The True Unhappened Chronicled Misdeed of an Immigrant Labourer: Part III

Times were so rough, jobs so scarce and the forecast was so bleak, I even considered the unthinkable. I was made aware of an advertisement for a very lucrative proposition. It was 4 weeks at a resort with all amenities, including TV/computer/Playstation lounges, a pool table, a well-kept garden premises, self-improvement classes, 3 catered meals per day. And the pay was an incredulous amount that would cover a huge chunk of my study year. All the advertisement said was:

"Are you a healthy male between 18 and 45?"

Yes. Yes, I am. Can I have the money in a large sack with a dollar sign on it, please?

Of course, there was a catch. This was an advertisement calling for subjects for medical trials. This calls for a movie flashback!

Okay, I did not believe there would be superhero-like consequences, however, I was still intrigued. This particular trial was testing new medications for nerve ailments or diseases. Would "Superstrong Ligament Man" pass for a superhero? (Well, if Hollywood is making a movie based on the board game Monopoly, then yes.)

My point is, my word, this was tempting. I am very acclimatised to failure by now, and this was so tempting. I figured, I can sit around waiting for temping agencies not to call me for work, or I can pretty much do the same thing, get drugged up and made to run on a treadmill for an hour a day. Hell, for the amount they were offering, they could smash my knees and study how fast my ligaments heal. Everything has its price. Beggars can't be choosers. If something seems too good to be be true, it probably is (a medical trial).

An interesting aside to this story, to show my dramatic fall from grace. I have a friend from my time in Japan, who lived in the same town, with the same job, for the same length of time, and he is now working a sweet job for a company that finds people to participate in medical trials. Oh the irony! 4 months pass, and we are on the opposite sides. I must have been really bad in a previous life, or I will be really good in a future life. (Irony number 2, he said that he wouldn't do the trial if he were me. Far from me to call him a hippopotamus, I'm sure I would say the same thing if I were him.)

In the end, mother knows best. Unsurprisingly, she guided me away from this preposterous idea of becoming a human lab-rat. I mean, I realise that the drug trial companies take all precautions they can to avoid liability, but the fact is, some lab-rats do not survive. A philosophy that I have lived by my entire life is "Stay in school, never get a job". I have the luxury of knowing, as a student, I can easily take out another fat student loan. As much as I would love the comfort of extra cash, it isn't too important or urgent. I would rather mortgage my future than gamble my present.

The Non-Chronological Chronicled Misdeeds of an Immigrant Labourer: Part II

With it becoming clear that it might be far-fetched to find work until February, I signed up for a job for the duration of December. December, the month of Christmas. It is no coincidence then, that this job was for the postal service, sorting mail during this, the busiest time of year.

Fun fact: The actual job is even more boring than "Mail-sorting" sounds. You know, you picture a giant conveyorbelt with an endless amount of letters, and you put them onto other conveyorbelts. At least, that was the image that I had. But no, the job entails sitting at a computer, where the scanned picture of letters comes up, and you type in the post-code and house number. That's exactly all there is to it.

To see if I might be a viable candidate, I was immediately asked to do a practice excercise at a computer in the temping agency. The girl explained it to me, and 90 seconds later she left me alone to finish the excercise.

I finished, and the final time came up. I had completed it within 16 minutes. The target was 5 minutes 30 seconds. Okay, so speed was key. I tried again and completed it in 7 minutes. They agreed to allow me a trial day (unpaid) at a later stage, and sent me away with a CD with the post-sorting program. I sign up for a job, and I get a computer game to take home! Sweet! If I was fast enough on the trial day, I would get the job.

So, over the next few days, I practiced at home, reminding myself where the buttons are on the keyboard, and learning how to read people's handwriting in the process. My god, some people have awful handwriting. I don't understand. We postal sorters don't ask much. Only that you write about 10 digits neatly enough to be read. Writing an address messily is like a hot girl asking for your phone number, and you give her a false number. I suspect that these messy-writers are the same people who drive 60kmph on the highways and change lanes without warning.

So, I got well under the 5:30 for the same test, only I was a little bit worried because of some special code nuances. Hopefully I could work those out on the day. It would just be very very irritating if I failed, and had to try again before December.

So, I was told to wait for a bus outside a Metro station on the other side of Rotterdam. I wanted to leave a good impression, so I made sure I was early. I well overdid it, and was 45 minutes early. I bought a coffee and made it last the 45 minutes. Then I waited at the X where the temping agency had drawn on a map.

I waited for 20 minutes in the biting cold. My phone rang. The bus would be late. They didn't add details like how late. Never mind. I waited another 20 minutes. I called them. They told me to wait another 15 minutes, and then added a little detail that it was a small blue bus. Shit, I had seen an unmarked, small blue bus about 10 minutes earlier, but nowhere near the X. And noone had called me then. Great. So, in defeat, I retreated home. I would have to try again tomorrow.

I have become so good at failure, I failed even before I had a chance to fail. Now, that is talent. Obviously, I am not impressed by the temping agency or the postal service, so please, until further notice, do not send me any letters. Or if you really need to, write the address with your feet, while you are driving. That'll learn them.

The Misdeeds of an Immigrant Labourer

They say that immigrants are the ones who get forced into the unwanted jobs and get hated on for taking all the jobs. This is one such story.

Prelogue:
In my quest for money for my student future, I have signed up to several temping agencies. The way they work is, they work for certain companies in finding people to work for them. It is a good system that allows the companies to delegate finding workers, and it is helpful for unemployed bums like myself because I don't have to go to each company or call each job advertised in the newspaper. Also, the temping agency can look at the strengths and experience of each prospected worker and put them into a fitting job. Everybody wins- and the temping agency gets a generous slice of the pie.

That is the theory. First of all, I have no strengths or experience that is relevant in the job market, and I am only looking to work until February. I'm not educated enough and Dutch literate enough for a white collar job, and I'm too inexperienced for a blue collar job- and too educated.

Another problem is that there are now so many temping agencies, that they are constantly fighting each other for lucrative contracts with companies, and they are spread so thin, to the point that the entire inner city of Rotterdam appears to made up entirely of temping agencies, and I suspect that all they do now is find employees for each other. These agencies are looking for talent. Fresh, young, healthy, nubile minds and bodies. Many of them tell me to go away. They say, "I'm sorry, there are no jobs, for you. Good luck finding a job."

Also, there is this little thing that you may have heard of called the "credit crisis". Now, I don't believe in imaginary concepts or value having a true impact on my life. In other words, I don't believe in credit or Christ. Certainly, neither is helping me get a job.

I haven't been totally without success. You may recall a few weeks back the story about the day I worked in a factory putting pieces of metal onto a table, and putting them back onto a rack, for which I was told this wasn't the job for me. What is the job for me, was the question I began to ask myself.

Part 1 (Apart from my stint working in the factory)

One of the semi-successes was writing in at a temping agency that specialises in catering. Now, this is something that I could- in theory- do, since it does not require a high standard of written Dutch. Perfect. Right? No, not really. It is on a on-call basis, and usually they only ask people to work a few hours each time. Second and thirdly, I have no experience in the field of catering, and I didn't exactly look the part.

See, the explanation meeting talked about self-presentation. Black shoes, socks and pants or skirt, with a white shirt. Also, long hair must be tied back. My hair was long, having successfully evaded the hairdresser for 8 months, and I was starting to look the part of an unemployed man. I have a terminal fear of hairdressers, and ever since an older boy with blond hair in a pony tail at the bus stop used to punch me, I am terrified of blond men with pony tails. I could never become that guy, and I love mirrors too much. I also hate paying money for hairdressers, but I would never allow someone I know to cut my hair. I consider the fee I pay as the right to hate that person who de-faced my hair until it (my hair) grows back. Yes, I can imagine how awful it must be to me.

So, I was told about a cheap hairdresser in the next town. I did like my image as an unemployee, but that is no longer the image I am going for anymore. On Monday morning, I biked halfway there, when I noticed that I had a flat tyre. Nothing comes easy to me... I continued on, pushing my bike, miraculously finding a bike store open on a Monday morning. Then, I saw a shop open too, and to my delight, it was a foreign-run barber. That meant that it was cheap, AND until my hair grows back, I could curse not just one person, but all foreigners for butchering my hair. What luck.

Anyway, this is more the kind of shop where regular customers come every week for a chat, and to trim back the side-burns. I walked in, tore off my beanie and shook my hair out like a hit chick on a shampoo commercial. "Halve it", were my general instructions. It turns out that his Dutch was even worse than mine, and he began snipping away at the tips. Great, that is not how you avoid going to the hairdressers as well as I do. I don't rip the plaster off, I prefer to rip the entire wound out. I told him to keep going, and he did. It was looking okay, I suppose, until he revealed the back of my head. He had left a blatant, flagrant neatly-trimmed mullet hanging there. Holy crap. This is one of the countries of techno music, after all. Or perhaps that is what Muslim girls have under their scarves. I don't know, but I didn't like what I saw. My fear of hairdressers, guys with blond ponytails and spending money put together don't even come close to my fear of having a mullet.

I told him to keep going, and I felt terrible for asking him to continue doing his job. In the end, objectively, I don't think he did a terrible job considering how paranoid, insecure and vain his customer was. Whatever, I no longer looked unemployed. Instead, I looked 17 years old. Whatever, I was now eligible to cater. I was eligible to start doing the jobs that regular Dutch people don't want to do.

Join us next time for the stunning followup of the chronicled Misdeeds of an Immigrant Labourer.

Will he find job satisfaction in the credit crisised market?
Will he ever confront his fears and pick a fight with a man with a blond pony tail?
Will the Xi Chao the panda bear ever find true love?
Will the immigrant cater to what?

SP AR TA

Whoops. Wrong PictureMy reintegration with Holland reached a new high point last week when I went to a football game. Yes, look at me being all European and refusing to call it "soccer". It is already working.

The most famous football club in Rotterdam is Feyenoord. It is famous for a mixture of good reasons (a winning history) and bad reasons (hooliganism). However, the football club closest to where I was born is famous for neither of these reasons. The club is called Sparta, and it is the oldest professional club in Holland. Yes, it is a storied history. They are currently sitting comfortably in the top 15 in the top division.

But try telling that to the 1/3 filled to capacity 11,000 seat stadium. "The Castle". Everyone was so jovial. Or at least the beer was making them that way. The stadium was filled with middle-aged men drinking coffee and/or beer, and jovial music composed before music was invented. I must have been out-of-place, as I was the only one in our group of 15 who got a pat-down. "aren't you lucky?". No, no I wasn't. He only touched my head.

The players came onto the field, with little children. You see this on TV often, but I don't know, are the kids disappointed when they get chosen to come out with a losing team? I guess you can just lie to the kids. That is always a good solution, and it is good fun. Then everybody stood to song the age-old Sparta anthem, with the rousing lyrics:

"S-P
A-R
T-A"

Yes, 100 years before Snoop Doggy Dog and Sesame Street were spelling things out in their lyrics, Sparta Rotterdam was already doing it. Take that. As soon as the song finished, the whistle blew and the game started.

You know, apart from the semi-professional basketball games I went to in New Zealand and Japan, I have never been to a pro-sport live. Not even rugby or cricket. For someone who likes sport as much as me, it was quite surpising. I guess I wanted my first time to be special.

I wouldn't consider myself a football fan, but I do like watching it. If there is an international tournament on, I will watch until my eyes bleed. So I do appreciate top-quality football. Sparta was also okay. It really is different watching live than on TV. first of all, the field looked nearly square from our perspective behind the goal. And you can't hear them kicking the ball. I still wonder how they do that on TV, because you can hear every single pass despite the rowdy crowds. Do they have a microphone in the ball? Or is there someone in the studio who pushes sound effect buttons? It is a mystery to me.


This is the Sparta team. I just wanted to show them in their uniforms, because I was watching the game, and it all seemed so familiar somehow. I kept finding myself thinking, "found him", "found him", "there he is", and so on.Okay, that was a poor joke. I'm sorry.

But it it turned out to be a very exiting game.

I was only close enough to take semi-decent photos at our end, but Sparta definitely had the team swagger at the start. In the first half, Sparta got a free kick just outside the box. It broke the wall, and dribbled into the net.


The villagers rejoyced, and everybody spontaneously burst into song: the Sparta anthem. Oh, football fans have such a likeable culture when they aren't fighting each other and vandalising stuff.

At half-time, everybody stood up. I'm not sure why, but what the hell, I'm reintegrating. The 2nd half was more of the same, scoring a 2nd goal off a breakaway.
Then the other team brought on a substitution. I looked at him, and knew he was trouble. It is amazing in football how much a team can have a swagger. They were definitely swaggerig now. Within 15 minutes, he headered in a goal, making the last half hour tense.

It was a jovial ending to the night too. Unfortunately, this was a cup-match, and did not count towards the season charts. So, for the moment, Sparta is still comfortably in the top 15. And my reintegration is nearly complete.

Magneto

My 3 month hiatus from working came to an end this morning. I was finally awarded with a tax number, and within no time, I was offered a test day on-the-job trial at a company named "Magneto". (Excuse my lame TV references. I personally never watched the X-Men series, although I did read the comic books that came my way.)

So, nompany which makes titanium diodes. Or was it annodes? Is there a difference? What are they anyway? They sound like delicious. Or were they the names of two of the Cosby kids? An internet search explained it to me, and yet, I didn't understand a thing. All I know is, it apparently has something to do with electricity and receivers.
I don't know if the latest Magneto, Sir Ian McKellen, knows anything about diodes or annodes, but he sure knows about receiving.

I do, however know a little bit about titanium. I first heard about this wonder-substance from an after school cartoon that used to be on TV. It was called "Extreme Dinosaurs", and it was the most bad-ass cartoon ever. It was about four dinosaurs who are heroes and fight against an evil T-Rex with a robotic jaw and his hench-velocaraptors. It was part of the early 90's Dinosaur Craze, along with Denver the Last Dinosaur. You know, "he's a friend and a whole lot more". Yes, Denver had a very memorable theme tune, but the theme tune for the Extreme Dinosaurs was 100 times cooler than Denver the Last Dinosaur. Take one minute out of your day to watch this.


"Fossilize 'em!"

Now tell me that isn't totally Bad-ass! Oh man. Freaking awesome. I can't describe the feelings of awesomeness that glow from this video like a good radiation, you know the ones that give you superpowers.

So anyway, the point of me mentioning the Extreme Dinosaurs, apart from highlighting the awesomeness, is that they were amazingly strong. I mean, of course they were, they were dinosaurs. And not the wussy types of dinos like Denver, or E.T. No, these Dino's would tear through walls rather than open a door. (Except, I remember one of them being a bit of a computer nerd in an unnecessary attempt at character development). So, these dinosaurs could tear through absolutely anything. Anything, except titanium. I swear, every single episode, one or all four Extreme Dinosaurs would be trapped in a room or be put in shackles, and you would here these epic lines:

"IT'S TITANIUM. I CAN'T BREAK IT!"

I had no idea what titanium was, but I knew then, that it was an awesome material. The TV show, unfortunately did not last very long, so the next thing I heard about titanium was years later that titanium golf clubs became the most sought-after target for burglars. Haha, take that golf!

So, when the temp-agency said they might have some menial labour job for me that involved the words "Magneto" and "titanium", how could a straight man say no? I'm glad you agree with me. They had me at "titanium.

So, I biked to the factory this morning and they had no idea who I was and why I came. I explained to them that I was sent by the temp-agency, which might have been from the future, or the past. I got led through the factory and I was sat down in a cafeteria for 90 minutes while someone went to make some calls, presumably with diodes. Now that I think of it, this sitting down might have been part of the test-day. I just sat and drank coffee.

Then, a big-wig came into the room. Wow. Just wow. A slick straight talker with winky smile. He gave me a quick explanation of what the company does, although he strangely skipped the part about telepathy and dinos. I didn't understand what he wanted me to do, although he emphasised that it was "Not unimportant work". This just got more and more promising.

Then, I got given a white lab-coat and latex gloves, and met some of the people in the painting department. And it wasn't just any paint, it was titanium paint! Was I aiding in the making of materials to finally capture the Extreme Dinosaurs? I mean, I presume that the evil velociraptors didnt produce their own evil contraptions since they have those foetus-like arms.

My responisiblity in the factory was assisting in the painting of boringly shaped pieces of metal. But the painting of titanium was very complicated, and I wasn't allowed anywhere near a paint roller. My task, all day, was taking pieces of circular metal off a rack and placing it on the table. Then, once my superior painted it, I could place it back onto the rack. Life is beautiful, isn't it? Life, death, seasons. Always coming back to where you began.

After lunchtime, I started to question everything around me. I hadn't seen one flying piece of metal, or one dinosaur. Also, with how carefully I was supposed to treat the titanium paint coating, I even started to question the strength of the Extreme Dinosaurs. You could damage titanium with a dead rodent. Why couldn't the Extreme Dinosaurs break it? It didn't make sense!
The ghost of Stegz and T-bone told me something was amiss...

There was only one logical explanation, it wasn't really titanium paint, and this had nothing to do with dinosaurs. It was a clever front. For all I know, we were making nuclear weapons for North Korea. I looked around me, the lab coats, people working obeintly on nondescript objects... I had just watched James Bond, Golden Eye the night before, and I could picture James Bond blowing the entire facility back to the iron(curtain)age. And I couldn't be angry at him. I was fair game in my lab-coat.

At the end of the day, the big-wig came back and asked me into his office. At this stage, I had not decided to not take the job. We sat down, and he talked, looked me in the eye, and this is what he said:


He gave me the "It's not you, it's me" speech! Apparently my resume was sent through, and he was discouraged that I had received an education and might have learned to question things. And that maybe this job didn't suit my personality. Maybe he was right to let me go. If after one day of work, I can get so paranoid and fanciful, maybe this wasn't the job for me.