But wait, there's more...

First things first. I didn't get the job with the oil company. Once I heard I was up against a woman who'd worked in the industry (not just mining in general), I knew she'd get it. Apparently the guy felt very bad for not choosing to hire me, which gives me a small amount of satisfaction. However, the mild panic about finding a job quickly has increased just slightly. I'm not going into meltdown just yet.

Onto last night and the first night of my course. I was expecting to be one of the older people there, and was surprised to find there were a number who were (or at least looked) older than me. There are only two teenagers and a handful of guys who look like they're more brawn than brains. Overall, it's a pretty wide mix of ages and experience, which is a good thing.

Considering it's November and it should be starting to get lovely and warm now, it wasn't too much fun waiting outside before the class started. It was a damn cold evening in the city! We didn't have to wait too long, though, and were finally ushered into the classroom. I sat right at the front like the nerdy kid I am. On one side of me was a teenage girl with pink hair, Alysha. On the other side was a nice looking boy called Leigh. We all got on well from the start, thankfully.

I won't go into the boring details of the session, but it was mostly about goal setting and visualising the results you want to achieve in different areas of your life.

There was one....issue...the whole night. A guy who came late and sat at the back kept interrupting the instructor and talking over him. He was either a recovering alcoholic, or ex drug addict. He'd killed so many brain cells that his speech was almost incoherent and he lacked any understanding of social etiquette or manners. He had a thought and it came out his mouth. I must say the instructor was seriously patient for most of the night. One of the other students was the first to crack and tell the guy to shut up. He apologised. And kept right on interrupting and talking the entire night. At one stage, the instructor had to say, "Darren, NO", like he was talking to a toddler, to get him to quit yabbering on. Anyway, needless to say, people were getting short tempered, but everyone was well behaved about it.

I would be surprised if they let him back on Wednesday night. Seriously, there is no way in the world he'll be able to train anyone, so I'm not sure exactly why he's there. He must have been sponsored through a program, because a) he couldn't afford the course, for sure, on his own (going by appearances) and b) he wouldn't have passed the hour long interview the rest of us had to sit just to get accepted. I respect his right to be there, but I - and everyone else - paid a shitload of money for this course and people won't put up with that kind of distraction and disruption very long.

All in all, it was a pretty fun night. The 'lecture' was broken up in the middle when they showed us how to do squats properly, then we had to do star jumps, run on the spot, then more squats before we sat back down to listen again.

I froze my arse off walking through the city to the train station at 9.30pm, had to borrow the money for the train from Alysha, because the stupid machines didn't take notes, and got home shortly after 10pm. I'm excited about going back on Wednesday.

Oh, I also learned that the course timetable I received is only the first two components of the course I've signed up for - which explains why I couldn't see some of the subjects I thought I was doing. So, I'm not finishing in mid March, when I expected to. There's another 8 weeks of business subjects to be done after that. I won't be done till the end of May!