atleastimnotwelsh

March 31, 2009
by Rodney Olsen
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welsh_flag.jpgIf you’re applying for a job at a Welsh tourist attraction, it may be best not to have an email address that includes ‘atleastimnotwelsh’.

Ananova is reporting that 21 year old James Kettle blew his chances of securing the job we wanted in Wales with what may well be the worst job application ever.

As well as using an insulting email address, James sent his application to the wrong address.

The horticulture undergraduate sent it to Aberglasney Gardens, Carmarthenshire, instead of the National Botanic Garden of Wales.

A manager at Aberglasney replied: “It may be prudent to change your email address. It could have a detrimental effect on any career aspirations of working in Wales.”

James, a student at Pershore Agricultural College in Warwickshire, said: “I feel a right fool.”

When talking about the incident on 98.5 Sonshine FM this morning, one of the news team, Jarod Warwick, said something like, “Who didn’t have a weird email address as they were growing up?” Well, me for one. Email hadn’t been invented when I was growing up.

It got me thinking to my days playing around with CB Radio. I had some interesting ‘handles’ or ‘call signs’. Of those I can remember there was Black Swan, Commodore One and Apache 9 but I know there were others. Maybe my brain has chosen to forget the worst ones.

How about you? Have you had weird and wonderful email addresses or maybe you were into CB Radio back in the day and had an interesting handle or two. What other strange names have you attached to yourself?



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A nation behaving badly

March 30, 2009
by Rodney Olsen
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around_the_world.jpgAre Australians the ultimate ugly tourists?

It seems we’re costing Australian tax payers more and more while we’re overseas and dying abroad at an ever increaasing rate. We keep getting arrested while travelling and we apparently don’t care much for those in authority. We also need rescuing a lot more that we used to.

The information has been released by our own Department of Foreign Affairs and is being reported at News.com.au in the article Department of Foreign Affairs reports latest Australian tourist figures.

WHINGEING, irresponsible, cut-rate Australian tourists abroad are costing those who stay home millions of dollars and are being arrested more than ever.

The latest figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs show that 2009 is set to become the first year when more than 1000 Australians are arrested and when more than 1000 Australians are expected to die overseas, The Australian reports.

Surely we’re not all bad.

While I don’t get to travel overseas a lot I do make a point of behaving myself while in someone else’s country. Mind you, I pretty much behave at home too. I suppose that with more Aussies travelling we’re bound to see an increase in the number of ‘ugly Australians’ leaving our shores.

What’s your experience? Do you travel a lot? If you’re Australian have you ever seen other Aussies behaving in such a way that you’d rather you weren’t idetified as their countrymen? If you’re not from the land down under, what are your impressions of Australians that have visited your part of the world? Who do you think are the world’s worst tourists?

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section of this post.



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Talking with Shelley Harland

March 30, 2009
by Rodney Olsen
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When someone claims musical influences as diverse as The Beatles, Bjork, the Motown sound and the Carpenters, you’re assured that their music won’t be anything ordinary. Shelley Harland’s music is indeed extraordinary.

Commuting between Sydney, New York and London, she combines a range of influences to create her own unique sound. She recently joined me on the phone for a radio interview on 98.5 Sonshine FM.

The song in the video, Wonder, is the first single to be lifted from her soon to be released album, Red Leaf.

Shelley has collaborated with a range of artists including John Cale from the very influential Velvet Underground who commissioned her to work on some of his recent releases.

You can hear my conversation with Shelley by clicking the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.



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The Power of Twitter

March 30, 2009
by Rodney Olsen
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twitter_logo.pngIf you’re a Twitter skeptic, you might like to reconsider.

Alison Godfrey has written at News.com.au that using Twitter helped her get the home loan she needed. Her article Commonwealth Bank all a-Twitter over mortgage approval tweet, describes how she turned things around very quickly by using less than 140 characters.

It seems that someone at the Commonwealth Bank saw her tweet about her negative banking experience and the head of Commonwealth Bank’s customer service team was in touch with her within an hour and seventeen minutes. Apparently a lot of the big business players are now monitoring social media to see where they’re being mentioned in cyberspace. I’ll have to keep that in mind when our house sells and we need to confirm our financial arrangements.

By the way, if you are using Twitter, feel free to follow me.

You’ll find my Twitter profile here.

If you don’t twitter and you’re wondering what I’m talking about, Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service, that allows users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are posts of up to 140 characters in length. Sort of a cross between text messaging and blogging.

Find out more at the Twitter page on Wiki.



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Do you Google yourself?

March 28, 2009
by Rodney Olsen
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google_logo.jpgI don’t do it often, but every now and then I pop my name into Google to see what it turns up.

I did it again this morning after reading Peter’s excellent post on Personal Brand at Whale’s Belly.

Does what’s online about you concern you? Do you hold back from what you put online knowing that anyone in the world can access what you may have published or uploaded? Are there things that others have put online regarding you that you don’t like? Are there others with the same name as you who feature prominently?

At the time I checked this morning, the first eight results for “Rodney Olsen” on Google referred to me in one way or another.

I must admit that while I have an awful lot of stuff about me on the web, I’m still rather cautious and conservative in what I publish. I always keep in mind that I’m not only representing myself, in some way I’m also representing my workplace, my friends and of course my family. How guarded are you when it comes to publishing online?



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