Weblog:
Wow, I didn’t think I’d have time to write more entries, but now that our stuff’s been taken to the docks for shipping, I’m kinda left with not much to do. I’ve already applied to the first round of job listings, and I’ve double, triple, and quadruple checked my portfolio, resume..etc. I suppose I could comb through all the game, film, and other CG-related companies and apply to the ones that are not actively hiring, but my experiences from the past tell me that’s a really long shot. Usually if a company isn’t actively hiring and your stuff gets filed away, they almost never remember to look you up once they have a vacancy–they simply put out another job available entry in industry job listings. I have heard of cases where someone got dug out of the files and contacted months or even years later, but I need a job now, not later.
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While packing, Elena and I painstakingly marked all sides of boxes containing fragile items with “Fragile!” and “Computer!” in both Chinese and English. Elena even drew a wine glass on all the sides (which I thought was cute, because I’ve only seen her draw once in the five years we’ve been together). Unfortunately, after the movers moved our boxes out of the apartment, she called me to tell me to abandon all hope that our fragile items would be handled carefully (she rode with the movers to my mom’s house to pick up some stuff). Why? Because the movers were all illiterate.
You might think that’s funny if you live in a developed country, but in a country like China, illiteracy is a very real social problem; the number of illiterate people in China is astounding. We’ve had two housekeepers that were illiterate, so my requests for them to try to cook western styled food from cookbooks got a good laugh out of Elena. However, it was my turn to laugh when she needed to have the housekeeper pick up some items from the supermarket, because a handwritten shopping list is out of the question, and reading the list orally only ended up with the housekeeper remembering things wrong. One of our housekeepers even lost her life’s savings because she was illiterate. Since she couldn’t read or write, she was afraid of going into a bank to start a savings account, so she just kept all of her money in her house. Recently, a fire destroyed the side of the house where the money was kept. Needless to say, she was devastated. We asked her why she didn’t have someone help her open up a savings account, and she said she was trying to save up to a whole number before putting it all in a bank. That’s another social problem I see a lot in China–people here lack common sense compared to the average person in developed countries. It’s the combined result from lack of education, lack of positive social climate, lack of fair opportunities, and the rampant corruption that keeps the poor and the rich well seperated. The poor remain illiterate, uneducated, and operate their daily lives with lack of efficiency and progress, while the rich sit at home watching their giant screen TV, surfing the internet with broadband, and eat at 5-star restaurants. China’s got a lot of social issues that would require a few more generations to sort out before they could even come close to being considered a developed country.
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I told Elena some time ago that my favorite item on the menu of her restaurant (she co-owns a Cantonese styled restaurant) is the roasted duck with plum sauce. So for the next week, she kept bringing home roasted duck (although they forgot the plum sauce once–which should be a crime punishable by law), except that chefs in China tend to use cheap low-grade kitchenware, so their blunt crappy knives always shatter the bones and I’d have to watch out so I don’t break off a tooth as I make way through the duck while spitting out little bone fragments. Eventually, I just told her to bring home whole legs so I could hold on to that sucker and tear through it with my teeth the way “war generals of the Roman Empire would do so during a feast” (those were my exact words). She conceded to my request. Now there’s no more tiny bone fragments; the general is pleased.
