great… overnight, the aussie dollar hit a 9 month high of 78c. i know i’ve mentioned this before but did u know the aussie dollar was at 55 cents when i was planning on coming over? i have my last payment to swinburne due in january. it would be nice if the dollar would drop down to 55 or maybe even 60 or even 65 before that’s due.
ive been meaning to write about a small world situation i had last week. i was leaving work & walked down degraves street (often a location used in tourist pix b/c it’s all cafes and looks very ‘european’). i saw this girl taking an order at a table & did a double take. sure enough, it’s this girl i go to uni with. she’s from germany so under the same work regulations i am.
this pisses me off. it’s just yet another intl mba student working a crap casual gig. the aussie students either go to school p/t and have full time jobs or they don’t work at all & go to school f/t (they can receive gov’t funding called a youth allowance AND work p/t). they also qualify for discounted transport.
the intl students are allowed to work 20 hrs a week and full time during breaks. we are not allowed transport discounts (i’ve been told the govt line is ‘if they have enough money to come here, they have enough money to pay full price’). i’ve found my fellow students have worked retail, call centres, waitressed & other casual gigs or they don’t work at all b/c they have money coming in from the parents. my personal experience is recruiters & employers (at least in IT) don’t want to have to deal with the 20 hr requirement & don’t really want to talk to you. i know of 1 classmate who was an accountant at home & has gotten an accounting gig here.
it’s quite a shock to go from working a ‘real’ job & earning decent cash to saying ‘may i help you?’ for money so low i’m embarrased to quote to any figures.
but i think its the situation that’s so annoying. people with skills, with experience who end up in casual jobs (um… here, they’re called ‘casual’… at home, um, i *think* it would just be called ‘part-time’. um… i forget). the department @ school doesn’t deal with jobs – they send you to the uni jobs department (so for ungrad & grad & TAFE which is a vocational school). looking at their site today they have jobs for… telemarketers, xmas tree delivery, pizza delivery, accounting, fundraising, marketing & sales (oh, look,i could do IT sales for A$15 an hour).
argh. ok, im just getting annoyed & not working on my thesis which i should be doing. out of here…