Having spent two fruitless hours on a couple of job search websites, I've decided to give up the hope to secure a job before going back to Taizé. I'll be out of town in like a week anyway, so why waste the effort?

Speak of the interview this morning, I think I did fairly well. Well-versed. Confident. Quite unexpectedly, I was able to deliver some of my pitched speeches fluently. In the 20-minute-or-so interview, we talked about things ranging from my college life, group projects, what I've done since I graduated, to my opinion on working in mainland China. Upon hearing my responses, the HR Manager often returned with a contented smile. The atmosphere was pretty laid-back until I told her my plan to volunteer in a community in France and wouldn't be back until August. All of a sudden, the muscles on her face tightened, her smiles replaced by a series of smirks, with occasional serious looks...

'Oh, I see... we'd like to wrap up the interview process as soon as possible, so if you're away and can't make it for the second round interview, we'll save up your application information for futute recruitment,' she said.

Damn. Perhaps I should have zipped my mouth about the plan this summer... I smiled back somewhat uneasily.

When I walked back to the waiting room to inform the HR assistant that the interview was over, I was greeted by him with a see-you-next-week. I returned with a nod, knowing that my application profile would go straight to the 'unsuccessful candidites' database.

When am I gonna land my first real job???