Ghosts of the Present

The Mets are in the 10th innning, trying to salvage at least one game from the series with the red hot Dodgers. 

I got home at 22:30. Two more days and then the weekend!

I forget what day it is. Thursday? Yes. And what year it is? All of the 21st century seem unreal anyway. 

Almost all of my friends' children were born in the 2,000s. Do they really exist?

Is there anybody..., out there?
-Pink Floyd

And then you repatriate and become a stranger in your own land. Bizarre. But been there before. Not so bad, once you get used to it. 

Somewhere Else

I interview for an ESL position in North Dakota on Fri, via telephone. Meanwhile, I work the phones for the Spa company from 15:00 to 22:00, which is mind-numbingly long when you don't get a lot of people to talk to. I have created doodles more expansive than Picasso's Guernica. It's a living, kind of. It's somone else's world, i'm just trying to survive in it. 

One world is enough, for all of us
-The Police

The bitch is back

Is it me, for a moment, for a moment
-The Who

I've been working at ThermoSpa for two weeks and it's going well. I'm working about 25 hours a week. Mañana, I will have been home one year. Crazy. I've had five jobs since then; EduBoston, UNH, For You Flowers, Working Families and now, ThermoSpa. But they seem nice, so I am hopeful.

The moral of the story? Repatriation is a bitch.

Thank you to Mum and the Seester. Not sure how I could have done it without ye. And Pat, Jimbo, Kev and all my friends here.

Our band, Wayward Platypus, will be putting out our fifth studio album this month, The End of the Whole Mess. It's 70 minutes of progressive instrumental madness with a few keyboard segway pieces and one song with lyrics from the back catalogue; Heaven and Earth. I'll post a link when it's all mixed down. 

The Road Forward

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.
Lewis Carroll 

I got a temp job setting appointments for ThermoSpa, the hot tub people. We'll see how it goes. They seem like nice folks. It's hourly plus bonuses, so I'm cool with that. I find it hard to believe there is a demand for hot tubs in this economy. But then again, lots of things surprise me. 

things get stranger

I have applied to Samsung jobs (seester works there) in places such as California, Kansas and Texas (bleck!) And now I am applying for an ESL job in Minot, ND, just two hours from the Canadian border.

How did it come to this?

North Dakota is preferable to S. Korea, I guess.

I guess.

The Winnipeg Jets would be the local hockey team, I suppose.

Something

Looking at jobs in many places - it's surreal. Who knows what will happen. 

Something. Something will happen. It always does.

Until then, i'm just along for the walk.

Back to the Drawing Board

You may ask yourself, how do I work this? 
You may ask yourself, where is that large automobile? 
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house 
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife
-Talking Heads 

And so the die is cast. After 11 months of looking for a job in the USA - any job; Target, Subway, Lowe's, waiter/bartender, customer service - I give up. I just sent my CV for a teaching job in S. Korea. May the god i don't believe in have mercy on my soul.

Jobs are flying out of CT faster than bats out of Hell's basement (where Hitler, Genghis Khan, Oliver Cromwell and Ronald Reagan play Texas Hold'em.) I a masters degree and I can't get a job making sandwiches. I have tried to repatriate. I have tried to make a go of it here. But there is truly nothing for me. So to quote Jimi Hendrix, Good-bye everybody!

I was brought up to believe

Belief has failed me now

The bright glow of optimism

Abandoned me somehow

-Rush