As if finding a job wasn't hard enough... Many of the places advertising decent jobs require the applicant to be bilingual. Fluent in Spanish or Chinese seems to be the more prevalent desired language. I'm not trying to be racist or anything, but this is America. Right? The national language is English?? I feel that hiring someone based on the fact that they are bilingual should be included up there with other -isms. Languageism should be made a real thing and then fought to be eradicated. If you can't turn me down for a job based on my race, sex, age, etc, I don't think you should be able to simply because I don't speak two languages. Don't get me wrong. I would LOVE to be able to speak another language. I took 3 semesters of Spanish in high school and college and it didn't stick in my brain. Perhaps if I was able to use it in everyday use everyday it would have worked better. But I didn't, and so it didn't and here I am. If I was going to move to a country where English wasn't the national language (and let's face it, the list of countries that speak English is quite long) I would do my darndest to learn whatever language they speak. I would not expect the locals or natives or whatever you want to call them to bend to me because I am more special. I'm not. It's their country and their language and I will do everything I can to fit in and live among them. This is NOT the case with many Americans. OK, OK, OK.. America is the "melting pot". A place for people from other countries to come and live a better life. But how do you expect to come to a country and not even bother trying to learn the language?? We end up with these factions in our cities, Little Italy, Chinatown, Filipinotown, Alhambra... Places where groups of people of the same decent can live and work and shop among their own kind. I don't mind you having your own places to go with people that are like you. Just don't turn me down for a job because people don't care enough about learning the language of the country they live in. If people are so proud to be Americans maybe they can put a little effort into it.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
A Day in My Unemployed Shoes
7:15am - Wake up
8:00am - Alarm finally goes off (note: time spent between waking up and when alarm goes off is normally spent perusing the internet and playing World Of Warcraft)
8:30am - Start water warm up for shower after patiently waiting for roommate to be done with the bathroom
9:15am - Complete morning ritual, including showering, brushing teeth, dressing, hair and make-up
9:30am - Visit Anticoagulation Clinic at Huntington Hospital for INR test (note: appointment takes about 10-15 minutes and costs be around $180 every time I go in. The real miracle is getting out before the 30 minutes parking time is up so I don't have to pay $5 for parking.)
9:45am - Rush back home to shave legs and get more dressed up for impending interview.
9:46am - Check mailbox for mail and receive letter from USPS letting me know that a letter was 'inadvertently damaged'. Freak out because it was my unemployment claim form.
9:49am - Calm down. Email EDD regarding replacement form.
10:00am - Leave house way to early for interview.
10:15am - Decide to visit mom at work on the way to waste time.
10:20am - Mom isn't working. Get back in car and continue on to interview.
10:45am - Park at 412 N. Santa Anita Ave in hopes of finding where I am interviewing so I am not late.
11:15am - Realize that interview is being held at 610 N. Santa Anita Ave. Rush to car, drive a few blocks north, park at business.
11:29am - Get to interview with minutes to spare. Relax, breath, smile. Nail it!!! (note: I do not know if I "nailed it!!!" But I would like to think I did.)
11:45am - Conclude interview. Return to car. Drive around talking myself out of going places. End up at Target to get toilet paper. $45 toilet paper...
12:02pm - Remember to take coumadin on time (almost)
12:57pm - Return home. Fix ham and cheese sandwich for lunch. Return to computer in room for perusing of internet and playing World of Warcraft.
3:48pm - Become bored of everything and begin writing blog. Write blog on how boring day has been.
3:57pm - Post blog.
8:00am - Alarm finally goes off (note: time spent between waking up and when alarm goes off is normally spent perusing the internet and playing World Of Warcraft)
8:30am - Start water warm up for shower after patiently waiting for roommate to be done with the bathroom
9:15am - Complete morning ritual, including showering, brushing teeth, dressing, hair and make-up
9:30am - Visit Anticoagulation Clinic at Huntington Hospital for INR test (note: appointment takes about 10-15 minutes and costs be around $180 every time I go in. The real miracle is getting out before the 30 minutes parking time is up so I don't have to pay $5 for parking.)
9:45am - Rush back home to shave legs and get more dressed up for impending interview.
9:46am - Check mailbox for mail and receive letter from USPS letting me know that a letter was 'inadvertently damaged'. Freak out because it was my unemployment claim form.
9:49am - Calm down. Email EDD regarding replacement form.
10:00am - Leave house way to early for interview.
10:15am - Decide to visit mom at work on the way to waste time.
10:20am - Mom isn't working. Get back in car and continue on to interview.
10:45am - Park at 412 N. Santa Anita Ave in hopes of finding where I am interviewing so I am not late.
11:15am - Realize that interview is being held at 610 N. Santa Anita Ave. Rush to car, drive a few blocks north, park at business.
11:29am - Get to interview with minutes to spare. Relax, breath, smile. Nail it!!! (note: I do not know if I "nailed it!!!" But I would like to think I did.)
11:45am - Conclude interview. Return to car. Drive around talking myself out of going places. End up at Target to get toilet paper. $45 toilet paper...
12:02pm - Remember to take coumadin on time (almost)
12:57pm - Return home. Fix ham and cheese sandwich for lunch. Return to computer in room for perusing of internet and playing World of Warcraft.
3:48pm - Become bored of everything and begin writing blog. Write blog on how boring day has been.
3:57pm - Post blog.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Back to Reality
You know when you have so much going on in your life, it's just nice to get away from it all? May I recommend doing just that... This was taken from my aunt's property in Snowflake, Arizona. It's 40 acres of nooks and crannies to explore, miles from anywhere. No cell service. No nothing. I spent 4 days with my best friend, hiking, riding horses, collecting meteorites and petrified wood, shooting soda cans with rifles, relaxing, and not thinking about any of what awaited me in Los Angeles...
Driving back yesterday, wasn't stressful... until we crossed that Colorado River and entered California. Almost immediately... Gas was $1 more then it was just 5 miles back... People started driving like assholes... I literally reached the 210 and started having panic attacks at the amount of cars weaving in and out of traffic at speeds much too high. Got home... looking forward to a glass of water and watching a movie to fall asleep to... Walk in my living room and there is plastic hanging from the ceiling (at least my landlord is FINALLY fixing the leak in the roof from our last big LA storm) and my roommate informs me we are out of toilet paper (but we have kleenex so apparently everything is fine)...
I have been off the grid for 4 days. No contact with friends or family aside from those I was with. No facebook. No twitter. No email or cell phone. I had been home for 15 minutes and already I am thinking about hopping back in the car and driving back the 10 hours to be back without all those things I thought I so desperately missed. Even now... updating my facebook, twitter, and blog, like there is any one who actually cares about what I write here... I am laughing at myself for doing it. I could quite literally move to the boonies of Arizona and be perfectly happy. I would have internet access... there are companies providing 'High Speed Access to ALL of Arizona'. I could keep in touch with everyone I care about and goodness knows they would all be more then welcome to visit me wherever it is I settle...
Could you imagine it? A house. Acres of empty land around you. A water tank and windmill and solar panels... A generator for when those aren't enough to power what you have going. A couple horses. A couple dogs. A couple guns. A large collection of books. What more do you need??? I could definitely live like that.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Finding a job... in this day and age...
December 23, 2010. The company I had a pretty awesome job with was bought out by another, much larger company. New company decided to sack all employees but one, two days before Christmas. Well, I thought I would have myself a nice vacation. Take the week off between Christmas and New Year and enjoy myself. I would find a job in the beginning of January and all would be right with the world... Right?
It is now January 12, 2011, and still no prospects. Now, I'll be the first to admit that there hasn't been a whole lot of searching. I am not desperate enough to be out pounding the streets looking for any old minimum wage, restaurant job I can get. Not yet anyway. And I have been dealing with a lot of health issues that have hindered the whole stomping the pavement in the search. However, I have been putting my resumes in to "respectable" companies, looking for some sort of office admin position.
The problem is, I don't want to go back to retail. I had a taste of the office life... and I liked it! I want to have to look nice and have my own desk and take actual lunch breaks. Is that so much to ask for? The only problem I have with attaining these goals, is that I have no "experience" in the industry per say. So potential employers look at my resume and go... OK, retail, retail, restaurant, retail, customer service, no thank you.
I know that I could be amazing at the jobs I am applying for. Office assistant at an elementary school. Office admin for a firm in Pasadena. I just need some soul to give me a freaking chance in their office. I have great phone skills. Am ridiculously organized. Competent with a computer. I'm not an idiot. Common sense and what not are in order. So what gives?
I'm bored. I feel useless and unwanted. And for that matter, grossly under-qualified. Just because I can't speak three different languages I shouldn't even bother applying. Nice. Give me a chance and I will rock the pants off that office job. But until I have experience I won't even be considered. What kind of fucked up Catch-22 is this?
It is now January 12, 2011, and still no prospects. Now, I'll be the first to admit that there hasn't been a whole lot of searching. I am not desperate enough to be out pounding the streets looking for any old minimum wage, restaurant job I can get. Not yet anyway. And I have been dealing with a lot of health issues that have hindered the whole stomping the pavement in the search. However, I have been putting my resumes in to "respectable" companies, looking for some sort of office admin position.
The problem is, I don't want to go back to retail. I had a taste of the office life... and I liked it! I want to have to look nice and have my own desk and take actual lunch breaks. Is that so much to ask for? The only problem I have with attaining these goals, is that I have no "experience" in the industry per say. So potential employers look at my resume and go... OK, retail, retail, restaurant, retail, customer service, no thank you.
I know that I could be amazing at the jobs I am applying for. Office assistant at an elementary school. Office admin for a firm in Pasadena. I just need some soul to give me a freaking chance in their office. I have great phone skills. Am ridiculously organized. Competent with a computer. I'm not an idiot. Common sense and what not are in order. So what gives?
I'm bored. I feel useless and unwanted. And for that matter, grossly under-qualified. Just because I can't speak three different languages I shouldn't even bother applying. Nice. Give me a chance and I will rock the pants off that office job. But until I have experience I won't even be considered. What kind of fucked up Catch-22 is this?
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
So Here's the Thing...
Since October of 2009, my life has been one big huge piece of crap.
In October, I started having breathing issues and it was all down hill from there. First it was bronchial spasms that were so bad it felt like someone was stabbing me in the chest with an ice pick any time I took the smallest of breaths. UrgentCare gave me some steroids and an inhaler, and I was fine within the week.
One week after that I couldn't walk upright or sit down without being in intense pain. I thought it was from an old snowboarding tail bone injury. Turns out it was an infected cyst. A Pilonidal cyst (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilonidal_cyst) to be exact, or two of them to be even more so. Right on my tail bone, like growths coming out the top of my butt crack. Getting those removed was the most painful experience I had ever had (up to that point in life anyway, don't worry, it gets better). Not to mention the pain and antibacterial meds they had prescribed me made it so I couldn't keep food down for 5 days. It was great in jump starting my metabolism and making me lose a bunch of weight though, so I won't be too mad about that.
About a month after that, those same pesky and utterly painful breathing issues came back. Only thing was, this time, it wasn't just bronchial spasms. They sent me to the ER so I could have a cat scan and blood work done. I had a freaking blood clot. Three to be exact. One in my leg, a rather large one that had made it swell up and become difficult to walk on. And two, smaller ones, that had broken off from the leg clot and moved up into my lungs. So THAT'S what that pesky breathing issue was caused by. Hm, good to know.
That's me, 28 years old, a week before Thanksgiving, and I am holed up in hospital because of some slim chance disease for geriatrics. GREAT! I had a DVT [Deep Vein Thrombosis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVT)] and a PE [Pulmonary Embolism(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulmonary_embolism)].
They put me on Coumadin (Warfarin). I had to go to the hospital every week or so to have a blood test so that they could make sure that my blood was performing well on the medication. What a pain in the ass. It affects everything in life. You can't drink (I did anyway). You can't eat certain foods that are too high in vitamin K (I never really ate those anyway). You have to take the pill every day at the same time. HUGE pain in the ass. Ten months I was on it, until August 2010. Then we rescanned the leg and the clot was gone! GONE!! Excellent. Life was gonna get better...
Well fuck. Two weeks after the wonderful news, while enjoying my first Philippe's famous French Dip, my tooth began to ache. Oh yeah... Had my first wisdom tooth/cavity/tooth extraction all in one. That was awesome too. All well, had to happen sometime I suppose.
November rolls around and wham! My leg is swollen and hurting and I am back in the ER for that same damn thing. Cat scans and blood tests and peeing in cups, oh my! Well fuck my life all over again. Last time they assumed, due to my age and birth control use, that it was a simple mess up with the birth control. No more oral contraceptives for me, I can live with that. This time, they have no idea WHAT'S going on. Why would it come back? I don't know. Let's run a bunch of really obscure blood tests that even the nurses are wondering about to try and figure it out. GREAT! I felt like an episode of House, except my medical issue wasn't tied up neatly in a hot little Hugh Lorie package within the hour. Nope. I'll probably be on Coumadin for life. All those tests they ran, came back negative. They still have no idea what is going on or why I am getting these clots. Some weird blood anomaly apparently. Well hell. Thanks alot modern medicine.
December 2010 started a whole new batch of issues with my body and health. Issues that I am dealing with right now. I would go into them, but they are still to personal and emotional, so for now... That is my medical history up to date. And don't forget, that is just from October of 2009... AND this is only my health, I haven't even gotten to the personal and professional part of the last few years. I will save that for another blog.
In October, I started having breathing issues and it was all down hill from there. First it was bronchial spasms that were so bad it felt like someone was stabbing me in the chest with an ice pick any time I took the smallest of breaths. UrgentCare gave me some steroids and an inhaler, and I was fine within the week.
One week after that I couldn't walk upright or sit down without being in intense pain. I thought it was from an old snowboarding tail bone injury. Turns out it was an infected cyst. A Pilonidal cyst (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilonidal_cyst) to be exact, or two of them to be even more so. Right on my tail bone, like growths coming out the top of my butt crack. Getting those removed was the most painful experience I had ever had (up to that point in life anyway, don't worry, it gets better). Not to mention the pain and antibacterial meds they had prescribed me made it so I couldn't keep food down for 5 days. It was great in jump starting my metabolism and making me lose a bunch of weight though, so I won't be too mad about that.
About a month after that, those same pesky and utterly painful breathing issues came back. Only thing was, this time, it wasn't just bronchial spasms. They sent me to the ER so I could have a cat scan and blood work done. I had a freaking blood clot. Three to be exact. One in my leg, a rather large one that had made it swell up and become difficult to walk on. And two, smaller ones, that had broken off from the leg clot and moved up into my lungs. So THAT'S what that pesky breathing issue was caused by. Hm, good to know.
That's me, 28 years old, a week before Thanksgiving, and I am holed up in hospital because of some slim chance disease for geriatrics. GREAT! I had a DVT [Deep Vein Thrombosis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVT)] and a PE [Pulmonary Embolism(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulmonary_embolism)].
They put me on Coumadin (Warfarin). I had to go to the hospital every week or so to have a blood test so that they could make sure that my blood was performing well on the medication. What a pain in the ass. It affects everything in life. You can't drink (I did anyway). You can't eat certain foods that are too high in vitamin K (I never really ate those anyway). You have to take the pill every day at the same time. HUGE pain in the ass. Ten months I was on it, until August 2010. Then we rescanned the leg and the clot was gone! GONE!! Excellent. Life was gonna get better...
Well fuck. Two weeks after the wonderful news, while enjoying my first Philippe's famous French Dip, my tooth began to ache. Oh yeah... Had my first wisdom tooth/cavity/tooth extraction all in one. That was awesome too. All well, had to happen sometime I suppose.
November rolls around and wham! My leg is swollen and hurting and I am back in the ER for that same damn thing. Cat scans and blood tests and peeing in cups, oh my! Well fuck my life all over again. Last time they assumed, due to my age and birth control use, that it was a simple mess up with the birth control. No more oral contraceptives for me, I can live with that. This time, they have no idea WHAT'S going on. Why would it come back? I don't know. Let's run a bunch of really obscure blood tests that even the nurses are wondering about to try and figure it out. GREAT! I felt like an episode of House, except my medical issue wasn't tied up neatly in a hot little Hugh Lorie package within the hour. Nope. I'll probably be on Coumadin for life. All those tests they ran, came back negative. They still have no idea what is going on or why I am getting these clots. Some weird blood anomaly apparently. Well hell. Thanks alot modern medicine.
December 2010 started a whole new batch of issues with my body and health. Issues that I am dealing with right now. I would go into them, but they are still to personal and emotional, so for now... That is my medical history up to date. And don't forget, that is just from October of 2009... AND this is only my health, I haven't even gotten to the personal and professional part of the last few years. I will save that for another blog.
My first blog ever.
Hello blogging world.
Let me just start out by saying that it's my first time. I have no followers and don't really even know if I want any. This blog is mainly for me to have a release for the tons of bullshit that has been going on in my life. I have tried diarys and journals... and I never stick to them. Maybe, now that I am all technical and shit I can keep up with getting my thoughts on paper... or computer as the case may be.
So read it if you dare. Comment if you must. Just know that this is more for me then it is for you... and be gentle.
Let me just start out by saying that it's my first time. I have no followers and don't really even know if I want any. This blog is mainly for me to have a release for the tons of bullshit that has been going on in my life. I have tried diarys and journals... and I never stick to them. Maybe, now that I am all technical and shit I can keep up with getting my thoughts on paper... or computer as the case may be.
So read it if you dare. Comment if you must. Just know that this is more for me then it is for you... and be gentle.
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