Funemployment

Hello blogosphere at 5:30 A.M.! As of yesterday I handed in my two weeks notice at my place of employment. This may seem unwise considering I need it to pay the bills and support my insatiable online and thrift shopping obsessions. 

In reality, I have been mulling over this decision for a very long time, since last year to be exact. Actually, ever since I started talking everyone at work into joining an union because there had been absolute no workers/supervisor egalitarianism or job security. It has been a year since that fiasco and even though we voted and won our rights to join the union, I have never stopped fighting my boss over issues such as fair treatment of every staff, gender discrimination (it is still the unspoken rule that male staff are not allowed to be left alone with the children we provide care for, because it "looks bad" by virtue of the fact that males are seemingly "more dangerous" and "more likely to molest kids") and managerial accountability. After all, he does run a non-profit society for children for fuck sakes! Shouldn't us adults lead by example by advocating equality, freedom and the rights of everyone? You see, this is where people get lost on, the whole rights for everyone thing. Most people think unions only protect workers and make managers and supervisors jobs difficult. Yes, this can certainly be the case however, from what I understand based on the basic functions of what unions do, they actually provide as an impartial, third-party scrutinizer for worksites. This means, accountability and responsibility need to come from both the workers and the managers. My boss, on the other hand, thought unions are going to make him lose his job or give his employees too much right that we'll go and ransack his office, or somehow get away with kidnapping his family or something. Seriously though, he was fucking paranoid.

So ever the past year; after our winning of the union vote and during our "pre-unionized limbo", I've been nothing but brutally honest with my boss about just how unhappy I've been with the practices and philosophies at WCASS (workplace acronym). I have had many a shouting matches over the phone and in person with various managers about their hypocritical and ludicrous way of dealing certain cases. Though all of which have something to do with fair treatment and equal rights but they ultimately affect the lives of the kids we provide care for. Thus, putting my self-righteous ego aside, a huge part of me is tormented by the paradox and irony of all of it. I sometimes find it hard to face the kids and teach them about being fair and respectful for every person and living creature whilst putting away cheques signed by people who think it's perfectly ok to execute brilliant plans such as relocate an unwilling staff because another staff complained about her being "too pretty" which "distracted" the kids from their daily activities and fire people during the middle of a union movement.

In a way, I feel like I've failed the kids for leaving and having to lie to them why I will be leaving. Through I know that it will not be fair for me lay the real reason behind my leaving nor would it be productive in a sense that trying to explain something like this to them now would only do more harm than good. The shittiest thing about this whole thing is that I feel selfish for not sucking it up and do it for the kids. I just hope someone else would come along and set a better example for them.
Moving on to the future, my unofficial last day is next friday but really I'm suppose to stay for another week after that. At this point, I don't think it'll make a difference how long I stay because the human resources department which consists of only one person - my boss (autocracy much?) will "have time" to find someone to replace me. I am going to look at job postings on craigslist now. Wish me luck.

Slow Cook

Happy Thanksgiving all of you Turkey lovers. My long weekend was extremely productive. I played a show on Friday night along with some great local punk bands and just had an absolute ball! Now I can't wait to get back into writing more stuff so we can start touring and play shows every night. 

Saturday was awesome. I went thrift shopping and got myself a wicked leopard print jacket (pictured below). It was only $7.99 and in great condition. I wore it out to see a friend today and five minutes into my trip I started to sweat. Of course, my vanity told me to keep it on so I sweated my entire Skytrain ride all the way from the East of GVA to the West end.

I also coloured my hair half pink and half turquoise but after several washes the pink bled into the turquoise so now I have mixed colours in the right portion of my hair. So far it doesn't look bad but I'm sure after more washes and when the brassy yellow tinge start to come out, it'll start driving me bat-shit insane. 

I've been procrastinating and putting off the opening of my Etsy shop. Shit! Maybe this week I'll find some time. When I do finally get it together, I'll link it to all of you right away. Sorry about the filler post, I really just wanted to showcase my outfit without having to write anything too involving and long.

Another Moon

Two weeks ago I was on another continent and now I'm right in the thick of it all. Back to work with the kids, a show on Friday, already out of groceries and even new job opportunity (more to do with working with kids). 

In the midst of living, I feel adventurous and want to explore more experiences. For some reason the thought of surviving a cross-Pacific flight for thirteen hours and traveling through time backwards from China to Vancouver make me appreciate life. This is why I have decided that in two years, I will be moving to Montreal. Thus leaving me with the biggest conquest yet to achieve - learning French.

Speaking of French, I watched a fantastic film by Tarantino the other day which some of you may have heard of; Inglorious Basterds. In it, the people spoke very little English and one Nazi was fluent in both French and German and Hitler was assassinated by brutal machine gun swiss-cheesing. It made me realize two things: one, European languages are beautiful. Two, if Hitler had in fact die that way, perhaps the world would be a different place.

After coming back from China, the very thought of living in a totalitarian society frightens me and haunts my democratic dreams (in which I speak English but hope one day that will become French). And perhaps this is a little too preachy and even patronizing but I think every young Canadians should be as politically active as they possibly can and exercise their democratic freedom in all ways possible. As one of the best countries in the world, we really don't realize the extent of our liberty. Seriously, just go read an article about what's happening in nations such as North Korea or Iraq. The fact that I can blog, post photos and even openly discuss controversial topic such as sexual politics and anti-establishmentarianism without paying much consequences is an absolute privilege.

Home At Last, Jet Lag's a Bitch

China cut me off of Facebook, Blogger, Twitter and everything which allows me to connect and interface with the relevant people of my life. The policies of the country acts like a big-time cock-blocker, impinging on people's internet usage freedom. The government basically hates and kills everything that may leave room for free expression and communication. 

Overall, the trip was good. I saw my family and stuffed myself with all of my childhood favourite foods and did the most quintessentially Asian things such as Karaoke and shopping at various markets for bargain fashion.

The experience this time was rich however I'm currently running on 3 hours of sleep and am barely able to type so consider this a "to be continued" post...

Gravity Always Wins

So I totally lied, I am going to be able to blog on this trip. I was thinking that there wouldn't be reliable internet sources here but WiFi is everywhere and so I'm not off the grid after all. However, the jetlag has rendered me simultaneous restless and exhausted all the time. So far the experience in Korea has been that everybody really does eat kimchi three times a day just as the stereotype predicted and that plastic surgery is more common than getting a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Speaking of that, let's talk about that for a bit.

I don't mean to be preachy or want to come across as being morally superior but there's something fundamentally wrong with Asian women wanting to get plastic surgery. I've been here for about a week now and if I were to ball park, I say about 70% of women here have undergone some sort of cosmetic procedure. How do I know that? BECAUSE THEY DON'T LOOK ASIAN!!! Of course, there is always assumptions about these things. Perhaps some Korean women are born with large, round, perfectly limpid eyes. Sure, but I know for a fact that the "double eye-lid" surgery is also one of the most popular and common surgeries here. 

The thing is that people are obsessed with looking Westernized here for some reason. I saw a Korean women yesterday standing in line for the flume ride (yes, I went to Everland, an amusement park in Korea) and her face was painted so ghostly white that it didn't match any other part of her natural skin. Meanwhile the only thing I can think of is, "man, I must look so ugly to them. I've gotten a bit of a tan over the summer. I have very typical Asian eyes and my nose is definitely not as well defined as the fake ones." But you want to know what the irony of it all is? The only reason why I'm Korea is because my mom is here to fix her botched nose job from ten years ago so I'm right in the thicket of it all. Everyday, I'm in and out plastic surgeon's offices waiting for her to get stem cells injected into her nasal tissue (standard post operative procedure). While I'm sitting in these offices, I get sadder and sadder with each woman that comes in, looking perfectly attractive I might add, waiting to book her appointment with a specialist to water down whatever Asian characteristic they deem undesirable within the beauty culture.