Carrer Day!

Professors above labor hard as the end of the year draws near.

---My Career---

I was eating lunch with another T.A. last week, when he told me about a great job opportunity working with troubled teens in Duluth.  He said that the pay was great and the teenagers were great kids, they just needed a good role model.  I thought this sounded great so I asked him if he would pass my name along to his old boss and see if I could have arrange a phone interview.  He said it would be no problem, but I really should think about my career.  

Like a plane hit by a missile -- smoke appeared I began a downward spiral.  Career?  Shoot, I am pretty comfortable where I am -- I have never really had my eye on money or power.   After talking to some friends I have found that at my age I don't have to start spinning gold out of hay, and I can still be happy with what I have.   This was a relief.  

---Job Prospects In China---

During the last few months my friends and I have been approached multiple time and asked if we would be interested in appearing movies.  Usually we don't have lines, but we just stand there looking 'western' while we are filmed.  The pay averages 100 USD - 200 USD, the higher end, if you end up saying something.  

There are also opportunities to model clothes.  Only a few T.A.s went out for this, which turned out to be a photoshoot for underwear.  The pay was somewhere around 100 USD.

Two weeks ago a newer T.A. was approached and asked if he would be interested in selling medical equipment for a major company based in our region.  The job would entail travelling around the region and meeting with hospitals.  They wanted a person from the west so that the products would come off in as technologically advanced.  -- My friend invited me to join them at a dinner/interview.  

We entered into the office and the boss told us a little about the company.  After offering us both a pack of extremely expensive cigarettes (the medical field is so funny) he led us into a room with couches and a liqueur cabinet which housed two bottles of what we assumed was  very expensive scotch.  We sat down with a girl named Cat who was an intern for the company, and a woman who was a full time professor at our college.  The full time professor at our college offered us a drink, and in the process of trying to open the bottle, she accidentally shredded the cork, dropping pieces into the bottle.  At this time, the boss had left the four of us to go meet an even higher up boss who was arriving from a large convention.  Unfit for consumption, the woman poured the bottle of scotch down the sink and opened the other.

While this was happening, we asked about what kind of medical equipment would we be selling.  Cat became a bit flustered (she would often become nervous when speaking English to us) and pulled a machine out of a nearby box and set it on the counter.  

"This machine...  uses..."    

She unraveled a sleeve attached to the machine and we understood.  We then proceeded to go around the table checking each other's blood pressure and then went out to dinner where we were able to eat the fanciest seafood I have ever eaten.  My friend, at this point, knew he could not accept the job because he was busy Monday - Friday.  I, on the other hand, had some free time and let the boss know I was interested in helping out if he wanted.    

Worse case scenario, I can stick around and sell medical equipment to hospitals.

---Weekend Plans---

This weekend I will be heading out with a fellow T.A. to GuangZhou to stay with a student and explore the city.  GuangZhou is the largest city in the GuangDong province (the province of China where I live) and the 4th largest (population wise) city in China.  

We plan on visiting a temple and possibly visiting a 'rural area' where we can go hiking.  I am not sure what it means to visit a 'rural area' in a city filled with more than 13 million people, but I can honestly say my expectations are very low.

Kids these days

A few weeks ago, I was offered the opportunity to spend an hour a day with a little boy named Stephen.  Since then, my roomate and I have taken turns watching him, from Monday through Friday.  Stephen is a 3-year-old who speaks very little english...or so I thought.  For the first two weeks we didn't accomplish much.  I would lead him to a large area in front of the nearby library where he would ignore me and talk to other Chinese parents -- explaining what he was doing with a foreigner while I would smile and nod.  Since then I have found that he knows a few basics and he is becoming more comfortable trying to speak english.  

Here is Stephen with another friend of his.  I don't know her name, but I see her often.

Stephen making faces while the girl hides behind him.

The mother of the little girl thought it would be cute (before I took out the camera) to put the little girl on Stephen's back as he biked around...  It may sound dangerous, and it is, but it is not uncommon to see three kids somehow riding on a single bike. 

Qiao

This last weekend I took a short trip out to Qiao island with some friends. We walked across the bridge which joins the island to Zhuhai and spent a beautiful day exploring! At one point we ended up in the heart of a Chinese military training facility surrounded by guards who told us to put our cameras away and pointed at the way out. It was pretty nerve racking.

Towards the middle of the we arrived at a giant gate with ollyWood written across the top. Approaching the gate, a guard came out to us and asked us to pay him 10 kuai ($1.25) to enter. We shrugged and payed up - taking a moment to study a nearby map which indicated a beach somewhere up the road. After climbing a hill -- seeing nothing more than a few graves, some flowers, and some 'no burning' signs -- we came to a beautiful view of the ocean, with a giant beach and tons of fishing nets. We decided to climb down and take a peek. After winding down the mountain side we wound up at a beach covered in trash, the majority of which was shoe parts (perhaps there was a nearby shoe factory). After stumbing through the litter we paced along the coast taking pictures of fishermen, mussel encrusted rocks, and a nearby light house.

Anxious to get away from the sad sight we climbed back up the hill and continued up to 'ollyWood'.

The road ended abruptly at a building with a giant female 'buddha-esque' statue posing nearby. Other than the bulding, statue, a bbgun/ballon shooting range, and magnificent view of the island, there was nothing to ollyWood.

We decended the giant hill and climbed on a bus to return home.

Let's talk about people.

I was given a book, igniting the heart at our first meeting.  In it are a series of quotes from various Bahai books and questions that follow from the reading.  

One such quote goes as follows:

"...backbiting quencheth the light of the heart, and extinguisheth the life of the soul." 

This passage gave our group quite a bit to hammer through and ponder.  

One thing about coming to China which has been constantly in my mind is how much backbiting or backstabbing has been going on amongst the TAs.  We came out here as a bunch of strangers and within no time we all were able to get along splendidly.  A few weeks later, someone would do something and everybody would spread the information like wildfire.  It was destructive.  To this day there are relationships in shambles because of what has been said.  

The man who gave me the book suggested that we ought to be careful whenever we talk about other people when they are not present, as it lends itself to backbiting.  The only case in which talking behind someones back is justified is in situations which one is consulting a person of authority on the matter -- to solve the problem.  (He later went on to say that it is also fine to talk about someone behind their back if it was purely factual, to inform someone about something of importance.  I will ignore this for now because harmful backbiting can be factual (My sister weighs so-and-so much).  Likewise some of the most important information ought to be passed on (for example, "Your boss said you should show up for work tomorrow an hour early."))

He used a story about Mohammad to elaborate:

A boy ran up to Mohammad, huffing and puffing.  

"Mohammad, Mohammad!!  You must hear this, I heard something about you."

"I don't need to hear it."  

"What?  You must hear i --."

"Does it involve you?"

"--No."

"Then why are you concerned with it."  

My friend who is also in the class chimed in with the proverb:

Great people talk about ideas.

Average people talk about things.

Small people talk about other people.

From my experiences exploring Buddhism in college I remembered the distaste for words which had grown within me.  The various troubles which arise from language will perhaps always instil skepticism within me, but I know the trouble does not remove the important role of language.  When I heard about this trouble created from the area of 'backbiting' I immediately felt vindicated for my old position, but slowly pulled back.  

Contrary to the proverb above I think there is a similar thought that lies in many people's minds:

Talking about ideas will get you no where.

Talking about things is trivial.

Talking about people is always relivant.

I am coming back to the US in just a few months and I am looking for a job.  Most jobs are not on the internet, but they are attained through your connections.  People you know, who know other people, who need someone to work for them.  So in this case, I want people talking about me behind my back.  

 thoughts?

A New Leaf

I just returned home to Zhuhai from another weekend in Hong Kong. I went with a few friends to explore and shop. We saw a film from the Hong Kong film festival called Gammorah: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hky53gXyjX0

Recently I have begun attending a biweekly meeting with some colleagues to discuss faith and religion. This being my first opportunity for such discourse -- I eagerly joined. The first week we covered some general information of the Baha'i Faith and discussed our faith. The second meeting, which was tonight, we covered some more quotes, discussed the soul, and heard about the structure of Baha'i's governing body.

I have to say that learning all of this is making me increasingly skeptical yet, I am also continually drawn in to to discussion. We discuss relevant things and practical dilemmas and try tease out the issues. One point of interest which we have been focusing on is uinity and estrangement.

I will elaborate shortly.