Well… I have one major complaint to issue to start off tonight’s rant… I have not heard from my dear friend Magnus in a very long time… I know he is alive and well since he posted a blog a fortnight ago…. But oh Magnus, dear Magnus… where art though!? Please leave me your phone number so I may call you!
On other matters… right now actively working on my CV… the interesting thing I’ve noticed is that while under certain circumstances I might be the best bullshitter alive… when it comes to selling myself to other people… or to be clear – people of strength and importance… I must be the worst ever… All the cacheisms and key phrases… all of the fancy shmancy way of telling these people what a bright and no-lose prospect I am… I cant do any of them… and while I can write a satirical piece on any damned topic that can entertain a rotting corpse… I cant write a decent CV or cover letter to save my life… maybe its true and I am in the wrong business…
Now to think of it… of all the hundreds of interviews I’ve been on…. Two really stand out as my finest… neither resulted in gainful employment… but nonetheless… one was my interview after college for a program to teach English in Japan… as usual, I showed up clueless and unprepared – the adventure seeker in me loves the spontaneity involved here… and when the guy started tossing out strange and random questions like why in the world I would want to go to a weird ass country like Japan (I’ve been to the airport… trust me… its weird…)… and teach a language I barely count as my own to people who speak or understand none of it whatsoever… and the interesting part was that I breezed through the interview and answered each question with absolutely stunning grace and aplomb… resulting in a job offer… that I, in my infinite wisdom (and under pressure of jewish mother), passed up to work as a treasure analyst in a failing mortgage originator… and no… I don’t regret this choice one bit… life of travel, adventure, learning… or reconciling daily wires for a now defunct company… the choice is clear to anyone semi-reasonable… isn’t it? Stay in new york… develop a slight drug and alcohol habit… earn measly pennies… watch and learn corporate intricacies… what kind of a freak needs to travel the world anyway… and no… I am not bitter… not matter how hard you ask…
Anyway… to move on to the next successful interview… I was on a train ride from Moscow to Kharkov (my beloved hometown)… in 2003… sixteen years after I left my sweet and bankrupt homeland for greedy world of capitalism… as a little background… the previous couple of days I spent at my cousin Andrei’s crackden apartment in Moscow… smoking copious amounts of cheap dope and playing video games… so by the time I left Kursk station on an overnight train bound for Kharkov (in Ukraine)… my brain was officially fried, toasted and un-functional…. The overnight part was fine though the three ladies in my coupe seemed to hate my guts… don’t know why… maybe, as has been recently suggested to me, I am a nasty snorer…. But that cant be true… anyway… at 7am I get woken up by a bang on our door… there stands a young and handsome Ukrainian border patrol officer… surely known for his unbending moral strength and fortitude… he gleefully asks where the American citizen is… whom it turns out is me… and one thing leads to the next and there is a problem with something I filled out on my visa form and there I am, in a different room, one on one with the officer, half awake with $200 bucks stuck in my back-pocket in case of an ‘emergency’…
Anyway, the interview starts in an old soviet fashion… I am presumed guilty before I can even defend myself… the officer demands to know how I could possibly have an inconsistency on my entry forms – i.e. on one it says I am here as a tourist... on another I am coming into my former motherland on a personal visa… I am such as easy catch that I can see the young man, with a nice clean uniform, mind you, already counting the bribe I’ll be paying him in a minute or two… but there again my wit and quick thinking comes out… true, I might have planned this in the back of my head just for a moment like this… but I lay out to the officer that its hard for me to say if my trip is personal or tourist since in a way its both… as I am heading back to my beloved homeland to see what these capitalist cretinism has done to my wonderful land…and how after sixteen years of absence, mind you I left as a proud and honorful Pioneer, I am really dying to see what good things have happened in my country since then… “and now”, I turn to the officer, “what further questions do you have?”
Here things get weird for the officer since obviously it would be implicitly a very unpatriotic thing to do to demand a bribe out of me… on the other hand, just letting me go just like that seems a little weird… so the officer starts asking me about America… what I do there… how I like life there… etc… he seems of reasonably educated sort… so maybe at this point he is just stalling time and scouting out his own prospects…. After a few minutes of an ever increasingly friendly chat… he sticks out his hand… wishes me luck… and tells me that I hope I like what they’ve done with Ukraine… I say of course… though deep inside I highly doubt I would… at this point I look up and realize that another border guard spent this whole time standing over the back of me… trying to intimidate me… which didn’t work because I was so obliviously lost in my conversation/ interview that I forgot to notice his presence… this latter fellow is slightly taken aback by this turn of events since I doubt his buddy is generally known for his softness of heart… he weakly asks the other guy if maybe they should search my stuff… who knows, maybe I'm one of those crazy Americans with fifteen pounds of fine Afghani heroin in my backpack… but the other says no… this is a good man traveling… and I shake hands with both of them… extremely warm handshakes by the way… to a degree I almost regret not asking for a photograph… and off we go in our own directions… officers over to the next train car where they’ll be mugging some other poor soul in lieu of their failed ‘collection’ with me.. and me back to my coupe… where the previously hateful three women greet me as if I am the rebirth of John the Baptist… head attached and all…. What happened in Kharkov is a story (s) for another time…. But again… strange that of all the demented, strange and bizarre interviews I’ve had… these two are my most pleasant memories…. Is there a message buried in here somewhere?? I think… but I fully gleamed it yet….
On other matters… right now actively working on my CV… the interesting thing I’ve noticed is that while under certain circumstances I might be the best bullshitter alive… when it comes to selling myself to other people… or to be clear – people of strength and importance… I must be the worst ever… All the cacheisms and key phrases… all of the fancy shmancy way of telling these people what a bright and no-lose prospect I am… I cant do any of them… and while I can write a satirical piece on any damned topic that can entertain a rotting corpse… I cant write a decent CV or cover letter to save my life… maybe its true and I am in the wrong business…
Now to think of it… of all the hundreds of interviews I’ve been on…. Two really stand out as my finest… neither resulted in gainful employment… but nonetheless… one was my interview after college for a program to teach English in Japan… as usual, I showed up clueless and unprepared – the adventure seeker in me loves the spontaneity involved here… and when the guy started tossing out strange and random questions like why in the world I would want to go to a weird ass country like Japan (I’ve been to the airport… trust me… its weird…)… and teach a language I barely count as my own to people who speak or understand none of it whatsoever… and the interesting part was that I breezed through the interview and answered each question with absolutely stunning grace and aplomb… resulting in a job offer… that I, in my infinite wisdom (and under pressure of jewish mother), passed up to work as a treasure analyst in a failing mortgage originator… and no… I don’t regret this choice one bit… life of travel, adventure, learning… or reconciling daily wires for a now defunct company… the choice is clear to anyone semi-reasonable… isn’t it? Stay in new york… develop a slight drug and alcohol habit… earn measly pennies… watch and learn corporate intricacies… what kind of a freak needs to travel the world anyway… and no… I am not bitter… not matter how hard you ask…
Anyway… to move on to the next successful interview… I was on a train ride from Moscow to Kharkov (my beloved hometown)… in 2003… sixteen years after I left my sweet and bankrupt homeland for greedy world of capitalism… as a little background… the previous couple of days I spent at my cousin Andrei’s crackden apartment in Moscow… smoking copious amounts of cheap dope and playing video games… so by the time I left Kursk station on an overnight train bound for Kharkov (in Ukraine)… my brain was officially fried, toasted and un-functional…. The overnight part was fine though the three ladies in my coupe seemed to hate my guts… don’t know why… maybe, as has been recently suggested to me, I am a nasty snorer…. But that cant be true… anyway… at 7am I get woken up by a bang on our door… there stands a young and handsome Ukrainian border patrol officer… surely known for his unbending moral strength and fortitude… he gleefully asks where the American citizen is… whom it turns out is me… and one thing leads to the next and there is a problem with something I filled out on my visa form and there I am, in a different room, one on one with the officer, half awake with $200 bucks stuck in my back-pocket in case of an ‘emergency’…
Anyway, the interview starts in an old soviet fashion… I am presumed guilty before I can even defend myself… the officer demands to know how I could possibly have an inconsistency on my entry forms – i.e. on one it says I am here as a tourist... on another I am coming into my former motherland on a personal visa… I am such as easy catch that I can see the young man, with a nice clean uniform, mind you, already counting the bribe I’ll be paying him in a minute or two… but there again my wit and quick thinking comes out… true, I might have planned this in the back of my head just for a moment like this… but I lay out to the officer that its hard for me to say if my trip is personal or tourist since in a way its both… as I am heading back to my beloved homeland to see what these capitalist cretinism has done to my wonderful land…and how after sixteen years of absence, mind you I left as a proud and honorful Pioneer, I am really dying to see what good things have happened in my country since then… “and now”, I turn to the officer, “what further questions do you have?”
Here things get weird for the officer since obviously it would be implicitly a very unpatriotic thing to do to demand a bribe out of me… on the other hand, just letting me go just like that seems a little weird… so the officer starts asking me about America… what I do there… how I like life there… etc… he seems of reasonably educated sort… so maybe at this point he is just stalling time and scouting out his own prospects…. After a few minutes of an ever increasingly friendly chat… he sticks out his hand… wishes me luck… and tells me that I hope I like what they’ve done with Ukraine… I say of course… though deep inside I highly doubt I would… at this point I look up and realize that another border guard spent this whole time standing over the back of me… trying to intimidate me… which didn’t work because I was so obliviously lost in my conversation/ interview that I forgot to notice his presence… this latter fellow is slightly taken aback by this turn of events since I doubt his buddy is generally known for his softness of heart… he weakly asks the other guy if maybe they should search my stuff… who knows, maybe I'm one of those crazy Americans with fifteen pounds of fine Afghani heroin in my backpack… but the other says no… this is a good man traveling… and I shake hands with both of them… extremely warm handshakes by the way… to a degree I almost regret not asking for a photograph… and off we go in our own directions… officers over to the next train car where they’ll be mugging some other poor soul in lieu of their failed ‘collection’ with me.. and me back to my coupe… where the previously hateful three women greet me as if I am the rebirth of John the Baptist… head attached and all…. What happened in Kharkov is a story (s) for another time…. But again… strange that of all the demented, strange and bizarre interviews I’ve had… these two are my most pleasant memories…. Is there a message buried in here somewhere?? I think… but I fully gleamed it yet….
1 comment:
We are at the close of 2008??!!! Wow, congratulations on successful time travel!! That's no small feat! :)
Post a Comment