Life of the (semi) unemployed

As most of you know, I graduated from a Graphic Design program in December 2006. I still work at Old Navy part time and have been spending my free time looking for a professional job. By "looking for a professional job" I mean "kinda sort of" looking.

I will admit I have been putting in more effort than before. I joined 2 organizations that aid in teaching skills to help find jobs. Both of them have excellent workshops I've attended and I have a counselor in both who also give great advice. I have about 4 websites I check for job postings and have been sending out my resume a few times a week. I even cut my days available at Old Navy so I could spend more time concentrating on the job hunt. I fixed up my resume and even printed some business cards.

I'm also building a website for the improv summit happening this saturday (March 24th) - http://improvsummit.com
It's not finished yet but when it's complete I'll have something non-school project to put in my CV.

Although I've done all these things it doesn't seem like it's enough. I still need to put my portfolio on the web, make my CV more graphical (it's only in word format now), start researching for companies in the field and start concentrating on cold calling. Cold calling is basically calling a company without knowing the person you are going to talk to. The whole point isn't to call asking for a job but just to learn more about the company/industry. The outcome to put your name out there while also discovering more about what it's like to work in that field.

I will admit I've been a bit distracted as of late (for example I didn't do anything this morning because I went skiing yesterday and I'm completely exhausted).

I'm going to keep trying to update this blog but as you can tell the posts are more spaced out. That's because lately I find it so hard to be structured while not having a concrete schedule, which hopefully will occur in teh next month or so.

Vaganza 2007 - 24+ hours later

Vaganza is OVER! It started yesturday at 12pm and concluded today at 12pm. Due to a meeting I had with a counselor at JEM, and partly due to the snow "storm" we had, I was only able to make it to Vaganza at 12:30pm. After a quick bite, my first performance was at 1pm.
For the most part, until 7pm, there were probably at most 5-10 people in the audience who were not improvers. At 7pm, Uncalled For, the first special guest, took the stage and the audience had definitely grown to 20-30 people. This stayed like so for most the night, with some traffic of people coming and going. 3am marked lock-down with this years theme being After maybe 4am, all the audience members left and remained that way until 11am where a whopping 2 people showed up. It sucks that we had such a a bad turnout due to the bad weather.

In the end, we all had fun, I managed to stay awake the whole time (by 5-6am I was having a great difficulty doing so) and we raised about 200$.

For pictures click HERE!

After Vaganza I went for lunch with my mom in which I found myself blacking out mid-sentence several times. I promise never to make fun of my dad again (who has a sleeping problem).

Until next year!

Also, don't forget the OTHER big improv event: IMPROV SUMMIT! It's on the Saturday, March 24th. Universities involved include Carleton, McGill, U de M and UQAM.

Best sense of direction EVER....

Friday night I was driving down to Laval. By accident, instead of heading North, I went South. Unfortunately, I didn't really know which direction I needed to go specifically, I just knew by sight that I hit the wrong exit. That being said, I knew I just needed to go the other direction (but did not actually know which direction I was going not, which was South). No problem. I just needed to get off at the next exit, turn around and go back on the 13.

Not so sweet.

I got off at the next exit but ended up on another highway (250) heading West. Ok, so I was now going back towards my house, no biggie. Just get off at the next exit and turn around... The next exit was Dorval! I drove past the airport! Finally, I got off at Cardinal dt. turned around and ended on the 520 est. I was getting somewhere!

And then more lost...

When I hit the 13 yet again, I accidently went South. Again. This time I didnt' even know it and I drove all the way until the highway stopped existing and it turned into the 20. Again I got off the next exit, which was Lasalle!

Anyways, 45 minutes total of driving, I finally made it to Laval.

On the way home it took me 15 minutes.

ON the bright side, I'll never forget to go North to Laval from now on.

VAGANZA 2007!

That's right. McGill Improv's annual 24 hour spectacular is back!

Click the picture to read all the info!

For those who don't go to McGill, it's in the Shatner (SSMU) Building located at 3600 McTavish way up the hill on the left.

When you're done with us, there's Nuit Blanche, an overnight festival happening all over Montreal. Sleep deprivation of 48hours! Hooray!

Note: The word Vaganza was chosen for the sole purpose of it being a shortened version of the word Extravaganza and has no affiliation with the word Vagina (although they look/sound the same). That being said, I had no intentions of a pun when I put down "Unlimited re-entry" (in fact I only realized this after I printed it)

Job Hunting Sucks

I finished my graphic design program back in December. At first I used the holidays as an excuse to dick around. Then I sort of looked around for jobs but was getting so many leads from my recruiter, was busy working on stuff for my client and was working a lot at Old Navy.

Now it's almost March, I haven't had an invitations for an interview, haven't heard back from the 2 interviews I did have, stuff with my client is on hold and Old Navy cut down everyone's hours. This leaves me with tons of free time, and I"m bored out of my mind. I know, I know, you're probably yelling at your computer monitor now wishing that you had nothing to do because you're so sick of work/school/killing hookers and burying them in your farm, but a lot of nothing to do gets boring after a while. I've been going out a lot lately but don't feel I deserve it because I spend my days either in front of my computer (reading Dr. McNinja comics), watching tv or a movie on TV or going downtown.

On the bright side I did start to apply to more jobs. On the really shitty side, I just discovered today I had 2 spelling mistakes on my CV from DAY ONE! Unfortunately I don't own a copy of the program I used to type up my CV (Quark Xpress) on my PC at home (actually I downloaded a ripped version. It worked fine and I was completely surprised until I realized I can't save for some reason...). So, I have to go to school to fix it up. Would someone night hire you for misspelling urgency as ergency?

I did go to a YES (Youth Employment Services) orientation and learned that networking is key. Anyone need a graphic designer??

New book time!

I was reading Tad Williams Otherland series. I read the first book and really liked it. The second one was SO bad. It just kept dragging on and on. I wanted to finsihed it but I lost it. That goes to show how much I really wanted to read it all. After not reading anything besides a couple of Maxim magazines I decided to buy a new book. I was looking into getting this book a friend recommened about Professional pick up artists. It looked really interesting but WAY to expensive for me (40$!). So I opted for Stephen King's Dark Tower book 1. I heard good things and decided it's time to try it out. A nice 10$ price tag helped seal the deal.

Job seeking looking up... way up

Today I had an interview for a graphic design job at Joseph Ribkiff (designer womens clothing).
In typical budman fashion, I had to print my portfolio (yet again, this happened last time) the DAY of the interview. This time however, I didn't even have time to eat breakfast. Last time I printed my portfolio it cost me 50$ because I got charged each time they had to open a file. They suggested the next time I put it all in a PDF file and that way I only get charged once for the open fee. So I did and it was cheaper. Yay! But all the prints came out with slightly different colors due to the program. Fuck! ("Oh! I like it much better that you changed the background from purple to blue" "Wait... I didn't change the backgr... WTF?!?"). Thankfully no one that looks at them would realize those are different colors so I'm in the clear.

I made there at 9:52 with my interview at 10:00am. I realized when I parked I forgot the person who I needed to meet's name. After screaming on the phone at my mom to turn on my computer and find it, I was all set. I run inside, and a couple of people walk by from both directions, one with a bunch of clothes. Reminded me a tad of "the Devil Wears Prada, but not as crazy.

After rushing in and being told that I had to wait, I put my coat in the closet and sit down. I look around and realize, Amélie, my former classmate and friend has been waiting there the whole time. She had an interview after mine.

The whole interview was 15 minutes. I met with the person, sat down, got asked to explain myself, she flipped through my portfolio faster than 747 jet, explained to me that they need someone to make layouts and work with photos on all kinds of jobs and finished with the fact that she'll need to try me out for a little "test". At most I'll be given a logo and a picture and text and just need to make a small poster or something.

So I'll just wait and see

McGill Improv Masked Ball

Last night I attended a formal masked ball. It was great. The people who organized it put lots of effort decorating the ballroom with all sorts of theatre props (including giant puppets hanging from a rope). There were a lot of interesting masks. I felt that the fact it was a masked party, a lot of people seemed to act slightly different. Perhaps the masks made people feel secure and incognito or soemthing. I know I felt that way a bit.

For pics, click HERE!

Budman strikes back

Last night I went to Grumpy's Bar to perform stand up comedy at the Open Mic Night. After watching my old video of me doing stand up 3 years ago I decided to give it abother shot. Unfortunatley I got so busy I didn't really have time to prepare properly. Having a pint and a half before going on stage also didn't help - I was pretty tipsy and was having trouble seeing straight. Fortunatley for me, the guy before me really sucked and I got a bunch of laughs.

A bunch of my friends came otu to suport me. I was told by many of my friends that I was pretty funny. In the end, I thought I was really sloppy but I did get some laughs from other audience members (i.e. not just the pity laugh). I was even told that some of the other comedians thought I was funny, so that's cool.

Turns out the host of the night, who is a comedian, was at the open mic night at the Comedy Nest back when I performed the first time. He even remembered me and after my set, gave me his card and told me he know runs the open mic night at the Comedy Nest and suggests I give it a try there. I might in the future but i think I need to come up with some better jokes before I start running there.

Here's a video of the night:

My very first interview

Yesturday was a long day.

Still being tired from 12 hours in front of the computer the day before, I had to get up early and run to a print place near my house to print my portfolio. It cost me 40$ but with less than 2 hours until my interview I didnt feel like running around for prices. I had 30 minutes to eat breakfast and put the sheets in proper order in my portfolio book.

I showed up on time and met the woman who was to interview me. It was an interesting interview since we moved from the cafeteria to her office and then to conference room because we kept getting booted out from where we were talking. She showed me a lot of the stuff they do there and explained to me what I'd be doing. I'ts all very cool and interesting.

The only snag I hit was when we had a tiny argument over nothing. It wasn't anything bad it's I was making apoint on something and she thought i had made amistake and was trying to correct me by explaining to "right" thing. The only problem was that the thing she was re-explaining to me is a ket thing to know if I wanted that job and although I didn't want to correct her, I also wanted her to know that I did in fact know what she was talking about (even though that wasn't what I was trying to talk about from the beginning). So, in all Budman history, things got awkward for a few minutes, but not enough to have narrowed my chances to have the job or anything.

She told me that she had other interviews to do first before she could let me know if I got the job or not.

Trying hard not to stress

I have an interview tomorrow.
It's 5:50pm.
I've been infront of the computer since 10;30am laying out all my work so I can print it out in a professional looking way.
Some files are so big it's taking like 20 minutes just to open and save in the right format.
The printer place upstairs closes at 7pm and I still have 8 other things to layout before printing.
I don't htink I'm going to have time to print tonight at all.
I hope I can get it done tomorrow so I have a printed portfolio before I show up at t he interview.
*sigh* That's what I get for waiting last minute. Man I got to learn to stop doing that...

In the style of blurry

I aolmost forgot! Here are some photos of the trip and a short video too!

Toronto Improv Competition 2007

This past weekend, University of Toronto, hosted a small competition between 8 Universities. McGill Improv accepted the invititation and a bunch of us took the road trip down for the weekend.

My brother Mark happened to need to go back to Toronto the same weekend and had a rented minivan with space for some friends and I. In total we were three cars. Car #1 was myself, my brother, Jeremy, Holly and Chris. Car #2 was Fiona, Nestor, Auralie and Adrienne. Finally in car #3 was Arvind and Bryan (Arvind call his car Melissa).

The plan was to leave friday night around 5:30pm-6pm and leave from Toronto sometime in the afternoon. We hit our first snag when my brother Mark and I went to pick up the rental. When asked to suply my driver's liscence, I discovered I no longer had it. After desperately trying to remember what I had done with it, I recalled that recently I had gone to play some pool at a pool hall and had used my card for collateral for the pool balls, and I guess I never got it back. So, we were stuck with 2 cars and only 1 person legal to drive at the moment. My brother's solution was to give me his car keys so that I could go to the pool hall to pick up my own liscence and that i meet him at the house. So I drove without a liscence to go get my liscence. At the place, the guy looked through all the cards and mine was the last one. Phew!

Chris and the others showed up at my house at around 6:30pm-7pm due to traffic and we were on our way. We stopped at Kingston where we met up with car # 3 and had a deliscious PIzza Hut dinner. However, upon our arrival, Arvind recieved a call from car#2 claiming that they hit a WOLF. There was minimal damage to the car, but the wolf was dead and they had to fill out a police report. This became the recurring joke of the weekend, it was awesome.

After, dopping off my brother at his place, we all met up at our hotel room by 2:00am, to which we stayed up another hour or so drinking! (who needs sleep, we're on vacation!).

Saturday was a packed day. We got up and headed to Ryerson College where we met with the Ryerson Improv team and did a workshop together. It was great meeting new people and trying some different things. Afterwars we got free pizza!

Once the workshop was done, we headed over to University of Toronto fo another workshop. This one was run by Jerry Schaefer, an instructor for the Second City. He showed us some great exercises and games focusing on emotions and being physical characters. I enjoyed it a lot and felt exhausted after finishing the 3 hour workshop.

Next was dinner and then returning to U of T for the actual competition. The format of the competition was to have 4 teams compete on friday night and for on saturday. Each team had 25 minutes to perform their set. Any games were allowed. The points were half made up by the ratings of 2 guest judges and half by the audience. The 4 teams of saturday night were ourselves, Ryerson College, Queens University and our good buddies from Ottawa, the Carlton Improv Association.

The order of the teams ended up being CIA, Ryerson, Queens and finally us. The atmosphere of the night was really good. At first I felt SO tired but when went on, all this energy came out of nowhere. I had a blast! Everyone from our team agreed that we put on a good show and really kept the audience entertained. We were even introduced as the Wolf Killers.

At the end of the night the votes were in. Ryerson came in 4th with 19 points. We were 3rd with 29.5 points folowed by Queens with 30.5 points, which left CIA with 1st place with 35 points! In the end we were all glad we made it to 3rd because the 1st and 2nd palce teams had to perform the winners of the pervious night at the finals on Sunday at 7pm. By then none of us wanted to still be in Toronto, so it worked otu better for us. Plus I was glad to hear that CIA kicked ass. I hope they do a great job tonight (good luck guys!).

After the comp, we al lheaded to a nearby bar called O'Grady's and chatted the night away. Hopefully, a bunch of these gus will make it out to our Iprov Summit in March.

Sunday, I parted was from teh group to spend time with my brother and try to head back to Montreal a bit earlier. I got to see my nephew Charles in all his glory.

Somehow, we left at 3:30pm and got to my house by 8:30pm. No wolves were harmed.

I'm on Youtube!

Recently I found a copy of a video of me when I tried stand up comedy at the Comedy Nest for the first (and only) time. It must have been at least 3 years ago. I remember that day. I wrote up a few jokes and a friend of mine, Dave Akerflug, ran the Open Mike Night at the time and recommended I should try it out. I invited EVERYONE I could and ended up filling the place with friends and family - about 40 people.



Actually, I don't think I did such a bad job. I remember being really nervous but I adlibed a bunch of stuff.

I just realized if you listen really carfully halfway through you can hear someone say "God! That was horrible."

Adventure Time!

Oh man this cartoon is AWESOME!

"It's time to believe in yourself" "NEVER!"



And no, that's not a pic of a kid giving an old man a blowjob...

Whats been going on

Since finishing school, everything has been so different. My whole routine is out of whack. I guess nowadays, everything is revolving around my work schedule which seems to be totaly random. Somedays I work at night, others during the day. However, I have been pretty busy lately. Here's a recap of my past couple of weeks:

Been spending more time with my brother Mark (he does live with me now). From tiem to time we play his favorite game Scene It. Yuo watch clips on a DVD and answer questions. He has a bunch of versions - Tv, Movie, Movie Extended Pack and James Bond. Usually we play the TV version first so he can kick my ass and then I kick his ass in teh movie version. Both of us equally suck in teh James Bond version.

Speaking of James Bond, I saw Casino Royal with my mom. I liked it. Daniel Craig as teh Blond Bond isn't too bad. I quite liked the beginning action sequence but dreadfully hated the lagging ending (it could have ended after the bad guy died!).

I started to work on my portfolio. I even saved some jpeg versions of some of my work and soon will have them up for all your viewing pleasure.

I got my first client, ever. I'm to make this guys website. I already started the design and waiting to hear his feedback and to get paid for the first part. I'm really bad with the money part but i've ben getting help from my "lawyer".

I unexpectedly had the opportunity to aply for a wicked job, so I made up a resume super quick and sent it off. Fingers crossed for an interview soon.

Norm came back from Australia and brought me VEGEMITE! It was so good to hang out with im at Ian's party that I attended on saturday.

Prior to that party I was at a belated New Years Eve party which kicked ass! There were so many people there in this tiny apartment and it was a lot of faces I hadn't seen in a long time. I had a better time that night then actually on New Years.

I acquired a damn cold this weekend and have been feeling up and down. I went to take some cold medicine and after taking it discovered it expired... in 2003! I felt fine this morning but was worried I'd feel ill or something. I actually slept quite well.

I'm really looking forward to next weekend. I'm heading to Toronto with McGill Improv to participate in some competition being held by University of Toronto. My brother happens to be going back to Toronto anyways and rented a van so it made things uper easy for my friends and I!

Under Construction

I decided for another new year, it'd be nice to have my blog looking different. Having spent a year studying graphic design, I thought it'd be fun to add a custom look to my blog. Unfortunately, it's tad more complicated then I expected and I may have to do some learning before I can get this to resemble something more exciting. So please, don't be scared with the slow changes that will be going on in the near future.

On another note, on New Years Eve, I went out with a bunch of friends to 2 house parties and a club.

Pictures of the night can be found HERE!

Highlights of the evening and new years day included:

- Having vegetarian tacos at Tiffany's

- Getting a call from Norm and Lauren in Australia

- Having a some of Glen's Sea Dog blueberry beer that he brought back from Boston and forgot about until that night

- Being told I looked like I was a member of The Hives by the way I was dressed (It was by Glen but cool none the less!)

- Going to a house party filled of drunk french people

- Asking host of said party how much it costs to live there and getting the response "Who are you?"

- Piggy backing Kelp down some street in the rain

- Finding out after walking 10 blocks that we were heading the wrong way.

- Stopping at some random alley for a piss and finding a really cool graffiti picture of spiderman

- Meeting some chick at the last party who then asks me if I met friend Chris, then she walks away. I turn to Chris and ask how long they have been friend's and he says "I just met her tonight" so we realized we got the ol' 1,2 and called her back. After 5 minutes of debating, another girl comes up, grabs the chick and open mouth kisses her. To this day I don't know if they were lesbians or if it was a ruse to get away from us

- Drinking rum and coke out of a bowl like a cat

- Spending the day at Emilie's watching Freaks and Geeks

- Leaving Emilie's by almost walking down to the basement until corrected on the proper route to exit the building

- Eating slamon patties made by my mom for dinner

- Bowling over 150 with my brother Lorne

-Getting my ass kicked in Halo at my buddy's place.

2006 - A year in review

2006 and is over and done with. This past year went by really fast. As 2006 began, I was still riding the high from living in Australia (as I had only been home for 3 months). My everyday schedule took a turn as I returned back to school to study graphic design. From then on I basically worked hard at school and worked hard at Old Navy.

On the downside, a lot of my friends moved away in 2006 and I stopped going to improv due to too much school work. On the other hand, I made great new friends and found the time to participate in a wide selection of activities. Those included:
- Manhunt
- Kareoke at Dollar Cinema
- A Medieval dress up party in February
- A murder mystery dinner party in Hudson
- dancing at Jupiter room (with porn on the TVs)
- Watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with friends dressed up as Oompa Loompas
- Dressing up as Cobra Commander for halloween and ending up at one of the craziest free open bar parties I've ever been to
- and of course the several music concerts I went to:
- Death Cab For Cutie/Franz Ferdinand
- We Are Scientis/Arctic Monkeys
- The Dresden Dolls/Panic At The Disco
- The Raconteurs
- The Tragically Hip

By the end of the summer I went on a roadtrip with Glen and his 2 buddies, Steve and Jay. It rocked! we had an amazing time in Boston. Party Bus!

By the end of the year, I finished my graphic design program. it was a relief in a sense but I soon realized that when I have nothing to focus on I get sad and lonely. While I did have fun over the holiday break I felt like something was missing. Like I didn't have an urge to really do much. I think the fact that I was all alone at home for a week while my family in was in Toronto may have had something to do with that. Then my parents returned with my brother, his wife and son, and the house just became filled with noise. It' s been kind of hard at home with the extra people and having to live in the guest room.

Thankfully on monday things wil get a bit in order. Connie and Charles go back to Toronto and I get my room back while my brother Mark gets the guest room. My plan is to also start working on my portfolio and start job hunting.

Happy New Year everyone!

A Budman Christmas

For a holiday which I don't celevrate, I had a pretty damn good time this year.
It was very relaxing and I really needed that.

On Christmas Eve, I got out of work an hour early (6pm instead or 7pm) and headed downtown to my friend Eric's for a Jews Night Out Party. The night was supposed to be anight of just playing xbox but ended up entirely different. I got treated to vegetarian take out Chinese food (who would have thought that general toa tofu would taste so good?). Then we played a round of Scene It - Friends Deluxe Edition (who would have thought how annoying that theme song could really be?).

The rest of the night was spent playing cards and listening to music.
Note: when at a party with a homosexual couple and you're asked the question of why you don't like a certain song (Daniel Powters - Bad Day to be specific), do not answer with "Because it's GAY!"
Note 2: When such an answer is used, the proper thing is to try and ignore having said it and not to try to fix things by saying "oh I didn't mean it like that? I just mean um... that I don't like that song... um...."

Christmas day morning was spent watching Nacho Libre. This was followed by heading to my brother's house. At his place we played Scrabble. It was a really fun game with words such as "aloof" and "ching". My favorite move was getting "oy" and "yenta" at the same time! I ended up winning by totally fluke. I was behind 17 points but I got rid of all my letters and my brother was stuck with only 1 letter... whcih happened to be Z worth 10 points! Haha it was awesome.

By afternoon, I learnt that the open invitation and Scrabble was just a ploy for my brother to get to come over so he could slave labour me into helping him remove stuff from his ceiling in his basement that was being renovated.

Two hours later, we went to his brother in law's and had, you guess it, Chinese food!

The night ended with watchign Running On Empty, a really boring movie with River Phoenix and Judd Hirsch.

All in all it was fun times!

Merry Christmas all!

Spring Cleaning in December

Now that I'm done school, I'm cleaning out my room. I stumbled on a bunch of old records from my brothers collections. They seem to have a lot of great stuff that was popular back then (Example: Pink Floyd - The Wall/George Micheals - Faith). My question is, are well known records of any value, or is it just rare stuff? I'm not hoping to sell them for money or anything, just curious on how these things work.
(For some weird reson my brother has multiple copies of Tears for Fears...)