So the job search is ramping up to high gear of late, which is a welcome distraction while Polina is away in Switzerland. However, she has been very good about calling me on Skype and videochatting with me regularly, so I don't miss her too too much.
The interview in Princeton went very well. The company is really in the middle of nowhere, smack dab in a giant corporate complex about 18 miles from the New Jersey Turnpike. They have a big trading floor that you can see behind glass as soon as you walk in the lobby, and the rest of the offices are open desks with no walls whatsoever. Not really my preferred environment, but I can't really be picky about that. My recruiter who set up the interview followed up afterwards and reported this morning that they really liked me, and thought I was a good candidate, but they are just starting their search and they want to see some more people. This is actually okay for me because I have a couple other interviews I want to explore before I'm required to make a decision.
The Midtown PR agency let me know they were not going to offer me a position, so that's a dead end there. I'm waiting to hear more from a phone interview I had last Thursday since the interviewer went on vacation for a week after she talked to me. Then I have another phone interview on Tuesday for a new position being created by an insurance brokerage company, one that reports directly to a CEO. That's a pretty exciting opportunity, so we'll see how that pans out next week.
In other personal news, I had my first date with someone new since I started dating Polina almost a year ago. My friend Vivek, who runs the cricket meetup group I participate in ("My first cricket game" - July 8, 2009) asked me out to Lolita Bar on the Lower East Side near my old burlesque studio. I planned to go directly after my Women's Poly Meetup Group on Tuesday, and I did, but we ran quite long so I turned up almost an hour late. It also started pouring down rain when I was about two blocks away, so I got drenched and showed up looking like a drowned rat. To add to my embarrassment, he was dressed nicely in a suit and dress shirt, and I was wearing just a t-shirt, skirt and sandals. He seemed to take it all in stride and we had a nice time talking about all manner of topics. He lives in Jersey City and runs his own mergers and acquisitions firm with a partner, matching up companies that do IT outsourcing in India. We'll try to get the group together on Tuesday after my phone interview to have another cricket practice, and maybe I can get him to go with me to Brick Lane Curry House, which was recently featured on Man vs. Food, to eat some spicy food.
I've been captivated lately by Regina Spektor's last album, Begin to Hope, which I checked out of the library a few months back and listened to, but wasn't impressed with it at the time. This time, her quirky lyrics and quasi-electronic folk music have caught on with me. Maybe I will find a copy of her latest release, Far, and give that a listen as well. I am also now more than halfway through my collection of Ranma 1/2 DVDs, just starting Season 3 now. Even after all this time, they still make me laugh. Maybe after I'm done with those, I'll finally get to watching the first two seasons of The L Word, which is the only remaining TV series I own on DVD that I haven't watched yet.
All for now. Hopefully I will have some good news on my job search the next time I post.
