April, 2006

Rants / Technology — 1 Comment
3
Apr 06

Telecom Are Awful

Telecom are the biggest telecommunications company in New Zealand. Their monopoly over the New Zealand industry has been debated a lot, especially over the past few years with regards to broadband internet service.

Back last year, I posted this article with prices for broadband internet plans. It got a fair amount of notice from my New Zealand readers, most who were pretty pissed off about the prices and speeds.

In the past few weeks, Telecom has been advertising about how they are now providing “faster, cheaper” broadband. While they have introduced a plan with 10GB of bandwidth at a speed of 3.5Mbps downstream (which isn’t really that bad, considering it’s almost twice as fast and $10 cheaper than before, however it still slows down to dial-up once you reach your bandwidth limit and you seemingly can’t buy blocks of more bandwidth) they are toting them as starting at $29.95 per month. Sounds great! Or is it?

In small print the advertisement says that the plan they are talking about gives you only 200MB per month, and each megabyte thereafter is 2¢. That means that 1GB is more than $20. That is crazy! I fear that someone will get caught out like the person who this Telecom bill from 2003 belongs to:

That is tragic.

Life — 2 Comments
3
Apr 06

Resume Lengths in New Zealand

I’ve just returned to New Zealand after living and working in the States and UK for five years. I’ve been getting into job hunt mode and have been visiting recruiters in the past week. One of them said that my resume (formatted for the US and UK job markets) is too short. At a paltry two pages, I was told it needs to be at least three pages with five pages being preferable.

I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would want to read a five-page resume, let alone specifically request it. It’s not like I’m a CEO and have been working for 20 years, although that would probably still be as equally boring to read as my resume if it were five pages long.

Google isn’t helping me (mostly because there is nothing on the internet in New Zealand) but I can’t find anything about how long a resume should be in New Zealand. Anyone?

Life — 7 Comments
2
Apr 06

I’m A Terrible Reformed Smoker

I gave up smoking five years ago and became an awful reformed smoker. The kind that lectured smoker friends and didn’t like going out to bars that were really smoky and actually thought it was a disgusting habit.

But I have a secret.

For the past two months I have been smoking. This is really weird, because when I gave up smoking five years ago, I actually gave up smoking. I didn’t go through any relapses aside from scabbing the odd cigarette when shitfaced at a bar and the night I realised I was getting divorced when I smoked an entire packet. But two months ago I was in Belgium and saw a pack of Davidoff cigarettes. They were only €3.50 and because I’d never seen them before I really wanted to try them. I was compelled. I kept buying them.

Now I’m back in New Zealand and have rediscovered the glorious taste that is Port Royal roll-your-owns. I remembered how much I enjoy putting a super slim filter to my lips, getting a yellow Zig-Zag and some tobacco and rolling it gently. Rolling it until it was a perfect thin rod of cancer-causing love meat. Then licking it from the middle to the right and then the middle to the left. And after appreciating how nice my new cigarette looks, I get to light it and taste it. Mmm.

I feel guilty. I’m not supposed to enjoy the taste. I’m not supposed to feel guilty about ticking “non-smoker” on employment forms. I’ve never had a relapse before.

Smoking is just too dangerous. I should do heroin instead.

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