I had my GAP interview in Reading today. They phoned me up at short notice to say they had a vacancy and since I’d spoken to them about not being able to attend one over the next few weeks, I got offered the chance, so it was kinda lucky in that respect. I found the GAP house location at the after wondering around Reading for half and hour, lost in the car with my dad. We parked up, had lunch in the hour beforehand and went to the GAP house afterwards. All the people there were surprisingly friendly, including the other guy present for an interview, Max, I think his name was. We had a briefing session and then my dad and I left the room and waited for Max to finish his personal interview – I think he was looking at placements in South America.

After about half an hour, I went in to meet the two guys we’d spoken to earlier; but arrggh! – It was like an interrogation this time. I’ve never been to a formal interview – the one for the job at Maplin’s paled in comparison to this – so I didn’t know what to expect. I got the feeling all the time that they weren’t happy about me selecting Japan and seemed to find any attempt I made at explaining my relevance for the position inadequate. I was mostly prepared for the questions they threw at me, except for one or two glitches where I couldn’t remember how to phrase something and wasted a few minutes babbling in a futile attempt to before one of the interviewers found the right wording. The other was the question: ‘What has been your biggest disappointment in life?’. Wha?? I didn’t have an answer to this at all, but fortunately they let me pass without giving a proper reply to it. I did get a little merit when I explained about the Handicamp thing being an on-call 24/7 caring placement with Joseph on the week away, so it wasn’t all bad.

I filled out the forms afterwards and added the times I was away so the Project Coordinator will (hopefully) not try to contact me then. As I was filling them out, an older man walked into the interview waiting area. I glanced over at him, unsure of whether to say anything and fumbled a weak smile or something. Then a few seconds later he shoots out his hand towards me and say ‘Hi. I’m the Director of GAP – so and so’. D’oh!! I couldn’t believe I’d just shrugged off the Director and not greeted him properly, dammit -_-”. We spoke to him about what placement I was applying for and he said it was a very good country (Japan), but probably their most expensive. It was okay speaking after that, luckily.

We left about 4.30, and as such I arrived late back in Chatham to meet the rest of the GCSE Japanese group in time for dinner, so I ended up rushing it and feeling like an add-on the whole while. We went to the pub afterwards also, which I’d be better off not reflecting my feelings on right here…