The other day, I went to a job interview pretty close to my dad’s church, and when I got out, I had a text message from my dad asking if I wanted to come by and meet for lunch.

I texted back Great! OMW now! Even though I’m in a weird transition state right now, I was pretty happy that I’m close enough to my folks to visit them. And my dad is texting! He’s using a numberpad, which is about a step up from Morse code, but still. My parents are using technology! Can yours do that?

When I got there, though, my dad was pretty surprised to see me, since he thought I’d gone back to Scep’s place. He pointed to my text, where I’d said I was home now, only I’d used the variant spelling of home as OMW. (Even though my dad knows a lot of acronym shorthand from ham radio, like YL for “young lady”,  or CQ for “Twitter hasn’t been invented yet, anyone want to talk?” I guess it’s possible that OMW might be a bit more of an MMO term than a ham radio term).

“DAD! You thought I spelled home wrong? You think I’m a writer and an ESL teacher and I haven’t mastered four-letter words?”

At this point, my dad might have said something about my early and impressive mastery of certain four-letter words.

Anyway, I had another interview the next day, and on my way in, my dad sent me this:

GLHF 2day 88 Dad

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

On My Way

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Eight or nine years ago, I worked in a diner while on a, ahem, break from college. The Pioneer Valley is full of similar college-age breakers, finding themselves, forming bands, creating art, getting that awful first novel out of the way, or just drifting between minimum wage jobs amid an ever-younger college crowd. It was the right choice at the time, I embraced the freedom of leaving school, and I read more of the literary canon during my year of pouring coffee than I ever read in college, but it became increasingly clear that waitressing was not really how I wanted to live.

And re-enrolling was the right choice, too, because going back to school introduced me to more  books that I hadn’t read yet, and one day in a Roman history class, I met a boy called Stick — maybe I’ve mentioned him? — who’d left an underwhelming job at the phone company to come back to college. And that was good.

I started working at a local restaurant a few weeks ago.  (And Stick returned to the phone company a few months ago, but this is my blog.) This is slightly different from my mid-college diner job, although it still offers all the intellectual stimulation of carrying items from kitchen to table and back again, it’s really pretty nice. It’s a Middle Eastern restaurant, which means a kitchen full of cardamon and coriander, and the owners are very relaxed about letting me experiment (for me, I mean, not to serve to the customers), and I really can’t complain about all the mango lassis. The dining room is pretty, with exotic decorations, and the customers are not inhaling meals on the rigid work breaks like my diner patrons, and the hours work around my classes at Chinese school. As long as I don’t think too much about how going back to college was supposed to prevent exactly this situation from happening, the job’s good.

The Urdu-speaking chef likes to call me senorita, much to the amusement of the Spanish-speaking kitchen staff who respond with the throat-clearing noise that means miss in Urdu. After my stress and success differentiating the four and a half Mandarin tones, and forcing my mouth to make sounds that aren’t in our alphabet, I probably shouldn’t be surprised that there are sounds in other foreign languages that don’t sound like words. And even so, hearing Urdu is just as shocking as hearing full speed Yantai-hua again. That was a sentence? How can anyone possibly pick words out of that? I’ve already ranted here about my massive struggles to learn Mandarin, and overall, I’m quite proud of myself. Still, I look back on it, and keep thinking that if I’d just done a little bit more, and tried a little bit harder…  everything would have fallen into place. (Just another way Mandarin resembles my ex-boyfriend). I’ve been missing the daily challenge of speaking a second language. And Spanish is wonderful, with that nice alphabet for easy transition between reading and speaking, and nice Latin roots for guessing.

Even my mistakes in Spanish are wonderful. When I screw up un poco and pequeno, for example, I can be told that un poco is more like a little and pequeno is more like small, instead of that zhāng is a measure word used for flat objects, except not for paper and not for things that come in a pair or come in a bunch, and actually my tone was wrong anyway and I really said monkey balls. (I’m looking at you, Chinese.)

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Waiting

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I’m pretty sure ‘virile marketing’ is something else entirely.

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I do not think that word means what you think it means.

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One of my November resolutions was to need the “job hunting” tag less frequently. (New Year’s resolutions are for conformists) For the most part, that’s worked out. I have some great clients and gigs right now, and no horror stories. But the Chinese school semester ended last week so I’m looking for some kind of summer work. I found a fun and interesting temp job, but I literally gasped when I was told how low the rate was.

I asked for a few days to think it over. One hand, fun and interesting! But on the other hand, how much will my self-esteem suffer by making what I made in high school? I laid out all the pros and cons to my mom on the phone.

“I think it all comes down to whether there’s a dress code,” I said, “The salary so ridiculously low that it’s barely worth the gas money to come in. If I have to buy khakis or something, it’s actually a money-losing proposition.”

“Well… you wouldn’t come to work in something skimpy or ratty, would you?”

“No. But you know, Mom, I think a job has to offer me health insurance to make me dress like an adult.”

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That You Can Live By

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I dropped off my CV at some places in the local mall today. It was kind of a downer, I didn’t go to 4 5 6 years of college to ring a register, but 3 classes a week doesn’t make a proper paycheck. I decided to focus on the bright side of  a simple job that won’t spill over into my free time, and not on putting on ridiculous dress code clothes to fulfill zany requests from corporate and customers. One place wanted me to handcopy my resume onto their official application (see previous re: “zany requests from corporate”) I started to laugh when I got to the references section, because does someone think I want a retail job badly enough to lie about it?

Later on today I had an interview, well, more of a meeting with a possible employer for some SEO and content writing work. Kind of what I’ve been doing here and there, but longer term and more regular work. They had a map of Middle Earth and a RENT poster on the office walls. Things are looking up!

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Want Ads

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“When I was looking at job boards,” Stick told me last night, “I found a perfect job for Evil Incarnate.” Evil Incarnate is an ex-boyfriend, the one who bears striking resemblance to my love-hate struggles with Mandarin. I suppose the name says it all.

“Send it along,” I said, “He’s not that all happy where he’s working now.”

“No, the job’s down in NC.” Stick said. (EI lives in Mass.) “Although if he moves down here, we’d have another player for a D&D run!”

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Stick Plans For The Future

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I interviewed for a job at reading center today, and the interviewer hired me to edit her dissertation.

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The Amazing Value of Complete Sentences

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I saw this ad while browsing Craig’s List.

Need someone to edit my essays

I need someone to read over two essays I’m writing as part of a job application. I don’t have much money to offer, however, maybe I can take you out for coffee or something like that.

P.S. This is not an offer for sex or anything like that.

Yes, I often mistake unpaid editing work for a sexual offer. This may be why I have trouble freelancing.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

As Seen On Craig’s List

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I’m still in Beijing, but I’m getting into an East Coast sleep pattern already. It comes from lying in bed wondering exactly what I’m going to do with myself next, and then waking up to an anxious countdown of time left in China. Four days, three days, two days.

I’m leaving for the US tomorrow. I finished my semester at the high school and I’ve decided not to renew my  contract. A visa to stay through August, and the Olympics, would require a one-year’s contract, and I can’t bring myself to sign up for another year without Stick. Maybe this will all blow over, and he could come back in September. Maybe not. And I’m not entirely sure I want to stay dependent on short-term visas that may not be renewed.

(My school has invited me back in September, if I change my mind, overall they seemed quite relieved not to be expected to get me the promised renewal. I wonder why?)

Stick has been home for a while now, and when we talk in those odd morning-evening phonecalls, he talks about the Raleigh job market. I don’t know if that’s the next step for us. Eventually I want to settle down near family, but I don’t know if eventually is now. There are some great things back home, I’m really looking forward to reading Cosmo,  eating rye bread and catching up with friends. And there are lots of jobs in exotic new places! It shouldn’t be hard to land another ESL job with a few years of experience, and I do want to keep traveling. And there’s part of me that really wants to come back to China — that would be the part of me that isn’t giving up on my Mandarin attempts!

In a few months, I’m going to be posting about how everything worked out for the best. I know part three is going to be awesome too, but right now it really sucks.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

End Of Part Two

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So I’ve narrowed it down to two possible jobs.

One job is Singapore Academy, with small classes, teenage students, all the things I want, but they weren’t able to meet my salary expectation, and between losing our double housing bonus and moving to a more expensive area, it’ll mean a loss in our monthly income. They’re closer to the center of town, in a nice international area.

The second job is a same-old same-old oral English class for adult, typical ESL in China, but they are willing to pay me more than double my current salary, give me free (Chinese) food and free housing in the hotel where the classes are held. Unfortunately, it’s in the boonies of Fengtai, where it’s actually considered Fengtai Town and not a district of Beijing.

Both jobs are 34 hours/week, both can do my visa, both interviewers called me a gifted teacher, both jobs do not involve dealing with FUB (that would be a certain Fairly Useless Boss) and both employers are waiting for me to make up my mind.

We’ve been hoping that I’ll find a new job close by, so we can keep this apartment, and stay in a nice neighborhood near Manfred and Xuemei, but the hot water saga has changed that. Going through the balcony to get into the kitchen to pick up the dishes to go back on the balcony to carry the dishes into the bathroom to wash them in shower isn’t working out.

Stick also wants to jump ship, and Singapore Academy is in a great neighborhood where he can find work nearby, while Oral English pays more than our combined salaries so he can take a long time looking for a new job.

It’s very hard to turn down a job where I’d be making double my salary. But, If I’m going to take a job just based on the pinkies (what we call a 100 RMB note), I should just go home and make an American salary. Then again, I also don’t want to be worried about money or not be able to have cool Chinese experiences because we can’t afford it.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

What My Dad Would Call "Logistics"

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