by Jonny | May 24, 2013 | Updates
07/04/2013: Please read the update(s) I posted below. tldr: – Angel Links is a door to door marketing firm.
Today, I went to a job interview for a “Sales” position for a company named as “Angel Links”, although I’d probably refer to the position as more of a “Sales consultant” position. I’ll admit that it’s the first time I’ve heard of this company; however, I will say that it sounds like a decent place to work & the people seem very nice and friendly. The company appears to be a PR & marketing firm and from what I gathered they only deal with global businesses. Of course, I don’t know which companies they market and do PR for; however, if they do only deal with global companies then Angel Links might be dealing with rather large companies.
The interview went well, but I tried to approach this interview as a learning curve; and that it was. I feel I displayed confidence and humility. Those would likely be the two adjectives I would use for this job interview. I feel if I had a second chance, I could possibly do better in responding to all of the questions that I were asked. I’m hopeful, but then again, there were over 50 people that applied. That’s a ratio of 50:5, as there are only 5 positions available for this job. I was, however, a little disturbed as the interviewer never really answered my question about the pay. It was as if he was trying to dodge my question by giving me the crappiest answer. I had red flag signals all over the place, once that occurrence happened. We’ll see how it goes.
During the interview, I, for the most part used my experience working in a full-time job (In Taiwan, as an ‘assistant engineer’) as a method of speaking up for myself. Whether that was enough, I don’t know. I won’t be too mean to myself, as I thought I did enough. But sometimes enough is never good enough, and I wish I had said more and I wish whoever the 5 candidates are that get picked do well and they become employed. It really does suck being unemployed. It was a good day out and about, nevertheless.
Here are some photos (Eye candy) that I took of Canary Wharf/Canada Place:
Update:
I received an email from them saying that I have been accepted for a second interview.
I’m, however, little more dubious about this company than I was before, as I’ve now come across information about this company being a pyramid scam of sorts. Where they employ as many people as possible to spread whatever product they want to advertise and they somehow reap the benefits out of that. It also seems that there is no basic rate of pay, which confirmed my suspicions before and it seems that this is a “door-to-sales” position and is ENTIRELY commission based. I’m still going to go to see what it’s like and I’ll be asking the employees there (If I think I can) about the pay and the company itself.
I feel a little gutted, but then again, I could be wrong and there is only one way to find out.
Another Update:
Is Angel Links a scam?
Who knows whether they are a scam or not, but they certainly have tricked quite a few people, including me, into believing they were a reputable company offering the chance for the unemployed for a decent living. It turns out they are just a door-to-door sales business and this type of business has been replicated all around the world, including the United States. I feel that this needs more exposure, so I’m going to link to posts on Reddit which give detailed explanations behind what these companies actually do.
UK Jobs: “Yet another scam“
For the US “Life tips”: “It’s a scam“
While I didn’t attend the second interview, which I was invited to, I feel a little silly as I bought a new pair of shoes and a nice trousers for the first interview. However, I can of course use those as future investments for job interviews I attend in the future, of course. I’m a little upset, which is why I’d like to expose what they really are, as they don’t have any back-bone at-all. They simply want you to advertise their goods without paying you a dime, and who knows if they’ll pay you the amount that they promised as advertised on their listings. Either way, steer well clear of this group.
by Jonny | May 16, 2013 | Travel
Terrible. Just terrible.
It’s not because of the over the top prices for the transport, namely the Underground and buses No, it’s not because the WiFi is not free at Heathrow Airport and because of that I was unable to contact anyone. It wasn’t even the flight being late by an hour and it wasn’t even the crying baby on the A380-800 airplane via Malaysia Airlines for the 16 hour duration to London. All of that didn’t bother me as much as the following:
Today was terrible as my suitcase broke. That might not seem serious, but when your luggage weighs 30kgs, it becomes a serious problem. The airport loaders must have broken my bag as the wheels axles were bent, and in the end the thing broke and I was left dead in the water lugging around 30kgs of my worldly items. Here you can see the extent of the damage:
I took the London Underground from Heathrow to Bromley By Bow (To the District Line), where my sister works. I surprised her as I couldn’t get a hold of her, as the phone box machines were eating my money like it was nothing. I put 60p in, my only small change, and I lost that money in the instance that the 02 voice-mail service saying my sister had not picked up the phone. I then went to get change, and put a £1.00 coin in.
To my surprise, phone boxes here don’t accept £1.00 coins and even though they don’t, they’ll take the money anyway and even when you pull down on the phone lever it won’t refund you or give you your money back. That made me sick and I promised myself I’d never use phone boxes here again. Sure, it’s radical, but I simply had enough of wasting money, – especially if the money spent is not actually being used. Sure, the 60p was my mistake because I let the phone call continue onto the 02 voice mail service. (Though I hanged up as soon as I could) However, the phone box taking the £1.00 that’s not even being used is almost criminal and I would say is stealing. That’s why I took a radical approach to never use phone boxes in London again. I’ve also taken other steps such as looking into buying a bike to cycle and hopefully not have to use the transport system here.
Either way, I’m a little fed up today and I hope that things will look a little better throughout the week. But my goodness, my luck today is really on a low. I’ve had such a terrible experience just going back to London.
The only consolation is that I’m now typing this in a café that doesn’t have a WiFi connection. Although the “not having WiFi” is an issue, I’m finally relaxing and getting the things that have happened to me today, behind me.
Here’s what I’ve eaten at this café:
Dubbed the “New York Bagel” at a small-time cafe I went to!
Tea with salmon baguette or dubbed by the cafe as the “New York Bagel”. The cafe I went to looked pretty cool and it is actually a listed building that was once a mill. The bagel that I ordered was delicious, but it cost me £4.60 altogether. I would be able to go to a nice restaurant for that price in Taiwan. Moving on, apparently the café that I’m in is based in a historical building and I guess the profits from the café pay for the upkeep of the place.
Here’s a picture of it:
A cafe situated in a grade 1 listed building called the “House Mill”.
Looks very British.
by Jonny | May 15, 2013 | Travel
Taoyan Airport
Okay, so I haven’t traveled much around the world and Taiwan is likely the first place I have traveled abroad to in years; well, other than South Korea and Hong Kong. Anyways, I came extra early to the airport because, well, I’m paranoid like that. I have a lot of free time, so why not make use of the time and post on this blog from the airport. Admittedly, this is the first time I have posted on a blog through an outside WiFi connection, especially at an airport. I’m currently using Taoyuan’s “Free Airport Internet” and it’s working great. Of course, the connection is not 100% or like I had in my home in Taichung but it’s definitely adequate and it’s uploaded all the pictures I’ve taken relatively quickly.
I don’t know what else to write, other than having a safe and no problem journey. Oh, and here’s what I ate at the Burger King at Taoyuan airport:
by Jonny | May 12, 2013 | Updates
I recently started a few new blogs and I used an automated installer to install WordPress via cPanel. However, when I created the site I noticed a few issues had arisen and that had made it impossible for me to login to “wp-admin” and “wp-login.php”, so I wondered what could have gone wrong, as every time when I tried to access those URLs, I encountered “Not found”, even though the directory does indeed exist. I knew it was a .htaccess issue, so I looked at one of my older blogs where I have none of these issues and copied my .htaccess file into the directory of my new site.
I copied this .htaccess:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>\
# END WordPress
… into my blog’s new directory and the problem was fixed.
If you have this problem then this is most likely the fix!
by Jonny | May 11, 2013 | Travel
I usually go to this supermarket called 大買家 or Da Mai Jia (English name: Save and Safe) and its surprising how the supermarkets in this country are very western. I also like the fact that there are many different companies who have supermarkets dotted around Taichung. Although admittedly Carrefour, the massive French company dominates the supermarket scene, but there is definitely competition. While Tesco used to be in Taiwan, and traded all of its stores in Taiwan to Carrefour for all of Carrefour’s stores in Czech Republic, there are still many other independent and other companies operating supermarkets here. Examples range from Costco, the massive American branded store, and the Japanese Matsusei supermarket.
Here are a few pics I took inside Da Mai Jia:
As you can see supermarkets in Taiwan are very similar to that of those in western countries or namely the United Kingdom. It’s probably why Tesco’s couldn’t break into this market as there were already existing supermarkets doing similar things to what Tesco’s does in the UK and Europe. I.e. provide budget supermarkets for large areas.