July 12, 2012
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Report # 899
Hey everyone, I hope that you’ve all been having an awesome week so far. On Sunday morning I went for a 45 minute run and later in the day I swam in the pool and soaked up lots of sun. I made sure to use sunscreen this time as it was super sunny and 29 C (84 F) so I didn’t want to end up super burnt. I probably still lied out in the sun for too long, but I didn’t feel too badly. Monday was a little stressful at work as it was the last real day for the month end.
I had to enter in a few more fence credit notes before finishing up my work. This month there were way more problem invoices than usual but I’ve got through everything now. On Tuesday I mailed all of the month invoices out in just an hour and a half so it went pretty quick. In the afternoon I talked with my manager and told her that I would be leaving. Not surprisingly she was pretty surprised to hear the news, but she was very happy that I had decided to give her four weeks notice instead of the two weeks which most people usually give.
She was very nice and we talked about the transition and how we would do things over the next few weeks. I asked if she could write a reference letter and she said she would so that will be great to get seeing as I just have two so far. This morning I started showing a girl in the other department how to do my regular work, and she’ll be sitting with me over the coming weeks to learn more. And of course a new person will be hired to replace me and I will have to do some training with them… providing that they start before I leave, though I would assume so.
The girl today helped me staple my invoices and I was happy with that as there was almost 500. So later today I will try and get all those mailed out and then it will pretty much be back to normal with the month end over, so it should be a nice final four weeks here. I was thinking in all of the jobs I’ve had before, I haven’t always asked for a reference letter. There have been at least two other times I probably could have asked for a reference letter but didn’t. That was probably a mistake on my part, but if I get the reference letter from here I’ll have three and I think that’s a good number of references.
Hopefully I get this reference letter before my last day so I can work with Carlos to get it nicely into Spanish, but if not I can always email him and I’m sure he’ll help me out. I am thinking I’ll finish my Spanish story in the next week or two. It’s over 60 pages so I’d say it’s time to wrap it up. After work today I stopped at Tim Hortons and headed home. I ate, read the paper and had a shower and then my mom’s friend came to pick me up.
She drove me over to her place to talk with her neighbours about living in Mexico. He is a Canadian his wife is Mexican. And they had lived in Mexico for a number of years. They live in a trailor park and every year they drive down to Mexico and visit some friends in the US on the way down. He’s 65 years old and she’s in her early 30′s but they are very happy together, so sometimes age is just a number I suppose. We talked about tons of things and they gave me some great advice.
Most importantly that when I’m there to be extremely careful with my money and make sure I look out for me first and foremost. And to make sure I don’t get rid of my health insurance or stay a day longer than six months, unless I have a job and the permission required to stay longer. It was great to talk with some people with experience doing what I want to do and they were both very friendly.
I was there for about two hours and I can imagine I got at least a few mosquito bites. After my mom’s friend drove me home and I thanked her for helping out and told her I would send her emails. I talked to Dora for a few hours and I really do think everything is coming together. Anyways I think that’s all I have for today, for the next question:
How many reference letters do you have ? How important do you think it is to have at least a few of them when applying and interview for jobs ?
I will leave you all with some pictures from Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver that I took in May. Take care and I’ll talk to you all on Saturday, bye for now.
Comments (4)
I have one sitting in my shelf. I have a lot of people willing to be references and some good ones, but i’m finding that to not be useful.
i have a doctor that is also a teacher giving me a reference and i still do not have an interview. my reference letter is from my ymca job when i helped with the launch of a new program that is now pretty popular across the nation helping underprivileged kids learn to swim. but that’s the only letter i have anymore. i think its a good idea to have letters. especially in a business setting.
That’s nice you may possibly get a reference letter before you leave. They’re important, but I don’t think they garentee you a job.
Really nice that you got to speak with people who experienced what you’re about to. I’m sure you learned a lot from them. Just keep it in mind.
Good luck with everything!
You know… I think I should have more reference letters. I have Zero
Good luck with everything in Mexico. Your pictures at the end of the post make me forget the content of your text often. heh! Anyway, it seems your life is divided between the two, or is it three, borders!