It's chips, it's chips

... we hope it's chips, it's chips.

I was singing something like this, but with my favourite potato-based side dish replaced with the scatological four letter word today, as I pranced around my apartment. It had been a long day, and clearly my mind was not at its best.

The last two days have been a jagged curve of disappointment and confusion. Not wanting to recap on what I said yesterday, but the rollercoaster I've been put upon (and I've always hated rollercoasters, or anything at a theme park scarier than the teacup ride) was of the HR department's devising. The same stone cold genius of cruelty that arranged five interviews for me on the same day, with 24 hours' notice, half early enough in the morning to deprive me of my much-needed sleep, and the rest at the end of the day to try to stop me getting to kempo for training, also managed to cancel them all with twelve hour's notice.

That left me wondering if I'd said something really bad and I wasn't going to get any interviews at all, but just thrown out with a flea in my ear. It's not as if you can admonish people in HR for sloppy procedures - that's like picking an argument with a man who buys ink by the barrel.

Luckily, for a laugh they sent another email at 1.15 this morning telling me they'd been rescheduled for the same time. I saw this when I struggled back to consciousness this morning, only to find that they hadn't actually arranged these interviews with the people in the US, so I was left baffled, confused, and occasionally on the phone. Or having my VP ask me if I'd given up on the application process, because he'd seen my interview with him appear and vanish again in a puff of human resources smoke.

The interviews weren't so bad. Or perhaps they were disastrous and I did so badly I didn't realise. The first was on some fairly hard mathematical questions (not Fermat's Last Theorum, but if you've spent the last year staring at an Excel spreadsheet, a bit stretching), while the second was more about technical solutions to problems, punctuated by the person who was interviewing me dropping every spoon in the world down a metal shaft onto a pile of saucepans. He said he was cooking dinner, but it was FAR TOO BLOODY LOUD for that. Ahem.

Maybe it was an interview tactic, to let me know I was a pathetic worm, not worthy of interrupting his dinner for. Or perhaps he was just incredibly busy, and hungry too.

He asked me why I wanted this job. Several people have done this, to the point where I begin to wonder whether I want this job. Or what this job is. Or why somebody would point out to me that everyone associated with this particular job has left the company (eight different bright people over the space of four years have gone into it, and then left again). Are they trying to tell me something that I already know?

I had another interview after kempo tonight, and then my saintly girlfriend phoned Dial A Dinner to get me a pizza to eat. With mushrooms on it, which she hates - I really am the only fun guy in her life. What a sweetie.

Not the pizza, mind. Sweet pizza sounds quite disgusting.

Anyway, to bed - two more interviews and some bellowing to go. And some questions on visas...