The Next Five Years

“Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans” is something my father has been known to say on occasion, but which google reveals to be a John Lennon quote/song lyric. Never is that saying truer than it is for the month of February, which at 28 days most years, goes by in a flash. Here we are March 1st and I’m thinking, we should probably take down the Christmas tree.

My Mum wrote a very funny blog earlier this week, about how she feels she is just hanging around in the waiting room of life. She’s 43 years old and all her children have fled the nest, and she’s not sure what the next twenty years will look like. Well funny that, none of us do.

A day after reading her blog, a package I sent myself six weeks ago arrived. During the Christmas break back in Hong Kong, I spent some time going through some of my old stuff that has accumulated in my mothers tiny apartment. I found my old school blazer (which was gigantic on me in year 12 and now sits the way my work blazers sit…ever an indication of aging and thickening) old programs from Musicals I was in, and I found precious newspaper pages on which I featured.

When I was 15 and living in Hong Kong there was a section of the South China Morning post called “The Young Post” and for a period of time they had different groups of kids (I think they started with 9) come in, photograph them in a couple of different poses, and then send then get them to respond to certain questions. The idea was that you would vote one kid out of the young post every week.

I only lasted 3 weeks or so. My downfall week, the question was “tell us a joke”. My parents had a thick book of politically incorrect jokes that used to sit in our bathroom (wildly inappropriate for children, but hey, I learned a lot about sex and sexual interaction from that novel!) Now, I know what you are thinking, I went ahead and did the one about the Nun and the Irishman. WRONG. Because somewhere in the back of my rude-joke-packed-mind I realized that these jokes were hilarious but also WILDLY inappropriate for the young post, I looked up online, “politically correct, lame jokes,” and came up with the following, which I used as my answer:
“What’s brown and sticky? A Stick!”

I was eliminated. Well Fuck.

But that isn’t where our story ends today. The question before the one that ended my career as Supreme Young Person of Hong Kong 2004, was “Where do you see yourself in 15 years?” And I answered the following:

“Wow! I’ll be 30! Well I hope to be working in a creative Job, maybe Acting because that is something I have always loved, living in some far away exotic place, with some really hot guy.”

Well.

This year I will be 25 and that means it has been ten years since I wrote that.

Let’s check in.

I am certainly living in some faraway place; Toronto is NOT exactly close to Hong Kong, and I’m not sure what I would have defined as exotic back then, having lived the majority of my life in Asia at that point. Compared to the busy, loud, crazy city that I consider my home…snow covered everything is pretty exotic. Eh?

As for the job…at this point I’d take any job as the endless weeks of Temping blur into one another and my sent inbox fills with more and more desperate and unanswered emails, (I’m totally kidding, I’m still working towards the creative thing and have actually had a couple of non-creative job offers suggested to me, which I have politely turned down. I didn’t bust my ass being poor and interning for the last 6 months to give up and take yet another Admin job which pays the bills, but kills my soul.)

And as for the really hot guy thing, let’s not even go there. You don’t want to hear me gush about Canuck boyfriend and he’d probably de-friend me if I did. But I think I’m on-track with that one.

But the next five years is going to be pretty huge I’m guessing. There is obviously no way of knowing (because 2 years ago I would have never thought I’d be where I am today), but the one thing I do know is that life is an ever changing thing. You can never get too comfortable with the way things are, for better or worse, and it’s always for the better in my opinion.
I find it interesting that my Mother feels rutted in her life when she is still in the prime of it. I get it that the hands on child-rearing faze of her life has fizzled, but she never gets to stop being our mother (sucks to be you) and she never gets to stop being a part of her already fairly eccentric family. Maybe that’s her problem (and I suffer from it to) there are days when things just seem too calm and normal.

And that is freaky.
The good news is that she has the next generation to look forward to. Maybe not in the next five years, but, thanks to stupid biology, certainly in the next 15. And she’s already threatened to be the grandmother that feeds the grandkids sugar and lets them stay up late and gives them money to sneak out to concerts and will generally be considered “cool” and therefore loved more than me. Stupid ungrateful unborn, un-conceived children.

I guess we’ll just have to see where we’re at, twenty years from now.

Temping, Prositution of the Corporate world

Temping:

temp [tɛmp] Informal
n
a person, esp a typist or other office worker, employed on a temporary basis
vb (intr)
to work as a temp

Turns out Temping is better paid than retail (not by much, but enough for me to go buy those Croc boots which I swear aren’t ugly, just give me a chance to show you) and because I continue to be ignored by the world of Full Time work in an industry that I am dying to work in, I decided to give Temping a go. Since the beginning of the month I have taken on four different assignments, 2 x 1 day assignments, 2 x 1 week assignments, and learned about a whole new world that I never knew existed.

The world of the Temp.

Let me give you a little run down.

The world of the Temp is a place ungoverned by your average 9-5. You wake up at 7.30am with the hope that at 8am, someone (Pimp) will call you and tell you they need you at XYZ location, and the dress code is *blank*. You slap on some make-up, make sure you vaugely know where you are going and sprint out the door. On the train you wonder again what you are doing with your life, but the other part of your brain says “this is the last job, I promise you. We’ll get the money and then move to Florida.” You get to the destination, you make small talk, find out what the client (John) likes and what they need. You settle down, close your eyes, and daydream you are somewhere else (like at a real job). When it’s all over, they thank you plenty of times, and you shuffle out clutching your time sheet. You buy yourself a couple of drinks to try to forget the disappointment in your mothers eyes.

Temping is the Prostitution of the corporate world.

But you know what? I don’t hate it.

My first two assignments were in Film and Television production companies, and you bet your Chihuahua’s left nut that I worked it like I was on the sinking Titanic and had to get my third-class ass on a lifeboat. The one day gig was a bit of a bust, it was a monday and quiet as hell, but the week long gig yielded fun, a bit of professional networking with an awesome Aussie guy who took my resume and some new surprising friendships with girls my own age who worked in the company. Turns out some of them had been in the same boat as me and some of them even got their jobs after temping first.

Actually, when I started to look into it, Temping seemed to be one of the ways a bunch of people I know got their full-time jobs. They’d go for an assignment and the company would say, you know what, why don’t you stay on, or, why don’t you give us your resume to take a look at. It was kind of like a pre-interview. And hell with the number of resumes and cover letters I have sent off, any chance of getting into ANY company as more than just a name on a piece of paper is a big bonus.

So why did I always think there was such a stigma attached to Temping? I couldn’t even tell you. Maybe there is, but now that I’ve joined the ranks I just don’t care. The job market is so tough out there, and lots of people who want to do what I want to do are stuck in menial jobs, frittering away their youth and talent.

I’d rather wake up each day with the fresh and exciting opportunity of meeting someone that may assist with opening a career door for me, than be marking down sweaters for the third time this week.

End Rant

I’m going to jot this one down in “experiences”

Being unemployed has its suckyness and its awesomeness.

It sucks because, money is pouring out of your pocket faster than it is pouring in (worst). It also sucks because you spend your days tweaking a document that maybe, just maybe, you can fix JUST SO, so that employers will realize you are the fantastic, charismatic, charming girl you are in real life. You spend the day gazing at job posting websites, or kijiji, or hiking around the mall in your cute pretend corporate get-up with a sweaty grey file full of those pieces of paper clutched in your hands. You spend the day trying to convince people that seem to hate their life why YOU TOO should join their organization and maybe YOU could have the opportunity to hate your life too!

Then there is the sparkling hope, (this is the awesome part by the way) the idea that every resume and cover letter sent off or dropped by, could be the next fun thing, the next big adventure, the part that leads to the next part. Does everyone live with this same idealistic hope or just me? Who’d a thunk-it that a retail job where minimum wage is $10.25 in Canada could be so alive with potential.
Mama says: If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.

Wise words. I feel their invisible power tattooed across my brain. That saying is probably what drives my very existence. Well…that and that song from Pochahontas “Just around the river bend”… because seriously, whats back there? Gold? A kingdom of sloths? A tiny toy car factory staffed by midgets?

I digress.

I have been handing out a lot of resumes and cover letters that basically say “BLAH BLAH BLAH hire me for the love of god BLAH BLAH Kind regards, Paris.” And the truth of the matter is, if you hustle with some muscle (do we like that one?… I’m not sold on it frankly) then you are going to get some emails back, some calls and some interviews.

And thus, I have had all of the above. It is so exciting when you get an email back in the first 24 hours, you think, THEY REALLY LIKE ME! But sometimes those can lead to nothing and that second email doesn’t come back to you.

Then you get a call to come in for an interview. And so off you go, giggling with excitement, into the dark hole of the unknown with that little folder of resume’s your only flotation device.

So, a week and a half ago, I go to an interview, for what I think is a restaurant job. I go down to a very trendy part of downtown Toronto. I brushed my hair, I even applied some makeup (teehee, what fun!) and I wait in the very swanky plush restaurant area. There are three of us waiting to be interviewed. The guy interviewing us shows up late in a flap (by the way this mans name is Norwayne, a name I have never come across, personally) and it soon becomes apparent that the job is in fact a hosting position at a totally different club. The Norwayne man, tries as tactfully as he can, to tell me, that this job involves…scanty dress. I’m nodding along like, yep yep, tits out for the boys, gotcha. My interview is done in 2 minutes, I walk out of the building and Norwayne and I part ways forever.

Yesterday, I went to an open job interview for a new restaurant that is opening up. First of all, I walk into the place and it has a big blow up picture of a girl dressed in, what I can only describe as an Irish get-up that hooters would be proud of. Think mini tartan skirt, tartan bra, and tie up white shirt over miniscule tartan bra. Second, the picture has been dissected, as if this were a scientific drawing, with helpful hints like, “Tartan girls are always proud of their personal hygiene” and for some reason… a line pointing straight at this girls crotch. Or, a line drawn from this girls boobs with the hot tip “Tartan girls must wear the Tartan bra uniform. No other bra may be worn underneath”. I should have walked straight out. No miniscule tartan bra is going to be able to fight gravity and what I’m lugging. And third, instead of a sign saying “Job interviews” there was a sign that said “Casting”.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I still have secret aspirations of becoming an actress and having paparazzi trying to break onto my lawn, but…this is a waitress job, is it not? Lets call a tray wielding waitress, a tray wielding waitress.
I had the interview, surprise surprise I don’t have enough serving experience.

Time to start lying on that Resume….
End Rant