Finally!

After 98 days of seeing company after company, with misdirections, good networking, and losing out to other candidates, I've finally signed with Cheil. Now I'm just waiting for the employment pass (work visa) to come through and we're good to go! It should be about 3 weeks, but they applied for a temporary one so I could start earlier.

It's been kinda fun, the last few months - a lot of cooking at home, watching movies, going for rides - but I'm going pretty stir crazy. I was a lot less productive than when I was hanging around before my Mexico trip. A LOT less productive. But hey, I did do 3 weeks of contract work which brought in a nice little pot of dough, but with the wedding in March, what we really needed was some steady savings.

So, anyway, we're going celebrating Friday night with Jac and Bru. We were out last night with them too... Man, I really cannot do the drinking on a school night thing anymore. If I was working I wouldn't have made it in till this afternoon. It was Mumbo Jumbo night - good old cheesy music and even cheesier dancing.

where did the last few months go??

After leaving Wunderman end of March, doing a 3 week contract at Proximity, going to the UK, we're suddenly in the middle of July??? Wow, that was fast.

This is going to be a fairly boring summary of my interview sagas I'm afraid!

I was supposed to sign a contract with Proximity when I came back from the UK, but they ended up bringing over a guy from their Malaysian office. One of the reasons is because they lost some business over there, and so instead of firing the guy they brought him over here. But, it's also fair to say that I was holding out on them because of another company I was interested in. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it's been a good 4 months of various other interviews, and I think it's finally coming to an end.

I just had a last minute round of talks over the past couple of days with ad agency DDB for a job as GM of Tribal (interactive) - to start it up and drive business. According to the MD it was a really close call between me and another candidate, but the other guy had more solid biz dev experience... which is fair enough, but I'm still looking for contract killers to take him out. I'll be staying in touch with them though - good bunch of people. So now it's down to the other company, Cheil, who do communications for Samsung, where I'll be Head of Interactive (or some such title that could include the words "Director", "Digital"...). I actually have an offer from them, but I'm just waiting to hear when to go in and sign the contract. Good package, fewer hours, uber-quiet-office-unlike-your-typical-agency (it's a place with Korean corporate culture)... A mixed bag of pluses and minuses, but, the wallet must be fed.

So, it's still a bit too early to celebrate, but at least now I've decided to cut off this interview period and there's a good offer on the table. Now we should be able to start up our wedding plans again!