2.11pm. Slathers sourdough bagel with cream cheese *nom nom*
2.17pm. While slathering cinnamon bagel with cream cheese, half of bagel flies through the air, cheesing my new black jeans and landing cheese first on the floor.
2.18pm. Picks up bagel. Crying.
2.19pm. Helen and I agree that the five second food-on-ground rule should be upheld in this situation, and besides, the cream cheese worked as a protective layer against the floor — armour, if you will.
2.20pm. Scrapes sullied cheese off bagel and applies fresh layer.
2.22pm. Devours bagel before it takes flight again.
2.27pm. Grabs remains of Helen’s blueberry bagel.
6.43pm. Eats more cinnamon bagels in front of a 10-year-old episode of The Simpsons and The Einstein Factor, marvelling at the likeness between Peter Berner’s head and the show’s light bulb logo.
1.16am. Finally falls asleep. Dreams of trapezing bagels with tiny mouths begging me to eat their cheesy doughy goodness.
11am. Wakes up. Rinse and repeat.
Anyone who has been reading my blog for a while will know that this February I enrolled in a TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) course run by the Australasian Training Academy (ATA). The course involved a five day face-to-face foundation component held in the city, and then from March til May I completed three more elective courses to study more specialised fields like teaching elementary aged children and teaching grammar. Through no stage of this process was I concerned that I wouldn’t find work — particularly in China, which has the largest ESL market and was the country I wanted to teach in to begin with. But almost two months after posting my resume and details on ESL job sites, and contacting countless recruiters and schools throughout China, I still have no definite work. In fact, I have almost nothing.
I’ve come to the conclusion that this is not a failure of the TESOL course so much as the failure of anyone I’ve dealt with at ATA and anyone else in this process warning me that my age, my lack of university qualifications, and only wanting a 6 month contract, would virtually dry up job possibilities. Most schools in China and the recruiters they hire to find people to fill their positions are looking for native English speakers over the age of twenty. I turn 19 in 22 days, but that doesn’t mend the fact that I’m still 18 years old, a recent high school graduate with no university qualifications beyond the Art History course I did at Melbourne Uni last year as part of the VCE extension program. But I thought the fact that I’ve had a book published, that I was dux (valedictorian) of my school and won the subject prizes for Literature and English Language (and Chinese), and my experience travelling and studying in China in 2006 and 2007 would be enough to circumvent the failings in other parts of my resume.
It turns out, and I was only told this halfway through the job hunt, that in many larger cities in China it is now illegal to hire foreign teachers who do not have a BA or other college qualification. My dreams of teaching in Shanghai died right there, but I hoped I’d still be able to find work in other provinces and smaller cities with “looser” visa restrictions. One of the first recruiters to contact me directly (like almost all the China-based recruiters, she found my contact information on a site called “e-job fair” that I’d never heard of or given information to — the wonders of the internet) was from Huizhou City in Guangdong province. Not only did the middle school hoping to hire me not mind if I only worked until December, they assured me that the transport to Guangzhou (Guangdong’s Province’s capital) was “very convenient” — only two hours away. As well-meaning as the Huizhou school seemed, though, I wasn’t exactly falling over myself to return to a Cantonese-speaking province to improve my Mandarin, so I put them on the back burner.
In the meantime I went through dozens of recruiters looking for work. Now, there are several problems in dealing with recruiters as opposed to contacting schools directly. There is always a language barrier, although I assume one of the major reasons Chinese-run English language schools use recruiters is because of their language proficiency. Though sometimes you have to wonder if apparent English proficiency is undercut by a complete lack of comprehension:
Mary on July 2nd: “Hi Aviva Kidd, you are so young !There just a elementary school in LianYungang, Jiangsu ,do you want to go there?”
LianYungang! I could take the ferry to Tokyo on weekends. I replied the next day:
“Hi Mary, yes I am interested in Lianyungang. But first I have some questions:
1. What is the name of the elementary school in Lianyungang?
2. How many hours a week would I be teaching (and do I get weekends off?)
3. Will the school sponsor me for a Z (working) visa?
4. Will I be provided with free accommodation near the school (including modern facilities like shower, bed, TV, sofa, kitchen etc?)
5. Will the school pay for my air ticket to China?
6. What salary would I receive?
7. When will the job start, and can I finish by December 2009?”
These are all standard questions and most of these perks, in fact, were offered by her recruiting agency in the introductory email she sent me. But when I hadn’t heard back three days later I fired off an email inquiring about progress, and received this reply a few hours later:
“Sorry Aviva Kidd, I want to konw where are you now ?? The school are in urgent, they will beginning the school tomorrow!”
Clearly she’d forgotten I was still in Australia, and had decided that knowing nothing about the school beyond the city it was located in should be no barrier to magically appearing for work. I reminded her I was still in Australia and would not be flying to China until she could answer my original questions, which I reiterated. That was 5 days ago, and there’s been no response. I feel jaded enough at this point not to expect one.
Sadly this is pretty much the way the recruiters all seem to operate. If I get any kind of reply at all, which is becoming increasingly rare no matter what stage of the negotiations, it is always vague and rarely answers key questions that would allow me to actually evaluate the possibility of accepting the job — if I ever get to the point where I see a contract. Probably the most stressful and heartbreaking moment of the process so far was when I found a job I really wanted — at English First in Jinan city — and was told the director would be ringing me for a phone interview when it was convenient, they were “very interested” in hiring me. I said Wednesday or Thursday. After sitting housebound by the phone for those two days I emailed Marita, the recruiter, on Friday asking what had happened. She said the director didn’t come into the school on Wednesdays or Thursdays (thanks for telling me!!), but the director hoped to ring by Sunday. On Monday I emailed Marita again asking what was wrong. She said the school hadn’t been able to get a Z (working) visa for me, but would I be willing to work on an F (business) visa? I was desperate enough to say yes. Another week by the phone and no new email in my inbox and I was exhausted, stressed out and angry. I emailed Marita one last time, and got this in reply:
“Hello, Aviva. I have to say sorry. The school told me it is troubled if you work with a F visa. Recently, the exit and entry department is very strickt in checking foreign teacher’s visa.”
I was crushed. I’d sidelined other job opportunities for the sake of this one, and after three weeks of negotiations and waiting, the recruiter didn’t have the courtesy to tell me the school had said no until I demanded an answer. God knows how much longer I would have waited for nothing had I been more patient. But the problem is I can understand the school’s rationale and why they didn’t want to hire me on the wrong visa. What hurt the most was being screwed around, hearing everything secondhand on delay, and waiting with absolutely no control over the situation. I can only let go for so long before I have to do something proactive just to keep my sanity.
After a few more situations like this (though none that went so far), I emailed the recruiter for the school in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, and asked if there was still a job opening. She said yes, wanted to know what salary and type of accommodation I’d accept, I replied, and we finally seemed to be making progress. I found out my Mandarin teacher from high school has a friend who lives in Huizhou who could help me if I moved there, and things finally seemed to be working out. Then, out of the blue, after another a week of waiting, the Huizhou recruiter said that the school’s dean had read through my documents (presumably my resume, references, TESOL certificates) and had decided I was a “little too young” for the position after all. Never mind that they’d been courting me since May, and it was now July, but there you have it. I was beyond crying, and just felt hopeless.
But that’s not all she wrote. The next day, Huizhou emailed me to say that they’d “gone through” my papers again and they’d like me to join them after all, and this was the new offer: come teach their Summer course for two weeks, which would be my probation, and if the feedback after the course was satisfactory they’d offer me a contract for the rest of the semester. I don’t know what the logical reaction should be in this situation, but I was furious, not thankful. I’d been offered everything I know the other teacher they’re hiring has been offered, and now it’s been yanked back, and part of it spat out again. Moreover, I’d have to pay for my own flight over there for the probationary period. So I emailed the Huizhou recruiter and said if I accepted their offer and passed the probation, does that mean my flight would be reimbursed, the apartment made available, and the salary we agreed on be reinstated for the rest of the semester — as per the original offer? In the meantime I talked to Nare who encouraged me to accept the job teaching the summer course, because it was the most realistic chance of “getting over there” at the moment, and more than anything was a way for the school to realise I’m not just some surfboard-toting Aussie kid looking for a free ticket to China to go boozing at rice wine joints. The next day I provisionally accepted the offer, but said if they really wanted me, to hurry up with the visa papers because the summer course starts on July 20. That’s 8 days away today, and I’m still waiting for a response.
Experience tells me that if I get one after this long a silence, the reply won’t be positive. Right now I’m pretty much ready to throw in the towel and enrol at Fudan University in Shanghai for a semester. I love Shanghai. It’s where I wanted to go in the first place, but this symmetry is little consolation for what feels like two month’s of wasted time, just waiting.
Gleaned from the last five minutes of Coco Avant Chanel.
1. Your boyfriend/lover-type person is killed in a car crash that you totally knew was going to happen because you foreshadowed it by saying “you’ll regret not taking me [in you car]” as he drives off, you stupid idiot.
2. Go see the crash site, because that’ll make you feel so much better.
3. Go buy a bunch of different fabrics, presumably with your boyfriend/lover-type person’s assets, then proceed to furrow your brow in grief and cut up said fabric with a pair of giant clipper things.
4. Voila! Your incredible new collection has miraculously appeared on a bunch of grissini-thin models. Now all you have to do is sit back and smile distantly as people shower you with adulation.
OK, I’m quite keen to get started. There’s a Spotlight not too far from my house, so fabric and giant clipper things are sorted. I’m a bit concerned about finding me some grissini-thin models this close to the mystical ring of McDonald’s restaurants that encircles the inner city, but I suppose I should put more energy into starting at the beginning and snagging a boyfriend/lover-type person (must have moustache) who is willing to die in a car crash to further my international fashion aspirations. Any volunteers?
Cross with care, OR BE TURNED INTO A CUPCAKE.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading too much -Fake- where virtually all the policeman protagonists want to get in each others’ pants, but I couldn’t help noticicing an interesting trend in the Taiwanese police drama I’ve been watching, Black & White (痞子英雄): the two male leads have way more chemistry than the main hetero romantic couple.
Take for instance this scene where Ying Xiong (误英雄) and Zai Tian (陈在天) are sprawled out on the floor of a metro station, recovering from the prior action sequence that had Zai Tian electrocute himself in order to save Ying Xiong from a room filled with nothing but carbon dioxide (I’m not defending the plot).
Aw. Now compare this with the scene immediately afterwards when the female romantic lead (who just happens to be Ying Xiong’s biological sister) confesses her love to Zai Tian.
Looks keen, doesn’t he? Though I suppose it’s not his fault they have all the magnetism of wet cement and a bucket of paint peeler. No doubt the writers will manage to contrive some way of forcing them to be together in the last few episodes, but to no avail. My slash-o-meter has been alerted. I KNOW THE TRUTH!!!*
*Really.
Went to see the John Brack exhibition at the Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square yesterday, though not before smuggling a cinnamon bagel in the hood of my hoodie into the members’ room. I don’t like the Federation Square members’ room. It’s small and cramped and kind of diagonal, and those eagle-eyed tea ladies and the signs that read “DO NOT BRING FOOD INTO THE MEMBERS’ ROOM YOU DIRTY WRETCHES” (in so many words) don’t exactly make one’s illicit bagel consumption a pleasurable experience.
But the exhibition itself was great, though I definitely prefer Bracks’ work when he was painting scenes of “ordinary” Melbourne life in the 40s, 50s and 60s. And finally getting to see The Bar in person, I now understand why the National Gallery of Victoria was (and still is) so desperate to acquire it. What an incredible painting, even just aesthetically.
John Bracks' 'The Bar', 1954
Other favourite paintings in the exhibition were Brack’s self portrait shaving in the mirror, the back of one of his daughter’s heads with her loopy hairstyle, the old schoolbuilding caught in late afternoon sun, his nude in the bathroom, Collins Street 5pm (of course), and its figurative descendant, the mechanical pencils marching out of the tower made of scrabble tiles. What I found disappointing about the exhibition curatorship-wise though, was that most of the paintings did not have individual descriptions under their labels, and even major paintings like Collins Street, 5pm were marked by interesting, but only vaguely relevant quotes from the artist. Still, a relatively minor quibble about an otherwise fabulous exhibition of one of Melbourne’s great artists.
All of that art-ogling can be a tiring exercise though. Lucky for me I have a giant cup of coffee to zap my neurons back into functionality.
Image credit for The Bar.
It’s the last day of June and I was going to write a whiny, reflective, introspective, wankertabulous post about being stuck in publishing and employment limbo, and how after six months of living in my bedroom I seem to have become unintentionally grafted to my bedsheets, but who wants to read about that? (I certainly don’t want to write about it when I already complain about everything ad nauseam to any poor soul foolish enough to stumble across the maw of my lair). So instead I’m going to talk about consumption. And I’m not referring to the type of consumption that allows opera divas to belt out their final arias while supposedly in their death throes. I’m talking about fan consumption, i.e. reading til dawn or until your lightbulb conks out, DVD marathons that make your eyes bleed in joy and gaming sessions that will no doubt become the cause of your permanent RSI in years to come. Aw. But ever since having rediscovered THE LIBRARY and it’s most admirable feature and everybody’s favourite four letter word beginning with “F” (nymphomaniacs have another one), I’ve cast away any pretences towards scholarship and literary blah and started reading again. OK, so maybe it’s manga I’m reading as opposed to great slabs of indented text, but there’s no such distinction in a post-post-modern world (I may need another “post” in there, please advise).
I was in Grade 6 when Mum took me to see Katsuhiro Otomo’s Metropolis (2001) at the Westgarth. It was is a fantastic film, with a stylish blend of CGI and traditional animation telling an exciting and at times, rollicking, story adapted from Osamu Tezuka’s own take on Fritz Lang’s original silent film by the same name. I’ve since seen as much of Lang’s Metropolis that has survived, and I was blown away by how iconic and beautifully-rendered it is, despite an admittedly corny moral underpinning the plot. But Otomo’s Metropolis is dark and ambiguous, and somehow manages to be incredibly satisfying despite its “unhappy” ending. As far as I’m concerned it’s adaptation at its finest.
Unfortunately I didn’t feel the same way towards one of Otomo’s earlier films based on his graphic novel masterwork, Akira. Maybe I was too young, but Akira the movie left me cold, and I found it ultimately more confusing than rewarding. But having recently (and finally) enjoyed Neon Genesis Evangelion as a manga after struggling to understand what people saw in its anime version, I decided to try Akira in its original graphic novel form when I saw the first volume at the library.
“It’s epic”, said my uncle when I told him I was reading it, and he couldn’t be more right. Set in an imagined Tokyo of 2030 but indelibly imbued with a 1980s Modernist art style, Akira is a massive story on a massive scale (it reportedly took more than 10 years for Otomo to complete all six volumes). The story itself is a classic example of “ordinary” kids getting involved in government conspiracy with global (and interplanetary) repurcussions, after scientific experiments to bring out psychic abilities in children caused the destruction of Tokyo, and then the destruction of Neo-Tokyo and the beginning of international yet very internal conflict as all sides seek to survive against a society gone haywire and its self-appointed and deadly supernatural overlords. And like all good stories, its characters are multi-dimensional and the readers’ attitudes towards people once perceived as enemies shift as circumstances throw them into a different light. You don’t know who you should be supporting because, like life, it’s never that clearly cut.
My one major complaint about Akira though is that it’s sometimes too action-packed, too ceaseless in its destruction of buildings and people as to make it unbelievable that by the end so many of the protagonists survived. Breaks in momentum are scarce, there’re always things happening on all sides of the conflict, and after finishing a volume, I’d feel exhausted. I had a similar sense of being overstimulated after seeing a more recent movie of Otomo’s, Steamboy. Still, I suppose when the destruction of the world is imminent you’re not going to be doing much sleeping.
Image credits: Metropolis and Akira
My farewell dinner in Guangzhou before I departed for the significantly colder streets of Shanghai in December 2007 was a truly enlightening experience. As usual I thew my entire reason for being in China out the window by letting my more Mandarin-literate friends do the ordering and trusted them to get at least one dish without meat in it (and because this was Guangdong Province, there was only one dish without meat on the menu anyway). It was up to me to navigate the drinks section though, and the cantaloupe juice I’d had the day before had instilled in me the somewhat reckless notion that as long as the name of the drink had the character for “juice” in it, it’d be fine.
When our order did arrive though, instead of the cheery glass of kumquat juice I was expecting, I was served a nasty little black can of something unknown and unjuice-like, and images of toxic lab-created fizziness swamped my mind. Nobody else seemed bothered though, and one of my friends promptly suggested I drink my coconut juice while it was still cold. Coconut, my cabbage-addled brain tried to comprehend, and juice? Together? But before I could look anymore like a culture shocked tourist, I peeled back the can toggle thing and took a swig. And it was at that exact moment that my life changed. Call it an outer-body experience, if you will. But whatever actually happened in me at that moment, I knew I had found my nirvana. I was hooked on this strange Chinese coconut juice (椰汁), and I was never going back.
At least that’s what I thought. While I managed to track down more cans of it at Baiyun airport and in the convenience store across from our Shanghai hotel — cooling my precious darlings on the balcony exposed to 1 degree C temperatures — by the time we got to Taiwan I had entered a coconut juice desert that was to last a year and a half. On my return to Melbourne I embarked on a quest very similar to the one I began in search of my favourite deep fried sesame balls, only this one was a failure. I tried every Asian convenience store in the City, even some in strange suburbs not on my tram line, and yet none stocked those glistening, achingly longed-for black cans of coconut byproduct.
But then, several weeks ago, on a cold wintry night spent buying lesser things, when Nare and I were detouring through a little sidestreet past the demolition zone of Myer, through a window into a stunted refrigerator stacked amid cartons of faux guava juice did I finally find my salvation! Or, you know, the juice. But I found it! And for two bucks a pop and with a new nutrition information sticker the Chinese market recognised as needless, I bought half a dozen of the suckers. And as I tore open a hole in the top of the first can and let its milky sweetness enter my mouth, I was sure of only one thing:
It was worth the wait.
…is a behemoth of a mall called Westfield Doncaster. The only time I’d been there before was during a 45-minute and ultimately fruitless car park seach on my way to Kevin Andrews’ office, located in an unmarked building next door. From the resulting interview I learnt that Mr Andrews is an Evil, Evil man — but a nice enough chap to talk to, really, and obviously someone with way too much time to kill these days (why else would he spend an hour and a half answering questions from undercover Greens and ALP members posing as National Politics students?). None of which has anything to do with my waking up yesterday with an irrepressible urge to return to Westfield Doncaster, beyond having way too much time to kill now myself and probably a few screws loose after reading Vampire Hunter D ’til 1 am again. Story of my life.
But even half-crazed from sleep deprivation and following a faded list of public transport possibilities, Hel and I managed to only get on the wrong bus twice before travelling through many strange and previously unknown suburbs with names like “Kew” and “Greensbrough” (we were scared there for a while), before finally arriving at Westfield (aka Many Blocks of Glass). Once inside we immediately set out in search of a foodcourt but got waylaid by a Borders appearing seemingly out of nowhere. I learnt a lot of things in this Borders. I learnt that the Young Adult section is actually the Twilight section now, and why read when you can drool over glossy photobooks of Robert Pattinson stalking underage high school girls?*
And just in case you’re feeling a tad overwhelmed by the merit of other sections like Foreign Language, you need only look up to experience that familiar feeling of being followed:
*Shivers*. It wasn’t a total loss though, because I finally found the last two volumes of -Fake- (the last of which was plastic wrapped for “explicit content”. Should I be surprised that the content raters are warning Concerned Parents about sex between consenting adults but not between an 100-something-year-old virginal vampire and a teenage girl?).
During our pilgrimage to Doncaster I also learnt that toilets are really called “restrooms”, and that the foodcourt is too big and has exactly the same food as Melbourne Central, and in fact all the stores there are exactly the same as Melbourne Central and nearby City environs, just packed closer together. My subconscious probably knew this already, but who could pass up the opportunity to accidentally board a bus headed to some place called Bulleen? Actually, it’s possibly a miracle we managed to arrive home on the same date we left, but we did it anyway, and tomorrow we’re going back to the well-tramped and well-loved stretch of Brunswick Street. They have bagels there, you see.
*And before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy after my not-so-implied Twilight bashing considering what I admitted to reading into the wee hours last night, I say this: a) Vampire Hunter D is 80s Japanese horror, not 2000s American fodder; b) D doesn’t stalk people because he wants to get in their pants, he stalks them because they have a price on their heads; c) in VHD you don’t have to put up with whiny heroines because they usually die before the end of the book, care of D or some kind of supernatural tentacle machine monster created by Dracula during his hyrbid breeding phase. Yay!
Got a letter addressed to me from the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development yesterday, and I’m sorry to say the first thing that crossed my mind was that my Working with Children card was being reneged because I’d spent the last few nights reading -Fake- til midnight and giggling like a demented fujoshi (the problem with this picture being the reading til midnight part). But no, the letter had nothing to do with my reading habits or lack of burgeoning teaching career, but informed me that I am a recipient of a 2009 Premier’s VCE award for National Politics.
1st thought: yay.
2nd thought: who gives a shit?
3rd thought: I have to go near JOHN BRUMBY?
4th thought: the awards ceremony starts at 10.30? Do they mean am? WHO’S EVEN AWAKE THEN???
5th thought: what do you mean I can’t wear jeans? I wore jeans studying NatPols all year, I wore jeans during the exam, I was wearing jeans when I found out my mark (this is a lie: I was in my pyjamas), so why the f*** can’t I wear jeans to the stupid ceremony? Stupid *♣&®X!% snobby #%!X®&♣* pri**** school people. Instead they suggested I could wear my school (prison) uniform. I was going to laugh at the idea when I realised my old school uniform technically allows jeans. Yes, I do thumb my nose at youse.
All of this and the fact that the ceremony will be 8 months after my actual National Politics exam and couldn’t feel more irrelevant to my life right now doesn’t make me particularly keen on going. Plus I’m doing my best to get out of the country by then. But otherwise, count me in (in a “I’m not coming go screw yourselves hahahaha” RSVP kind of way). But here’s hoping they still send me a prize. Personally I’m holding out for a blank cheque with my name on it, or an assortment of imported cheeses. Odds on though it’ll be some plasticy medal thing or yet another book (someone seriously needs to tell these people I only read subtitles and books with big pictures with a page count under forty). Or considering our dire economic times, I’ll probably wind up with an embossed certificate care of several Tasmanian rainforests that shall otherwise be useless until the giraffe flu apocalypse at which point it can be used for kindling.
So. Anyone fancy a spot of fraud and feel like going in my place?
