Oct

Got milk?

Jon Seah on October 21st, 2008

A month ago, my boss pulled me aside and asked me whether I wanted to do a “milk run”. At the time I was thinking he must be shitting me cos there was no way in hell I’d do a pleb’s job. He clarified further that a “milk run” was a term used to recruit graduates and would entail talking to students on campus and conducting interviews. It still didn’t sound right to me but at least it gives me the opportunity to see some places in the UK that I wouldn’t have thought of.

I was asked to fill in a preference of universities to attend and the one that sounded the best was the one furthest away - St Andrews in Scotland!!! The event was on a Friday which gave me the opportunity to see more of Scotland on the weekend. Free flight some more so why not????

So I arrived in St Andrews late last Thursday which involved a palava of flights, trains and buses. Grabbed some grub at a local Italian restaurant and went to bed (I only had 2hrs of sleep the night before).

St Andrews is a small town that has only two things - a University and GOLF! Apart from those two, there really isn’t much to do. You can pretty much see the whole town within a couple of hours. For the golfing fans, I got kicked off the course for being on the green of the 18th hole I was only taking pictures!!!

Prior to being kicked off the golf course, I was in awe as this is the course where golfing legends like Greg Norman, Tiger Woods, Nick Faldo etc had played on. The course was kept in well pristine condition so I understood why I had to be kicked off. I walked towards where the caddies were hanging out and it was my first memorable encounter with Scots. Listening to them talk to each other reminded me of a turkey farm. I can’t really describe it very well but if you get 10 or so Scots to say “aye” at random times, it’ll sounds like a group of turkeys

The career fair was rather interesting as couple of years ago I’d be doing the same thing like these kids competing for graduate jobs. Now the tables have turned and I can be the bastard with the Dr Evil laugh… muhhahahhaha… but seriously I was amazed by how some students were enthusiastic and proactive about their career while others just seemed too lazy or arrogant. There were others there who were only after one thing - FREE STUFF! You’d see these kids running around the floor sneaking behind people then all of a sudden you see this hand from out of nowhere reach in and grab your pens. Or there are others who’d just waste your time to ask what your company do then go in and grab the pens. Bastards I tell you, the whole lot of them… But then again that would have been me a couple of years ago too

What was surprising about St Andrews was that I was expecting a lot of Scots or English but instead I was greated by a bijillion Americans. When you walk around town listening to the accents, all you can hear are Americans. Sigh… they’re everywhere and you know that most of them are rich kids who are sent there by their parents for their studies.

St Andrews itself is small and beautiful. I managed to grab some shots when the weather was kind enough. I think it is time to get a new lens though. Throughout this trip I was getting sick and tired of taking shots of building. I think it’s time for a new paparazzi style super long lenses