h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today I was compelled to do voluntary work as a mark of my respect for the ‘mutual obligation' I am under as a recipient of social security ‘benefits'. My appointment to figure out what exactly I'm going to do is on Thursday at 10.00am, and thereafter I will be compelled to do 240 hours, between now and 7 May 2001, of unpaid work for somebody else. In addition to this, I have to apply for five jobs per week (an increase from the usual 1.5). This régime will last for 12 weeks - or until I get a job. I don't think I'm any more likely to get a job, merely because I apply more - it just doesn't work that way any more, if it ever did. I suspect I'm in for 12 weeks of extraordinary financial costs without any extra income, arbitrarily limited time and psychologically debilitating disappointment, and I still have to do a lot of other stuff. I'm going to need a lifeline, here, I think...

The weather is suitably unimpressed about this development. It's overcast and unusually cold for this time in November. The bureaucracy of Australian inequity aside, it's actually quite a nice time. I wonder if other things will not make this better, anyway...