New job at SCOOP Publishing.

The last few weeks have been crazy as I started a new job, hooray! I was amazed to find myself in full-time work just two weeks after arriving in Australia - no time off for the POM! It all happened pretty quickly from having an interview lined up the week after I arrived, to being offered the job, to starting the following week…

I’ve managed to stay within the magazine publishing industry so that’s good. The company is called SCOOP Publishing and they publish eight premium magazines within lifestyle, design and travel in Western Australia and are renowned for their high quality and style. SCOOP is the flagship and the main title I’ll be working on although I’ll be working on the entire lifestyle series including SCOOP Traveller and SCOOP Functions & Venues. SCOOP is a quarterly lifestyle mag with an editorial content focus on the very best in fashion, food and wine, health & beauty and events and entertainment for the coming season in WA. The advertising reflects that by profiling the best brand names and businesses in WA so my clients will fall into all of these categories. I’ve had two weeks of training and job shadowing and the last week or so has seen the real work begin. There are 50 or so members of staff within the company. It’s so refreshing that the editorial, production and advertising teams sit near each other and interact with each other – this is the first time I have experienced this and it’s so much better. For example, I can go and have a conversation with the Style Editor before a meeting with a fashion client and talk to the Entertainment Writer about an upcoming meeting I had with a Perth theatre with complete ease.

The SCOOP offices are based in the western suburb of Subiaco, right in the centre. It’s about a half hour drive or a twenty minute train journey from the nearest station which is a five minute drive away. Subiaco is a quaint little suburb with elegant buildings and beautiful houses. It has a cosmopolitan feel with lots of boutiquey shops, cafes and restaurants along its tidy tree-lined streets and it’s just a few kilometres from the city centre so the location is perfect for me as I like to feel like I have lots going on around me. It’s not quite Oxford Circus by all means, which was a five minute walk from my London offices, but it’s great in Australia standards.

My new working day starts quite a bit earlier at 8am (I was used to a late 9:30 start in London) but with the good weather (so far), rising a little after 6am isn’t as bad as it sounds. Today was a great day as I won my first new client: a beauty clinic for Scoop for the full year! So all in all, a busy but good start on the work front…

Next week I’m travelling down to the Margaret River region (about four hours south of Perth) for a week of meetings for Scoop Traveller magazine. Very nervous about driving around a huge wine region and on country roads but I’ll let you know how I go….

How you going, mate?

It’s been almost a month since I arrived in Perth and there are several cultural differences between Australia and England that have quickly jumped to my attention.

The one I want to share with you today is the Aussie way of asking “How are you?” versus ours. The Aussies and the English speak the same language but have different ways of expressing themselves with language. I've learnt in a short space of time that the majority of Australians here in Perth will ask me the exact phrase “How you going?” Just those three words. Sometimes the word ‘mate’ is added on the end for a friendly effect. The verb “going” is always mentioned which I find strange, as to me, it comes across as a question asking how I am travelling from one place to another.

Early example:

Australian person: “How you going?” (pronounced: Ow ya gown?)

Me: “Where am I goin? Urrrh well, I’m not goin anywhere right now… But later I’ll be going food shopping by car.”

To me, this isn’t really asking me how I am but instead, where am I off to, hence my initial reactions. My most used greeting is either a “How are you?” or a “How you doing?” or in most cases, my familiar south London one; “You alright?” which since I arrived in Oz has occasionally been responded to with a confused “I’m okay, I’m fine”, or “nothing’s wrong”, as some Aussies sseem to think I am asking them if they are physically okay – funny!

I’ve learnt that “How you going?” is the most common greeting down under but it might take some time to get used to…. And I’ll definitely be keeping my English greetings for as long as I can!

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