resumes

So I'm helping with some recruiting efforts to find a junior IT helpdesk person. In searching Craigslist, I've noticed some interesting things:

1. A lot of people have ridiculous spelling/grammatical errors in their resumes. Isn't that the most obvious no-no?

2. The backlash against hiring foreign H1-B workers has manifested in the addition of "citizenship status" on a number of resumes. e.g. "US Born Citizen -- Native English speaker" or "Status: US Citizen and French green card holder." This irks me. Companies purport to hire based on suitability and skill and not to discriminate based on race, religion, nationality, sex etc. but this demonstrates that people don't believe them. They believe, and probably rightly so, that American corporations prefer to hire not just citizens, but those who speak perfect English, nevermind the skills they might bring as someone with experience working in other countries, economies and cultures.

3. Some assholes are ethnocentric enough to demand that the people looking to hire them speak English well e.g. "I am accepting Phone Calls from the local 408 and 650 Area Codes ONLY. This is my Local Job Search Area. NOTE- You MUST be able to speak English clearly and distinctly." I kind of want to email him just to tell him to shove it.

4. Rather than use the title of the post to bring attention to the position they are seeking or the skills they bring, some people (ie the ones I would never contact because they just seem too dull) use their name or something like "APPLYING FOR SUITABLE JOB " as the posting title. See another example below, the best Craigslist resume post ever.

5. Some people are really too idiotic to deserve a job. Yes this is the entire posting, no there is no resume or any indication what kind of job this person is qualified for or seeking. I kind of want to email him to say "you're kidding right?"

Tony's Resume (redwood city) <--- this was the title of the post per #4 above. Brilliant Reply to: [deleted for the idiot's privacy]
Date: 2007-06-30, 12:31PM PDT

Looking for a job higher than entry level, in which will allow me to use my skills and abilities to my fullest potential

[yup, this one clearly takes the cake. Absolutely a waste of time and in no way deserving of even an entry level position in whatever it is he wants to do]

Haier sucks

Here we go again. Why does my shit always break? Why am I always on the phone with some sort of customer service rep idiot?

Dear Haier,

I have a dryer gdz5-1 purchased 3 years ago from Lowe's. Within the first couple months the fuse broke and I called Haier's customer service to find a person who services Haier products under warrantee. Back then, of the list of appliance repair companies your customer service person gave me, only one company actually serviced Haier products.

In other words the list was EXTREMELY out of date and almost all the companies I called said they had stopped servicing Haier many many years ago. A couple of them said they never remembered ever servicing Haier and shouldn't be on your list at all.

Now the dryer's drum won't turn and the one company that serviced it 3 years ago (Alegria Appliance repair in Newark, CA) won't come out to my area anymore because it's too far from them. I am in Foster City and at a loss for what to do next if no one fixes Haier around here. Please advise (and please dont send me that list of people who no longer service Haier as calling them the first time was a big waste of my time and so was trying to explain that to your customer service rep who basically threw up her arms and told me there was nothing else she could do).

Cali

So I'm on week two down here in the bay area. I've been working every weekday since I got here and trying to get used to cube life in a tech company again. My plan was to finish a paper after clocking my 8 hours but it's been hard because I'm still tired from the school year. The most I seem to manage is to look for more articles to reference and add them to EndNote. By the time we get home and fed, it's impossible not to plop down on the couch in front of Simon's new TV. Weekends are too sunny to stay in and work. This weekend we did all the car maintenance stuff on Saturday and spent Sunday at the Asian American expo, grocery shopping and watching a movie with a friend.

The paper I have yet to finish has been accepted to the Midwest Popular Culture Conference in October and another one I wrote in Fall was accepted to the National Com Association conference in Chicago this year so I'm pretty happy about that. Just wish those conferences were some place sunny instead of in the frigid midwest.

In other news someone's idiot dog escaped in traffic on the 101 this morning. A lot of drivers got out of their cars to try and chase it down. Not sure how that panned out. Ok it's my favorite time of day, bedtime.

fire

So the night before I flew down to the Bay Area (last Friday), Denny and I were gettin' ready to head out for happy hour at Ivar's and drinks downtown. All of a sudden a really piercing noise filled the apartment. It was the fire alarm. Not just a smoke detector but an apartment wide alarm. All my neighbors headed out onto their balconies to see what everyone else was doing. We figured someone had pulled the alarm but the noise was so loud we picked up our stuff and headed into the hallway where I ran into a guy in jeans and a t-shirt soaking wet and smelled some smoke in the hallway. I asked him what's going on and all he said was "there was a fire but it's out." It took a while before I figured out that his sprinkler (heat sensitive not triggered by smoke) must've gone off. We headed down many flights of stairs and outside where most residents were already standing around asking each other what happened. It took forever for the fire department which is spitting distance away to arrive. Three trucks came and the firefighters went inside then came back out and went back in with what looked like vaccuum cleaners. Before long, they were throwing chunks of carpet out the window. Then the head firefighter guy announced that anyone next to the apartment or below them would have to find an alternate place to stay since there was likely to be water damage to all those apartments. It's still not clear what started the fire but that apartment is totalled. I have some photos which I'll post later.

idiot

Tonight I went to Cactus Club Cafe at Metrotown for a little mini high school reunion. Not my first restaurant choice by a long shot but I had to please people who don't eat Japanese food which is my staple when I eat in Vancouver. That reunion was fun and all that but one incident really pissed me off. See I was wearing my favorite t-shirt. It says on the front "I WILL NOT LOVE YOU LONG TIME." Get it? White boy waiter comes by and says, oh I like your shirt. My friend can't see the whole thing and asks me what it says so I read it out for her. Stupid waiter says, "no, but you have to say it with the accent." (%$#@ WTF??) I resisted the temptation to climb over the table and punch him in the face to wake up a few of his dormant brain cells. Then I resisted the temptation to say "fuck you" and instead opted for "FUCK THAT, what do you think I'm protesting with this shirt?!" I also bit my tongue before I ended that sentence with "you ignorant privileged frat boy piece of shit." He still didn't seem to understand what I was talking about because he responded to my outrage with this lame nervous giggle. Give it a few years I'll bet he becomes one of those assholes who goes on sex tours in Asia and doesn't see why it's a bad thing.

inc

I'm taking my first "incomplete" in a university class ever. It's for a 1 credit class that requires I send a paper off for publication. This is the real thing, not some pointless exercise. I had a paper that just needed more massaging than expected and it'll take a little more time than the quarter allowed. Luckily all but one of the students in the class will be taking this incomplete and in fact it was encouraged but that doesn't make me feel any better. Neither does the fact that I left way too little time to take a break before going to SF to work for the summer. I always feel like I have to fill up all my time. Part of it was that I know Simon needs help at work and I want to get there to relieve him a bit. I'm in Vancouver now and too mentally drained to work on that paper and too wound up to feel like I'm taking a break. I dunno just being in Vancouver always feels so hectic. People making appointments and all this pressure to be places when I just want to sulk, lay on the couch, and watch Law and Order by myself. It doesn't help that I barely recognize my own city and it's just a constant reminder of how quickly time is passing and how little I've been accomplishing over the years.

jump street

Did you know 21 Jump Street happens in real life??
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/318023_federalway01.html?source=rss

I always thought that was fictional. I mean how the hell can a 33 year old man pass as a 15 year old? The slang and mannerisms and music and culture and all that you can learn. But what do you do about crow's feet and receeding hair lines? I look pretty young at 31 but I don't think that even I would pass for 15.

celebrate

Things to celebrate today -- one of my students got through two rounds of an annual public speaking contest and has qualified to compete with two other speakers at the final tomorrow. I've been accepted to contribute to an encyclopedia which will be published in 2008 (I don't want to reveal details because I haven't received/read the contract yet). I only have 19.5 more speeches to grade (I stopped halfway through the first one to blog, damn adult ADD). Denny made it safely to Eugene, OR on his solo move to Seattle. Upon last update, he was in a movie theater in Eugene, OR and was the only one in the whole theatre.

housewives

So I don't have many channels with basic cable. Most of them are home shopping channels for some reason. So if I'm taking a break I watch whatever's on and remotely interesting, usually it's on the Discovery Channel. Today I landed on a show that turned out to be Desperate Housewives which I've never seen before but have heard of. Maybe it was a rerun, I'm not sure. It would almost be a funny show had it not been for the repulsive stereotypes. Gabrielle has a maid/surrogate mother named Shao-Mei who, of course, speaks in horribly broken English. Of the few minutes of screen time for this character she is demanding (dragon lady) because she, as Gabrielle's surrogate mother, is able to hold the unborn baby hostage in return for making her boss reverse roles and take care of her. She complains that her meal served in bed does not come with crackers and throws a pickle on the floor. Gabrielle threatens to send her back to Shanghai where she'll "be on all fours in a rice paddy" as soon as the baby is born. Shao-Mei then disappears after stealing all of Gabrielle's clothes. Gabrielle goes down to a Chinese Restaurant looking for her and when the waitress doesn't cooperate, she threatens to send the authorities to "see what really is in the mushu pork." I can't even begin to count how many anti-Asian stereotypes were in this episode alone. There's no way I can watch another one. That was just vile. Fuck you Desperate Housewives.

distractions

So my students have started delivering their final speeches. This project is called the advocacy speech (formerly called the protest speech) and it involves motivating a sympathetic audience to take action. The speech is given out on Red Square which is a central area in my school where there is a lot of foot traffic.



So the students are graded partly on their ability to deal with environmental conditions whether they be seagulls flying overhead, hecklers, noisy airplanes flying by or what have you. Well my students sure got to deal with their fair share of challenges today. My first class had a mentally unstable homeless man walking around the area making very loud noises that I can only spell as "mreeeh." I saw him walking towards the speaker and I started to worry a bit but luckily he detoured toward the garbage can nearby, still making these loud noises. After that, another speaker was up. During her speech a couple of ducks, regulars in Red Square, decided to walk in front of her, down the steps, and for a little sight seeing around the audience's ankles, and then back up the steps in front of her. Damn they were soooo cute. Distraction #3 was the crowd of elementary school kids. They were actually not terribly noisy but one of the idiot teachers instructed them to run up the steps toward Kane Hall, right in front of my speaker. WTF?

In my second class, one of my students was doing a speech advocating that our state mandate the HPV vaccine. Just as soon as she said "teenagers are having sex" you could see the two crazy Jesus folks walk towards us with this HUGE, I mean like 12' tall sign held up in harnesses they were wearing. The sign said something like repent for your sins among other things. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing the word hell. One of those crazies decided to park himself right behind the speaker so we could all see his big huge sign. On top of that, some folks decided to set up and test an amplified sound system for an ROTC event to take place later that afternoon so that speaker got to compete with someone saying "test, test 1, 2" through a microphone.

I have to say nothing beats teaching. Everyday is different and usually pretty interesting in one way or another. You can't say that for most desk jobs.

fast

A former professor of mine who is only a few years older than me sure had a big year. He released a CD, got engaged (I didn't even know he was dating anyone), bought a house, and got an awesome new job on the other side of the country. Man things sure happen fast when you hit your 30s. I am so happy for him. He totally deserves all of that. I like it when good things happen to good people.

Admittedly that also means I hate it when good things happen to bad people and when bad things happen to good people.

weekend

What happened to the sun? It was nice out yesterday. I got a chance to run around Greenlake and get some work done before having a friend over to watch Art School Confidential yesterday. The movie was a little dark and twisted for a comedy but pretty creative. Today I got up at noon and had a solid 3 waking hours to do work and watch Anaheim beat Detroit before taking a nap. I just cannot stay awake without more light. I'd sure be screwed if I lived up in Alaska.

Couple more weeks of papers and grading before I get to head to Vancouver to unwind and then to the Bay Area for the summer.

skate

I just finished watching The Lords of Dogtown (2005) which documents the real life stories of the pioneers of professional skateboarding who started the sport in a rundown neighourhood in Venice, CA in the mid-1970s. Did you know three of those original pro-skaters were Asian American, and one of them female? Yup, Shogo Kubo, Jeff Ho and Peggy Oki. Unfortunately they're secondary characters in the movie (if that).

Jensen

Yesterday I attended Robert Jensen's talk titled "The Academy and Activism: Neutralizing Neutrality and Moving Past Polemics" and this afternoon he joined the graduate students in my cohort for a class and a dinner. Jensen is probably best known (I'm guessing) for his article U.S. just as guilty of committing own violent acts, which was published in the Houston Chronicle three days after 9/11 and invited a number death threats and poorly articulated diatribes about being callous and unAmerican. Here is a quote from that article:

... this act was no more despicable as the massive acts of terrorism -- the
deliberate killing of civilians for political purposes -- that the U.S.
government has committed during my lifetime. For more than five decades
throughout the Third World, the United States has deliberately targeted
civilians or engaged in violence so indiscriminate that there is no other way to
understand it except as terrorism. And it has supported similar acts of
terrorism by client states. If that statement seems outrageous, ask the people
of Vietnam. Or Cambodia and Laos. Or Indonesia and East Timor. Or Chile. Or
Central America. Or Iraq, or Palestine. The list of countries and peoples who
have felt the violence of this country is long. Vietnamese civilians bombed by
the United States. Timorese civilians killed by a U.S. ally with U.S.-supplied
weapons.

You can probably see why that article ruffled a few feathers.

Tonight I spoke with him one on one and I cannot describe how exciting it was to have this opportunity. I thanked him for writing that article because it voiced a very unpopular opinion, one that I held but did not dare to discuss with anyone but my closest Canadian friends. I thanked him because when "my people," and I mean this in a collective sense meaning anyone of Asian, South Asian or SE Asian descent, make claims like this we're immediately dismissed and often told to "go home" if we "don't like America and all it stands for." Opinions like this are, after all, used as "proof" of our unassimilability in this country. In Asian American studies classes we talk about the millions of lives lost in SE Asia at the hands of the United States all the time, but this sort of thing doesn't enter into the wider discourse unless someone like him -- a white male professor -- initiates that dialog and he did and I couldn't imagine if he hadn't.

I also thanked him for writing The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege. I confessed that one of my most terrifying teaching moments was introducing the idea of whiteness and white privilege to a racially diverse class that included many white students. I told him that I made a very conscious and deliberate decision to front end the lesson with articles written by white men about white privilege because I felt that being an Asian woman simply wouldn't give me the credibility to get the message across. I admitted that at the end of the class I felt guilty and disappointed that I would not feel comfortable giving that lesson in my own words in my own skin. It's not fair that I feel that I have to direct students to articles written by white men in order to teach about a topic that I can articulate myself, but I feel like I have to and I hate it. We joked about our differences: white - Asian, male - female, older - younger (looking), tall - short. "Well you're screwed," he concluded with a laugh. But in all seriousness, Bob reminded me of what's really important. It's teaching and helping people to understand these things. It's about being strategic and doing what works for you. You can try to overthrow the system and I think we (as in people of color) are taking baby steps to at least shift the so-called system, but sometimes in the here and now you need to just work within it and do little things to make a difference. I forgot to thank him for this conversation. So, Bob, thanks for this (and for being a privileged white man who gets it).

phone pics

Finally downloaded a bunch of photos from my cell phone. Thought I'd share. So this one I took at Long's Drugs during their closing sale. That sale was funny because as the merchandise made its way out the door they started consolidating so you'd have stuff like pork and beans next to the engine oil next to the condoms. I took this photo because the actual La Victoria is a taco place in San Jose where we'd go eat afterhours in the rare event we actually went south to party instead of up to San Francisco. People would get in deep shit for stealing the sauce from the table because it's their own hot sauce and is actually sold in stores even in Seattle. From what I remember they even had a security guy at the door.


This is my campus in March. The cherry blossoms are beautiful. Those clouds were not as threatening as they appear in the photo. That was a warm sunny day.


This is a used bookstore up the street from my campus.



Here is the aforementioned cat.

This is what you get at Cafe Ori in Bellevue for under $7. Yes, for that much you get the big bowl o' noodles AND that huge pork katsu (2 pieces stacked).

There is a little tiny shack on the way up to Snoqualmie Mountain that serves ostrich burgers. Yum. I think the building is red and you'll miss it if you're not looking for it.

Summer

To do list:

- work
- edit my friend's wedding video
- go to gymnastics class in Mountain View
- take a course at a community center, maybe an instrument
- write one paper and submit it to a conference
- do lots of reading (reading list needs to be developed still but definitely some hard core theory and cultural studies stuff I need to catch up on)
- pick up running again, aim to do 10Ks without feeling the need to throw up

stranger

I recently met a person, pardon the vagueness as it is deliberate. You know how you aren't supposed to talk religion or politics with people when you first meet them? In my first conversation with this person (whom I will probably have to tolerate for at least a year), he asked about my research interests and then argued with me that Oriental is not an offensive term and that Asian is more of a problematic term because it leaves out some people in Asia, like Russians and people from Kazakhstan. I made a failed attempt at being patient as I explained that Asian is a term of collective identity that gives us (as in yellow people) some political strength through solidarity. He would not compromise and just pushed the argument harder. He was in complete denial of the social and political implications of this racist notion of Orientalism as it is constructed in the west. He argued that black people call themselves the N word so "Oriental" is also okay. I responded that Asian American people DO NOT call themselves Oriental and even if they chose to reappropriate that term (like queer for example), it doesn't give other people permission to use it unless that permission is granted rather than assumed. Asian American history really needs to work its way into the public school curriculum because obviously there are a number very misguided people out there.

Oh and did I mention this heated argument took place in MY HOME within five minutes of meeting him? Aside from taking Ethnic Studies 101, this person also needs to take a lesson from Miss Manners on how to make small talk with people you've just met.

Canadian accent

What do you do when you don't feel like working on a paper and people are generally pissing you off so that you can't concentrate on anything and you want to hurl someone or something out a 10 storey building? I look at cuteoverload and then I do dumb quizzes like this:

What American accent do you have?
Created by Xavier on Memegen.net

North Central. This is what everyone calls a "Minnesota accent." If you saw "Fargo" or "Drop Dead Gorgeous" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Some Americans may mistake you for a Canadian.

Canada. You probably get irritated when British people and Europeans think you're from the States, but over here we wouldn't make a mistake like that.

Take this quiz now - it's easy!

We're going to start with "cot" and "caught." When you say those words do they sound the same or different?

Same Different Same, no wait I mean different, maybe, a little bit different...

just gettin' by

It's week 6 and I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have a paper to rewrite in an attempt at publication, three final papers/projects to work on, advisor (or lack thereof) issues to resolve, students freaking out about their speeches, and speeches to grade. Everything was pretty manageable but all of a sudden I feel like there is more work than hours to get it done. Oh and the Canucks are fucked if they don't win tonight. I have to put aside a couple hours to watch that 'cause it's do or die.

It doesn't help that Facebook has been such a distraction. It's been cool though to reunite with some of my closest friends from high school/junior high and also some neighourhood kids I used to play with.

I survived

I survived a workshop that I delivered to a bunch of teenagers on the weekend at the Seattle Center, a project that we had to do for a graduate seminar on public scholarship. The group I got was, however, not a group of teenagers. I got a bunch of preteens which is not what I had prepared my material for. This was a workshop on race and the media. When I showed a clip from NCIS of a non-profit office burnt down and a bunch of Middle Eastern men being interrogated by white cops who suspected they were terrorists, the kids thought the characters were Mexican. Things went downhill from there, with the highlight being the scuffle over pens at the next table which was also mostly pre-teens (AKA children).

After that we we went to a bar to celebrate and ran into this crazy junkie bitch. Two of my team mates arrived first and sat at a 4-person booth. The crazy junkie was sitting in one of our chairs but they let her be since we hadn't arrived yet. When we arrived my teammate asked her to move since the rest of the party had arrived. Her response, "Uh no, this is not your seat. Can't you see I'm sitting in it? So no I'm not going to move." The next booth where her two friends were sitting had two empty chairs since she was sitting in ours. Yeah, after dealing with the drama of the workshop we practically get in a fight with a crazy woman. Luckily her friends convince her to move back to their booth and sit in one of their chairs and so we get our seats back. Needless to say, the first thing I ordered was a beer, and with that a big sloppy cheeseburger and fries. When I got home I had to sleep. I was knocked out for 2.5 hours and still woke up with a headache.