t give them what they haven’t asked for they remain quiet waiting for you to provide what you don’t know that they haven’t told you they need to see.
To someone newly arrived in Spain the previous paragraph would seem to be a paraphrase of a trickier part of ‘Catch-22’, but we natives who have been here for over a year know as ‘real life.’
The authorities apparently want a full description of the courses that I have taken at University and in my training year. They want full Spanish translations of documents that I send. My degree certificate is written in Latin and my threshold certificate in English and Welsh. The original of my post-grad teaching certificate looks like an amateur attempt at a photocopied fake and my DES teacher number is on an ancient yellowing postcard. I can foresee months of frustration as the powers that be look askance at my ‘documents.’
This is where my every trusty e-book reader comes into its anaesthetising own! Delay merely sees me sitting serenely reading. Out of the 350 books that I have in my slim gadget companion there is something there to ameliorate the pernicious effects of pernicious Spanish bureaucracy in all its manifestations!
I have fired off another batch of e-mails to possible sources of employment and I now sit back and wait for responses. In one of my e-mails I quoted part of Malcolm’s speech at the end of Macbeth’ that should give them something to think about!
And when no responses come, I will turn to plan B.
Plan B will be unveiled in all its glory when I have finished my latest ‘medicinal’ extract from the gadget.
Perhaps.
Or there is much, much more to read!
The non job interview was in a private school high on the hill overlooking Barcelona in a ghetto of private school institutions nestling among other moneyed establishments perched on some of the one-in-one slopes of this rich mount.
I found a parking space which threw me a little. My previous experience in the rarefied car packed narrow streets of this area was akin to a motorised nightmare with my eventually parking space for a school being in a not so adjacent underground car park of a hospital.
My entrance to the school was questioned by the teacher on duty at the gate but she accepted that I was arriving for an interview on my say so and allowed me to wander off into the school buildings unsupervised.
I eventually found a very helpful teacher who tried to find the person I had come to see and when that didn’t work she directed me towards an older part of the school which housed the administration.
The school is a mixture of ferro-concrete and plate glass at one end and elegant town house at the other. I stepped across artificial grass surfaces on which the children were playing to ascend the short flight of steps to the old glass doors which gave access to the secretaries and their reception area.
I was early, having left an hour to travel the twenty kilometres to my destination and settled down in the reception area on a Sheraton style chair to wait for my interviewer and to study my surroundings.
The reception area was small but solidly comfortable. A small but nevertheless impressive flight of steps curved upwards to the first floor; the walls had above average artworks by past pupils including a heavily worked scene in mosaic. Most impressive was the dark wood pair of heavily panelled doors in a dark wood alcove which housed the Director and the Library. They looked like something from one of the more pretentious banks when the Manager was able to lurk in opulence hidden from common view by a carved door of imposing magnificence. This was of course in the days when bankers were regarded with some degree of awe and not seen as the criminally irresponsible charlatans that we know of today.
It must cow the pupils if they are sent to the Director and have to wait outside such exclusive pieces of woodwork.
When I eventually got inside I was ushered to a low sofa in an elegantly furnished room and I half expected to be offered tea in exquisite porcelain cups with miniscule handles. But I wasn’t.
The interview was reasonably informal and hardly searching. They were courteous and informative, but the job that might be there would not appear until next year. As I am not working in The School That Sacked Me they offered the expectation that there could be some supply work which could be used as a way of getting to know each other.
I will have to get my qualifications ‘recognized’ by the Spanish government. This means dreaded paperwork and, as one of the interviewers explained, “The government is not helpful.”
I have downloaded the simple looking form which is necessary for the process to be completed but as the interviewer explained that was just part of their diabolic cunning. What they actually want and what they say they want are two different things and, when you don’t give them what they haven’t asked for they remain quiet waiting for you to provide what you don’t know that they haven’t told you they need to see.
To someone newly arrived in Spain the previous paragraph would seem to be a paraphrase of a trickier part of ‘Catch-22’, but we natives who have been here for over a year know as ‘real life.’
The authorities apparently want a full description of the courses that I have taken at University and in my training year. They want full Spanish translations of documents that I send. My degree certificate is written in Latin and my threshold certificate in English and Welsh. The original of my post-grad teaching certificate looks like an amateur attempt at a photocopied fake and my DES teacher number is on an ancient yellowing postcard. I can foresee months of frustration as the powers that be look askance at my ‘documents.’
This is where my every trusty e-book reader comes into its anaesthetising own! Delay merely sees me sitting serenely reading. Out of the 350 books that I have in my slim gadget companion there is something there to ameliorate the pernicious effects of pernicious Spanish bureaucracy in all its manifestations!
I have fired off another batch of e-mails to possible sources of employment and I now sit back and wait for responses. In one of my e-mails I quoted part of Malcolm’s speech at the end of Macbeth’ that should give them something to think about!
And when no responses come, I will turn to plan B.
Plan B will be unveiled in all its glory when I have finished my latest ‘medicinal’ extract from the gadget.
Perhaps.
Or there is much, much more to read!
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