Elbows OK

.

Well, there is always that silver lining, or so they say. One thing that’s been improved by my time out of an office is the state of my elbows. You know the condition called (hmm, I guess I made this up) office elbows?

Office elbows = a darkening of the skin at the elbow area as a result of one's
elbows being constantly propped up, or rubbing on the edge of the desk.

For me, no more office means no more office elbows. Ah, there’s the rub.

Wishes on Paper

I took this picture at a Chinese temple in Cebu. It’s a snapshot of a pile of wishing papers on a bench. The way it works: you take a piece of paper, make a wish, and then roll the paper into a tube, tucking in the ends while leaving the gold paint visible on the outside. Then you take your rolled wishes (make as many wishes as you want, why not), and burn them on the altar along with some incense, petitioning the docile buddhas to grant your heart’s desires. It sounds so easy.

No wonder I didn’t trust it. No paper wishes for me, I remembered thinking. Better to talk directly to the powers that be. I just knelt on the red satin cushions and bowed three times, waving the smoke of the incense around my head.  When I finished, I felt light, even calm, as though my worldly cares were lifted. Even when I turned and walked away, I could still see the benign smile of the buddhas.  The rotund little gods kept smiling the entire time, smiling with the careless abandon of those that promise nothing, but accept all.

I should have known, then. I should have.

Job Stats: Current Count

Loafer’s paradise, or mocking photo for the intrepid, yet so far luck-challenged jobseeker? These days, for me, that photo is more of a mockery.

It’s now 21 days since I was last gainfully employed. I was just daydreaming yesterday, as I went about my lack of business, that I could get used to this. I mean, I could go on with this kind of life—the waking up with not much purpose to one’s day. The 2PM lunches. The unmindful dawdling over coffee. The slow descent into madness.

But before plunging into all that, here are my current job search stats:

34 applications sent through JobStreet

9 applications sent through JobsDB

12 new applications (no views as yet)

5 applications under consideration

5 applications in process

5 applications kept for reference

5 applications with no updates

2 applications withdrawn (unsuccessful)

1 interview in person, still no call

1 phone interview that did not push through (who does these things, anyway?)

8 applications sent directly to companies through their career sites

3 networking efforts (sending resumes to kind folks who promise to pass them on)

I still hang out at the mall, go to internet places, seek out networking possibilities, obsess over grocery shopping. Right now, the adverts for cheap passage into Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, etc. get more and more attractive as each day passes. How I wish I am financially set up to be able to just drop everything (kids, rent, responsibilities), and travel aimlessly for 6 months. I could do that. I think I can.

Job Stats: Back to Square One

It’s now 11 days since I’ve been let go from my job. I recovered pretty quickly from the shock of it, and I haven’t been idle. I’ve pounded the keys sending resumes online as well as the pavements of Manila going to that one interview, so far. I’ve even polished a few resumes of my lost team members in an effort to help them land good tech writing posts. I send them prospective job opportunities I see online. I’ve renewed membership in online job search sites, made several versions of my resume (4 at last count), and have begun some subtle networking among my contacts.

These numbers illustrate my attempts to be part of the working masses for the last 11 days. And yes, I am counting the weekends for job hunting. I got no job, ergo, weekends don’t count for much.

And so, willy-nilly here we are:

3 applications in process

3 applications kept for reference

2 applications withdrawn (unsuccessful)

1 interview in person so far – most thrilling, but no call as yet

22 applications sent through JobStreet

6 applications sent through JobsDB

6 applications sent directly to companies through their career sites

3 referrals (helpful souls who forward my resume or try to sell me to employers)

I keep my new shoes on hand, clean and polished, ready to roll. My resumes are proofread to a crisp. Job interview outfits are ready in the closet, wearable at a moment’s notice. I would like to have another interview soon, if only to restore my faith in the recruitment industry—that companies are indeed recruiting.

I’m beginning to master the art of dressing up as though you have an office to go to. I leave as though to go to work in the morning, spend time in net cafes sending out resumes and checking job posts, do some window shopping to while away a few hours, write in my notebook, plan my household budget, take my kid to school, hang out at book stores, think about going into business, try to entertain only positive thoughts. I do this everyday.

Today is Tuesday, practically just the beginning of a work week for those that are lucky enough to still be employed. I am optimistic that the job is out there, waiting to meet me. I hope I can keep the positivity and the energy up, even as the days unwind and my savings are that much closer to dwindling. I am more than just a skilled worker, I am educated, multi-faceted, quick on my feet, and with the proven ability to forward plan. And yet, I am out of a job.

I have so much to offer, I handle people well, and I am a loyal to a fault.

For God’s sake, hire me.

Seeing Things

Precognition? Premonition? ESP? A mirror that opens a view into the future? Or just logical deduction? I don’t know. What I know is that I wrote about this ages ago—about the strange quality I seem to have— the ability to somehow see things with such clarity.  Half blessing and half curse, this spider sense allows me to intuit things beforehand, and oftentimes I use it to prepare for the eventuality of them happening.

Part logic, part intuition, and maybe a large part common sense, this inner antenna gives me a crucial head start in averting or coping with dire events in my life. I learned quickly enough (deduction?) that when I ignore my instincts, I get into trouble. Or at the very least, become inconvenienced. Knowing about things before or as they are about to happen is often painful, and prolongs the agony all the more because you know about it in advance. This post, for instance was written Monday, 15th of June 2009, but I set the published date to Saturday, June 20 since what I will refer to here needs to be kept secret until after the publish date.

I will be starting over again, after close (so close!) to two years of being gainfully employed. That monster which goes by the name “global economic crisis” has devoured me. Or more accurately, devoured an entire team, no survivors left. And so I find myself, at 38, out of a job, resume in hand, peddling my skills to a market that’s not just hesitant, but oftentimes unable to make any purchases. I saw the end coming, saw it months ago even before earlier cuts were made in the company. I knew in my gut that time will be the only variable, the inevitability of it seemed long ago decided.

That’s why most of the major decisions I did the last few months have all been influenced by the monster coming to get me. I made plans to get the major financial needs taken cared of, migrated most of my files online, updated my resume, even brought home most of my office stuff. I began considering different fields to explore. I opened a new savings account and tried to set aside  a small chunk of my income each month. I made only one major purchase, an item that was absolutely necessary. I stopped window-shopping, I gave up expensive treats. At work, I finished a project even though I knew my efforts on it would be all for naught. I made sure my team not only met, but exceeded, our goals. I made a presentation that pushed for my team’s retention and asked for it to be taken as high up in the chain as it could go, feeling as though I was battling giants armed only with a slingshot.

But clarity being all that it is, I also knew that all these preparations will not spare me from the pain of having to face 9 people and telling them one by one that they are no longer needed.  I am not especially sentimental, but I feel as though these people have been family to me. I know them.  I know the names of their husbands, kids, boy/girlfriends, their affairs at home, their plans, preoccupations. I built this team, I wish I could save every single one of their jobs, even at the expense of my own.

Sadly, that is not to be.  No amount of productivity will save you, I know that now. In these uncertain times, decisions are about the bottom line, and when the margins are shrinking, you do what you can to cope. I will not speculate about the wisdom of the decision, since nowadays conventional wisdom no longer applies.What I can do is get the team out as quickly as I can, to spare them the pain as much as I possibly can. I asked for the meetings to be done Friday, end of the week so that those who went on leave (how unfortunate) can come back and so that I can tell everyone myself. I expect most of them to be crushed, but I know each one will leave with dignity and perhaps some optimism. Small mercies, yes.

I will get talking points and some help in getting the bad news out, but really, nothing prepares you for this. This is not “business as usual” anymore, and don’t I know it.

Gone, Another One

~

Even in death, you are most like yourself—swift to flee the ordinary.  I heard the news that you were gone while in the middle of chaos, trapped among the hoi polloi clamoring to fulfill their consumer desires. It was news delivered through the wires, quick as can be, just a few lines of text in a forwarded message. An electronic rumor, as though speed mattered more than fact. My first feeling was numbness, a cold hand clasping my heart. And then, I thought it very apt that news of your leaving us should come through like this, quick and mysterious, like a close-held secret released only to a few, or how very much like you doing  a French leave from a party you’ve deemed ripe for abandonment.

Tina, my friend whose dark, mischievous glance always amused me, I regret not seeing you one last time. It is, perhaps, your design that we do not see you anymore, so that we may remember you as you were, in college: young and beautiful, the smoky voice, those dimples, the long dramatic swish of black hair, legs for miles.

I will miss you, Tina. Our bond was words, the stimulating verbal repartee, witty volleys back and forth that leave us laughing, always laughing.  How we love to poke fun at ourselves—how smart we were, how articulate, how powerful in our ability to cut to the core. And now, even with all the words at my command, I do not feel up to the task of writing about you, so I will stop.

Instead, I will put up this Sylvia Plath poem (she who knows best about cutting to the core), to let that which is out there, the vast but now incomplete universe know how I wish you could have stayed here a little bit longer.

~

Denouement

Sylvia Plath

The telegram says you have gone away
And left our bankrupt circus on its own;
There is nothing more for me to say.

The maestro gives the singing birds their pay
And they buy tickets for the tropic zone;
The telegram says you have gone away.

The clever woolly dogs have had their day
They shoot the dice for one remaining bone;
There is nothing more for me to say.

The lion and the tigers turn to clay
And Jumbo sadly trumpets into stone;
The telegram says you have gone away.

The morbid cobra’s wits have run astray;
He rents his poisons out by telephone;
There is nothing more for me to say.

The colored tents all topple in the bay;
The magic sawdust writes: address unknown.
The telegram says you have gone away;
There is nothing more for me to say.

This is the fourth friend I’ve lost to a kidney related illness.  Universe, I get it I get it. Stop hitting already.

Bum Tummy Today

After a weekend spent doing mommy duties and getting a much-deserved foot massage, I capped Sunday night with a meal of squid adobo. This dish is my long-time favorite, squid cooked in its own ink with vinegar, salt and pepper, onions, and lots of garlic. Now, squid agrees with me, for years and years now I never had problems with eating it.

So I’m guessing that the culprit for my bum tummy is that iced coffee I had at the mall before going home. Serves me right for buying from a little stall with no other customer except me. No wonder their cashier was grumpy.  Arrrgghhh the twisting pain! I’ve been to the bathroom 3 times already. And the cramps are still coming in waves. Owners of Auntie Anne’s, may the fleas of a million camels and warthogs infest your sensitive areas without let up for a year! Ooooh my tummy! It hurts, hurts, hurts.

This is a not-so-glam excuse to break out my new blue ceramic tea set at work. I’ve been downing copious amounts of green tea in an attempt to calm the waves of turmoil in my stomach. It made me burp, so there was some relief for a while, but the heavy stone pushing on my belly from the inside is still there. I want to go home already, but I got roped in to conduct a meeting at 9 tonight. Bad, bad luck.

The tea set is pretty, alright. But now I know I’m going to associate it with a bad stomach ache so the joy of looking at it is much diminished. Awwww.

Down, Real Low Down

What comes to mind today is how deeply sad it is to realize that I have first-hand knowledge of the phrase, “a life of quiet desperation.”

Green Means Go

Green means go, right? Just yesterday, I finished fiddling with the photos that I uploaded to my Flickr account, and I noticed that I have a lot of greens in the batch. Leaves, palm trees, shrubbery, lawns, rolling hills, whatnot—the color predominates—shades that are saturated, filling the frame with lushness all around.

The longer I stay in the city, the more I long for green, the hue of nature. Last weekend I was down on my hands and knees tending to my little garden at home. I pruned three pots of shrubs, re-potted some purple bromeliad-like plants, weeded out my foxtails, trimmed chinese bamboo, and applied fertilizer (organic, of course) like it was going out of style. Ironically, it seems cleansing to me to muck about in the dirt, to pull out weeds and dead leaves, breathe in the smell of fresh-turned earth.

It’s been raining for what feels like weeks now, and the patches of green have become more vibrant, as though photoshopped by a manic tree hugger. After a rain, I like to go out and look at the underside of leaves on the trees, their veins seem to pulse and throb with life. Even the air smells different, as though it was swirling scents around, a secret concoction you take in, trusting that it has miraculous properties.

Just when everyone was looking elsewhere, summer was snatched away by moonsoon rains. In the taxi ride going home, my gaze speeds through streams of black water puked up from the sewers, vomit from the very bowels of the city. Here, rain falls down as a gray, dank sheet—clouds flushing the great toilet in the sky. The air is visible, riddled with smoke and particulates like the air inside a cheap, rundown girlie bar.

I wish green will take over the city one day, creep up from the edges of the highways, underneath buildings and bridges, up from cracks in the cement lots and asphalt roads. Imagine it, shrubs mushrooming everywhere, vines looping through wires, grass spilling into malls. A hothouse of flora blooming overhead, soft grass underfoot, colors cutting through the grayness.  Green going on, and on, and on.

Accounting, But Not Adding Up

And so even with my dread of numbers, I find that the ruminations of the day need to be addressed numerically, if only to shore up with logic that which does not abide by it. Today I am finished with work duties, and my mind meanders to thoughts that I have been avoiding all the long weekend. Numbered for convenience but never sequentially, here’s the state of my being.

3 – glances from strangers last week, as though they know me, and then 3 glances away.

1 – whom I wish were dead remains all too near, and by all appearances, not dying anytime soon.

787 – the number of times I think friends have taken advantage of my kindness/graciousness.

2 – my kid’s teeth that have come out ahead of time while baby teeth are still hanging steady.

2 – cellphones lost and two new ones bought as replacements. One given to me by the universe.

4 – unread books on the shelf, mocking me and my pretense of not having time to read.

2 – men I love/have loved are now oceans away from me, and I do not know if any of this at all matters.

3 – redesigns made on this blog, before I arrived at this one. All excuses to avoid actual posting.

12 – episodes watched of Bones, season 4, all in one sitting.

22 – mini meatballs I made over the weekend and forgot to photograph for the food blog that I do not update.

What does all this add up to, I wonder? Randomness that boings back and forth into the universe?  I maintain that I couldn’t care less whether or not I make an audible ping out there.  It’s just that lately, the universe seems to be applying a vastly different equation to me.