Gaijin-in-Japan

1. what is a ‘dispatch company’? I can’t image it’s something like FedEx… .

2. how many universities are there in Kobe, anyway??

3. I forgot… what does your wife do for a living?

4. if you’re going to be working at night and travelling for hours, I can see you getting together with Neil a lot now that you have a great excuse for coming home really late. Hell… the two of you can do the ol ‘you tell your wife you’re sleeping at *my* place and I’ll tell my wife I’m sleeping at *your* place and let’s just go to the titty-bar’ routine. Vidcast for that one, though, ‘k?

5. any news on the ‘wonder!job’ you got the interview for?

Man. This unemployment stuff really resonates with me. A few short years ago, I ended up working crappy jobs for a temp agency and trying to save up (hard to do when you’re also getting crappy pay) to cover the initial unemployment insurance gap of two weeks of no pay at all between getting your last pay cheque and starting your unemployment cheques *plus* another $200 a month (for, I figured, three months it would take to find *my* wonder!job) to cover the difference between getting the unemployment insurance rate of 67% of said crappy pay and a subsistence lifestyle.

Once I managed to slowly get all that accumulated, I immediately asked my temp agency for assignments only at the $20 an hour level. Which, of course, they couldn’t get me. Which made me ‘unemployed for lack of work’. Which kicked off the whole Unemployment Insurance process. Because I needed a break from doing $11 an hour jobs that the schmuck permanent employee in the next cubicle was making $24 an hour for and *I* was doing a better job. Jesus, that was depressing… .

In Canada, you don’t get UI if you quit or get fired so I had to tread really carefully on this issue. I was ruthless about this. I figured the only way I could get settled enough to find a decent job was by having *time* to do it. And not running around to all these places doing crappy assigments… .

I only did the UI thing for ten months. And in those ten months, I couldn’t afford to live on the UI payments and the $200 top-up so I ended up working so many hours (and having my pay clawed off the UI cheques - which was fair, I guess) that I immediately requalified for UI after my final UI cheque. And I took three month-long different kinds of ‘job hunting’ clubs (while working at night and having the money clawed off my UI cheques). In ten months, I received a whopping six weeks of UI. And they were interspersed throughout those ten months.

I was even more exhausted by being unemployed (and so freakin’ dishearted that my job-finding time was so severely curtailed by having to work crappy jobs that I couldn’t turn down) that I nearly cried when I ended up having to go back to the temp agency after my final UI cheque and the first assignment I got was… more crap. Worse; a crap assignment where I had specifically been asked for - even after months had gone by - because, damned it, I’m a good worker regardless of the crap wages. It was working in an insurance office, typing insurance letters. Typing. Not inputting into Word and printing. TYPING. With carbons. And WhiteOut.

When I got the assignment, I happened to have one of those no-plan cellphones and I got the call while in the middle of something like a K-Mart or Walmart (which it couldn’t be since I refuse to shop at Walmart you get get the drift) shopping with a friend of mine. Or should I say, I was watching *him* shop because I was broke. I closed the phone, felt like throwing up and made him take me to a bar. He’d never seen me have a drink. He knew this was serious.

God. What horrible memories… .

Wow! That’s what I call a comment. Where do I begin?

Um.

1. A Dispatch company contracts with businesses for teachers. The business buy a package of lessons from the Dispatch company whereby they contract a teacher. I then go to business and teach, usually 6 to 8 students. At the end of the contract the business has a choice to renew as do I.

2. There are around 20 universities in Kobe and probably 40 or so in the Kansai area.

3. My wife is a domestic engineer. She designs way to make it easier for me leave the house and bring home bacon so she can fry me up in a pan. She also does some part time work sometimes. Now she is working with the census bureau delivering business surveys and then compiling and resubmitting the forms back to the city.

4. The wonder Job wasn’t really a wonder job. It was a commision low salaried cold calling job I would have had to do strictly in Japanese with Japanese recruits. They actually never contacted me back. Good thing.

I also didn’t get the 37 hour a week job with the housing allowance. Looks like the gods want me to have a flexible schedule and an unstable lifestyle. I think they like seeing me do all these little projects. It makes there lives more interesting.

As for you. I loved hearing your story. It put a smile on my face and let me know others are in the same boat as me–you too Zen. I guess we allll have to hang in there in order to catch the big fish.

I’m impressed that you hung in there like you did. It must have been tough for you. Especially seeing the others making twice what you were. You must have felt like you were overqualified and were not being given the chance to succeed.

I hope everything is better now.

Oh, yeah. It wasn’t so much being in a terrible position… I learned that I can roll with the punches pretty well.

The one thing you get to learn to do (if you’re balanced) is to be gracefully humble and humbled - to see that ‘luck’ and ‘good timing’ are often more important factors in getting a decent job than actual qualifications. And you’d better not stack yourself up against other people because thems who may be doing better monetarily may not be as balanced or free as they only look like they may be.

I’m debt-free, I have no ties or committments and I can be mobile at a moment’s notice if something interesting and decent comes along. I value that above having, say, car and insurance payments. ‘Course, it helps if your parents are dead so you don’t have to worry about them becoming frail

I’ve always been pretty empathetic in nature. This period just made me more so for other people. And I have good friends who never judged me while they went off to waaaaaay better paying career-type jobs (and some of the adherent hassles).

I was frustrated but never depressed about the situation. And you don’t sound depressed, either (but I may be typing out of my hat (mitt?)).

And it could aaaaallll change in six months. *That* was my mantra through the most frustrating periods.

Or I gave up my life expectations a long time ago and learned to live in the ‘now’.

Or something

Oh. And I found I had to completely stop reading the newspapers for job-hunting ‘advice’. The advice was always written by and geared towards the demographics of the subscribers (which seemed to indicate profession degreed white folk who wanted corporatey jobs - or could be cloaked in ’socially environmentally conscious’ jobs and organizations that still wanted you to be degreed out of your ass but you got to wear sandals and cargo shorts to work).

And I stopped watching ‘aspirational lifestyle’ TV since I was only aspiring to make enough money so that I’d pay 33% of my after taxes on rent and put a little bit of money aside each month into savings (forget about ‘retirement’. HA! I have none! Thank GOD the family tends to die either before or soon after 65).

Ah. Yeah. Those are the things that got my through that period.

YMMV, of course.

Sorry that the jobs didn’t come through. But you seem to have a flexible attitude so you’re on top of that, anyway. And you have talents that go beyond the requirements of the two jobs by the sound of it.

As for dispatch companies. Woah. I didn’t know about them. You learn something new every day, dontcha?

I said before… I like this Betty Woo

Betty. When am I going to host you for a dinner party? Let’s plan on a you moving over here In January or February. K?

Ain’t that right Zen?

works for me.

Don’t even *joke* about that. My swivel servant contract is up in early December and, God damned it, I *want* this boring-as-hell-no-brainer-nice-staffed-office-ladyish-no-career job to become permanent - least of all because I want to take a year’s sabbatical as soon as I qualify for it.

Life lesson: while I used to be a risk taker, now I’m a *calculated* risk taker. I am *not* going to be poor again. That sucked and it’s over with and it was another interesting life lesson and I’ve got the ratty t-shirt, thank you very much. I want to swing this thing so I can have an adventure and come back to a decent wage if I have to.

Anyway. If all goes well, I’ll be heading off to France and England from mid-October to mid-November to visit some old haunts and see my formerly-crazy-assed sister (who I haven’t seen in more than ten years).

Which reminds me, I have to start bugging Frank-from-New-Jersey about coming with me for the England/Wales portion of the trip… . I’ll get his sister on my side and that should be enough to get him to come… .

Who’s Frank?

A calculated risk taker–me too. BUUUUT, I seem to take waaaay too long to devise my plans and get them to do what I want sooner than later. Now I do everything with a many-years plan.

Does your know you want the job badly?

Well. I had a little chat with my in-theory supervisor on Friday. They *love* me… but then she asked me what the chances are of me agreeing to go from contract to contract for another 2.5 years (at which time I automatically become permanent). I just stared at her.

1. I don’t really wanna be here for another 2.5 years but I may be,

2. that would mean I’ve worked within in the organization for more than 5 years without becoming permanent. That’s a lot to ask of someone, non?

3. I gave her some questions I needed answers to and told her I’d do some of my own research and get back to her by the end of this week. I also told her upfront that doing contracts for another 2.5 years is my *last* preference. She was cool with that. I really like her and it’s not her fault for having to breech the subject.

I *really* do not want this. I’d rather get in permanent, accumulate time towards a once-a-career year-long sabbatical and be able to tell my bank manager that I’m good to go if I decide to ask for a loan for a Master’s that’s always dangling just out of reach. I’d also be able to apply for other jobs without having the added hassles of carrying over contracts or being at the bottom of a hiring priority list.

So, you see, Mike. Crazy hiring practices aren’t just a Japanese thing