Careers advice for young persons

Up until now I have considered myself to be relatively technologically-ept. I'm not like a certain friend of a friend who gets home drunk and gleefully pounces on all kinds of e-Bay treasures (resulting in surprise presents 24 hours later). The worst I manage is a little tipsy dabbling on facebook, and even then the results are never as bad as I expect them to be.

However, today, stone-cold sober and at three thirty in the afternoon, I was pottering around on FB, replying to an email into which I casually dropped a question about some freelance work.
It takes me on average half an hour to send an email in any case, because even after writing I have to check the spelling, punctuation and correct use of idiom (translating is beginning to go to my head), but all seemed correct and I hit Send.

Horror of horrors, I had replied to all, and this guy is facebook friends with my boss.

This meant that on his return from lunch he would discover the following about me:
i) I use FB compulsively (a friend refers to it as 'face-crack' for its addictive properties. Try not to think of the anatomical connotations)
ii) I'm working for 'the competition' (a competitor, for heaven's sake, as if they were even in the same market/specialization)

Immediate panic set in. I eyed the open window (we work five minutes from the main railway station) and wondered how long it would take me to clear my desk and flee the scene.

The next twenty minutes passed very, very slowly. But not slowly enough for me discover how to withdraw or delete sent mail.

Now, hopefully, I will be dramatically fired, PetiteAnglaise-style, and receive millions of złotych in compensation, as well as a lucrative book and film deal. Tales of a crummy linguist in Central Europe anyone? No, I thought not.

[Any other tales of Facebook woe out there? What's the story on moonlighting anyway? Feedback would be greatly appreciated....]


Kids: Don't Go To University. It is NOT WORTH IT.
Here are some alternative ideas on how to educate yourself For Free (not necessarily in order of most commonsensical):
- Go back to your parents' house (they usually have a bigger fridge). Work at Starbucks. Save money. Become a property magnate in Central Europe.
- Do a PA skills course. Become PA to Someone Very Powerful (preferably in Hedge Funds). Become so useful that they pay you to do an MBA (or, better still, an MSc in Economics)
- Do a CELTA course (it only takes a month for heaven's sake). Teach abroad. Learn exciting languages. Become a property magnate in Central Europe
- Get a job in a lapdancing bar. Be very, very good. Get hired by Russian mafia dons. Be recruited by MI6 to eavesdrop. In ten years time, be head of the Joint Intelligence Committee. (then retire early and become a property magnate in Central Europe, if you can manage to keep a low profile, without an old foe slipping a bit of Polonium 210 into your herbata z mlekiem).


The Bad Obwarzanki Lady is finally back, but working half days to ease herself back into the swing of things. I didn't get a chance to check out her tan. It's got to be better than mine, acquired whilst rollerblading in shorts last Saturday.
It would've been fine had I not been wearing knee pads, resulting in a pale stripe beginning at the top of my calves, causing a strange 'muddy welly' effect...