Acid42 is the Soft Asian Enemy

Or: How I Spent 8 Months Searching for a Job in the States.

Reading about my youngest sister’s unemployment predicament in Toronto set me thinking about how I got through the fog of joblessness back when I was a fresh-faced new immigrant to the States, and what I learned in that search. Here then are my five tips for new immigrant jobseekers.

“On the job hunt“, photo on Flickr by Aaron Edwards.

ONE: APPLY FOR ANYTHING!
Be ready to swallow your pride and get any experience that you can get in your new country. Your biggest problem is that your resume contains foreign phone numbers and foreign companies. You need local experience. So go out and scout for openings at coffee houses, delis, supermarkets, and stores.

I remember as my job search continued to give me dead leads, I found myself at a computer kiosk in the department store Target, going through a long and tedious job application on their computer system. I was never accepted unfortunately. This leads me to think that either they found me overqualified or they thought I was psycho. Can’t have psychotic shopping cart gatherers, can you now?

TWO: BE HONEST BUT DON’T BROWBEAT THEM WITH YOUR CREDENTIALS
This is especially true if you’ve got above-average academic credentials and a load of experience, and find yourself applying for an entry-level position. Remember. you don’t have to put every single job you ever had on your application. Just the most recent ones, or the more pertinent ones. I’m not telling you to lie, because that’s one of 10 ways to get fired according to Monster, what I am saying is you don’t have to disclose everything. If they ask, then tell the truth. If not, they don’t have to know you got an M.A. in creative fiction, right?

I remember one interview for a listings editor at a San Francisco cultural magazine. My resume was studded with my experiences as managing editor and freelance writer, hoping it would help me land the job. When the editor-in-chief askjed me if I wouldn’t feel overqualified for the tasks I would do, I answered truthfully and said that was OK by me because I understood that I had to start somewhere. She probably thought: “This guy is jumping ship as soon as another opening comes his way.” Suffice to say, I didn’t get it.

I got the next one though. Different company. Same question about being overqualified. I gave the same truthful answer. Apparently they really needed someone right away because I started the next Monday. Stuffing envelopes with collector’s stamps bought over e-Bay. And then within a few weeks, I moved on to taking digital pictures of the stamps that were going to sell on e-Bay. It wasn’t what I studied for, but it was a start, and I honestly loved the work.

THREE: APPLY FOR AS MANY AS YOU CAN
Craigs List was my most visited bookmark on the web during that time. There were great days with lots of listings in the writing category and I would dash off 4 or 5 applications as quickly as possible. There were lean days when there weere no new listings. Anyway, I ended up sending out around 50 to 60 applications and out of those, I got only 3 actual face-to-face interviews (and I was hired by 2 of the 3). So the odds are against you if you only apply once or twice a week and then give up. Quantity works!

FOUR: NETWORK THE WORLD
While applying fopr jobs online is (relatively) quick and easy — unless you bleed every time you write essays about your goals in life, that is — nothing beats actual face-to-face networking. Let everyone know you’re on the hunt for a job. Tell them to tell their friends. Hand them your resumes to hand over to people they might know.

Actually, within the first 2 months of jobhunting, two opportunities came my way which I eventually decided to reject just out of matters of financial stability. How did I get these opps? One came from a parishioner who attended the same 8:30 AM mass daily with me, and the other from my parish priest!

FIVE: MEANWHILE, SERVE GOD!
Finally, just because you’re jobless doesn’t mean you’re useless. You can still serve God in some way. Volunteer for soup kitchen duties. Teach someone to read. Serve at your parish. Feed the homeless. Do something for the glory of God! If you stay faithful to Him despite your unemployed status, you will see blessings rain down on you. One of those blessing will be a job he wants you to take.

For those of us closely interested in the future of internet and culture in general, the book The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen is riveting reading most of the way through. Keen tackles how the democratization of the Net is producing tons of crap on a daily basis and slowly killing off the production of meaningful art. He cites digital piracy, the production of meaningless “noise” instead of art, and the corruption of values such as respect for intellectual property rights, as culprits in this age of the amateur cut-n-paste videographer and mash-up remixer.

I’ve seen and heard it myself, having been an avid MP3 downloader since 1999, how the levelling of the playing field and the easy availability of every digital tool ever made (via piracy) has ended up making mediocre media producers out of all of us consumers. In fact, the term consumers almost loses meaning, because all participants in ‘the Great Conversation of the Internet’ are consumers and simultaneously content producers — whether you’re commenting on a blog, micro-blogging on Plurk, leaving video responses on YouTube, or posting photos on Zooomr.

One of my major areas of interest is electronic music. I’ve been producing electronic music and releasing it freely on the web via my netlabel QED Records since 2004. And I’ve seen the community of netlabels grow a hundredfold in only a few years.

Just looking at the number of extant netlabels today (July 2 2008) there are 925 free netlabels who house their music files on Archive.org. And each of these netlabels releases something at least once a month, if not more. Some of that output is extraordinary and exquisite stuff you’d never hear over the radio, however the majority is mediocre mush, simply taking up space.

In general, we now all have the tools at our disposal and so we are all now producing much more mediocrity than if those tools were more difficult to avail of. Don’t believe me? Look at YouTube.

And the ease with which digital media can be copied and shared is bringing intellectual property to a dangerous impasse. Old school media producers aren’t making much from their intellectual property rights, so less truly talented people are making meaningful art as full-time jobs. End result? A dangerous slowdown of culture. A slowdown that may one day become a standstill.

Keen asks the poignant question in his book: who makes the decision that something is art or not? In the end, if no one is making any art anyway and simply engaging in the frivolous production of noise in the form of inane mash-ups and blog commentary, then the question is rendered moot.

Something to think about.

Find out more:
The Cult of the Amateur page on Random House publishers.
QED RECORDS netlabel
Another list of netlabels on Rowolo.de

“Have a cupo of tea.” Flickr photo by See/Saw.

A thought hit me today in the break room at work. Companies here in the States all mostly have break rooms with free coffee and tea and some type of snack food, whether healthy (fruits and health bars in my current job) or less healthy (Doritos and Costco muffins in my past job).

I remember my past jobs in Manila, where we would buy tea or coffee sachets in supermarkets and bring them to work in order to have our own stash. Or we would have to scrounge around for change to buy from the vendo machine on the second floor, then walk slowly back up so nothing would spill.

Seems to me that small perks like these, which many here now take for granted, do actually make employees feel more comfortable, more appreciated, more at home. Not a bad price to pay for employee loyalty, if you ask me.

Enough talk. I’m getting a cup of Bigelow Cinnamon Stick tea with milk. And maybe a banana.

On the walk to the train station 3 days ago, listening to Teresa Tomeo’s radio show on EWTN, moral theologian Dr. Pia de Solenni had this to say about the Catholic faith:

“We don’t need more teachers. We need more witnesses.”

St.Peter Catholic Church in Skokie, Illinois

Witnesses are people who give testimonies. In Christian parlance it means something more though: it is someone who, by the way he lives his life, gives testimony to his faith — what he values and what he believes. Someone who lives his faith and becomes a shining beacon to others. Someone with integrity.

Someone once told me integrity is something that you do even when no one’s looking. Which is a very worthwhile thing to remember: you are not a façade, you are what you do in the dark.

Lord knows, I’m not a very good witness.

I have pirated mp3s on my hard drive (I’m halfway through deleting the ones I didn’t actually buy, but can’t seem to get rid of them all). I still have software on my home laptop that I didn’t pay for. I have a speeding ticket, and just wrote a check for 174 dollars to pay for it, and will have to spend a few more dollars to enroll in driving school.

I talk the talk on this blog, but when I’m offline, I don’t always succeed in walking the walk down to Calvary.

Where’s the hope then? I can only do these things successfully in Christ. Not through my own efforts but through His grace. I only pray that somehow through His blessing I might be able to follow His footsteps more closely every day.

Thanks to Catholic author Meredith Gould’s blog, I discovered Jonathan Feinberg’s clever ‘magnetic poetry meets Java’ website called Wordle.

It generates ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide. Here, I pasted the body text from my last blog post and came up with this wonderful word art piece. I’m sure you’ll waste several precious minutes of life with this beautiful link. Enjoy!

I recently blogged about a section in Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz book where he chances upon a discovery thanks to a lecture about metaphors: that we tend to think of relationships in economic terms. Which got me thinking…

The Stanford University Memorial Church plaza

If you push the business metaphor further, then you get this: any investment demands a return on investment (ROI). And if you (sadly) view love as an investment of emotion, time and money, then normally, using the thinking process of this mundane and screwed-up world, you would expect to get your money’s worth, your ROI — whether it be attention, affection, commitment, special treatment, or something else that you, the investor, want to receive.

Except that love isn’t a business. It’s not an emotion either. It’s a command from God. It’s an act of obedience. It’s a way of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth.

When Jesus says in Matthew 5:44 to love your enemies and pray for persecutors, He is telling us to quit expecting an ROI, especially when loving people who might possibly be unlike-able… and simply decide to love, to reach out in kindness, to forgive, to serve others. He was saying, “Stop expecting people to be nice to you when you serve them, and just do it because you are doing the will of God.” Even when it means no one thanks you. Even when it means ridicule or persecution or death. And He died for us as the ultimate example of selfless giving.

All throughout Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God during his earthly ministry, He went against the prevailing ways of thinking in the world at the time. And in fact, He still does. Which just tells you: don’t believe the examples of “love” you see on TV or the movies. Real love is in Sacred Scripture, where we read about Jesus serving unto death.

1. Receiving Christ in the Blessed Eucharist gives me the strength to fight selfish pride and sin.
I’m not saying I’m a saint. The truth is far far away from that. Ask my wife. But I do know that pride and my ego are the two constant demons I must battle. I want my pleasure, my sleep, my comfort, my free time to do what I want. It’s a constant struggle to kill these impulses especially when they impede on other priorities and other relationships. And I already know I cannot win alone. I wasn’t made perfect. I was made weak and frail and egotistical so that I can acknowledge that any good that happens is from God.
___Because it takes supernatural strength to combat ego. And I get that strength from my Lord as He is present in the Eucharist. The sanctifying grace that pours through me when I receive the consecrated host allows me to stop before uttering a word of anger, or engaging in a selfish sin. And truly, those days when I fail, the days when my weak flesh regains control, are the days when I fail to receive communion, or decide not to show up at the morning mass.

The back of the cross at Saint Joachim’s.

2. Praising God first thing in the morning is the most important thing on my daily calendar.
First things first, as they say. And since I’ve been blessed to live a mere walking distance away from my parish, I take it as a privilege and a gift that I can make God the first thing in my day literally by worshipping Him in His temple. Add to that the fact that God asks for the first fruits of your harvest, the first tenth of all your blessings. Going to Mass is offering the first part of my day to the Lord who is the source of all my blessing.

3. The Mass is my ongoing spiritual formation.
The beautiful thing about the Mass is that is so drenched in scripture. And attending it every weekday allows me to soak in God’s Word. Since I play the organ as well and get to pick the songs each day, it means I am forced to read each day’s readings ahead of time so that the music fits the liturgy. Add to this the enriching homilies put forth by the trio of SVD priests who pastor our parish, and you get a full Catholic education in Christ, stewardship, the sacraments, the saints, and evangelization 260 days a year. Growing in the Lord a day at a time.

4. The Mass heals.
Every Mass is a healing experience. It heals wounds caused by our sinful nature, it heals our relationship with God and one another, bringing us closer to our Lord, giving us opportunities to draw near and receive Him not only in the Word, but also in the Blessed Eucharist.
___Back in my first two years of high school, I used to curse quite foully. Every other word was dirty and spiteful, and it was affecting me, tainting my mood, keeping me in a constant state of anger and impatience. I started going to the daily mass in third year and after a while, without my noticing, the foul vocabulary died away. In fact it only came to my attention when my classmates started wondering why I wasn’t cursing anymore. These days I pray for healing of a different kind. And I have faith that the Lord will grant it to me as long as I stay faithful to Him.

5. I meet my creator, my friend and my love.
As Saint Augustine says: my heart is restless until it rests in You. I find shelter in the wings of the Lord. Every morning, I find it at His temple. During the day, I find it in silent prayer wherever I am. I yearn for Him every morning knowing my day is incomplete without worship, finding no other solace but His Word and His sacraments. And in surrendering to His love, in accepting the daily challenge to get up early and meet Him in the Eucharist, I find ever more joy.

Here’s a random painful truth: self-discipline and self-denial have never been my strong points. The proof lies in everything from my rotund belly to recent issues with over-eating, and over-sleeping.

My past is riddled with failed battles against: (a) over-indulgence in media (i.e. watching too many episodes of 24 or Charmed or House back-to-back, playing online multiplayer video games for 12 hours straight, bloghopping till dawn, playing single player shooter games till my eyes burst), (b) over-indulgence in alcohol, food and caffeine.

Self-denial means saying no to the dark and yes to the light.

The addiction to media was easy enough to cure: turn the TV off, turn the computer off. The alcohol and caffeine just as easy: simply stay away. The food: not as easy. My cubicle buddy asked me the other day if I was feeling sick, because I turned down free Baskin Robbins ice cream at the office.

It’s easy to see that a lack of self-denial leads to laziness and over-indulgence and… well, fat. I’d also venture to say it leads one to sin. Because what is over-indulgence? Sometimes it’s simply eating the whole bag of potato chips. But soon it leads to crawling through the internet looking for lewdness and debauchery. And that soon leads to an erosion of conscience, of integrity, of everything that hinges you onto the good. It leads you down a morally degraded path.

The lack of self-discipline, of self-denial, feeds the cult of ME and turns it into a well-oiled, well-practised machine with one goal: my satisfaction.

And yet we’re not supposed to be self-indulgent and selfish and self-centered. We’re called to be other-centered, to serve others, to care for the widows and orphans and keep the self unstained by the world (James 1:27). Sacred Scripture is riddled with admonitions to deny yourself daily and take up your cross and follow Christ (Matthew 16:24), to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:31). Not “love ourselves to death by calories or smut.” The only true lasting peace and satisfaction lies not at the bottom of a Baskin Robbins gallon, but rather in the liberating truth of Christ who as the Bread of Life is broken and shared to all who hunger for peace.

When God has a message for you, He really drives it home using multiple points of contact. In that regard, he’s probably the best multimedia marketeer ever, using every medium available in order to get your attention. (He’s got all of creation at His disposal!) I say this because for an entire week, I’ve been riveted. In prayer and in reading, I’ve been bombarded with this message: to love and not seek to be loved. Take a look at how He’s been bombarding me:

“The Metro Prior” photo by Ali K. on Flickr.

A few months back, Agnes once told me (lovingly) that I have a problem giving without counting, that I keep expecting something in return. I’ve never forgotten it and I’ve kept it in my mind and heart as a loving reminder from my wife that love means more than tit-for-tat.

Suddenly, St.Ignatius’ Prayer For Generosity, which I’ve been praying since I first learned it in high school seems so unbelievably unrealistic. To give and not to count the cost? To labor and ask not for reward? How can one become that generous, that loving? And yet, we have examples in saints like Ignatius of Loyola and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and most importantly in our Lord Jesus who died abandoned by most of His friends and the people he ministered to.

* * *

I went to confession last weekend. Over the past year, I’ve probably partaken in the Sacrament of Reconciliation more times than in my entire life. Partly due to a renewed appreciation for the sanctifying grace that it gives, and partly because the sacrament is so much more understandable when you’ve experienced what it means to love: you make mistakes, you admit your fault, apologize, and heartily promise to amend your ways because you just love the other person so. Confession allows us to say sorry and make amends.

Anyway, God told me through my confessor (because Catholics believe that during the sacraments, the priest is the earthly stand-in for our Lord) to reflect on the prayer of St.Francis of Assisi. The middle of the prayer contains another reminder about selfless giving:

“O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.”

* * *

I just recently finished Donald Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz, which is an entire blog post unto itself. In one section, he shares a discovery after attending a lecture about metaphors: that we tend to think of love in economic terms (e.g. investing in the relationship, earning our trust).

Then in chapter 13, he gives us a startling and touching excerpt from a play he wrote consisting of monologues. The passage that struck me most was from a character sharing why he would continue to dedicate all his efforts to truly loving his beloved:

“I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again.

“God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us.”

* * *

And then all this week, the gospels at the daily masses have been drawn from Matthew and have largely dealt with loving enemies, forgiving them, and praying for them (Matthew 5:44).

* * *

Finally, on the radio this morning, I was listening to Teresa Tomeo’s show “Catholic Connection” as she spoke with EWTN’s Rome bureau chief Joan Lewis who translated a beautiful letter from the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Ennio Antonelli of Florence. The letter is entitled: Ten Commandments for the Family, and is a beautiful list of family-strengthening advice. The most striking for me, once again, was one about not keeping track.

III. To progressively build a beautiful relationship as a couple, it is necessary to freely give of oneself, rejecting the temptations of one’s own immediate interests, and not keeping track of giving and receiving.

* * *

You think maybe God’s telling me something?
Yeah, I know. I hear Him loud and clear. And I’m trying. Lord knows, I’m trying.

I’m not telling you this because I consider myself special or holy or anything. I’m telling you this because He speaks to all of us like this all the time. And it’s our job to listen to Him — in the silence, and in his Scripture, in the people he sends our way and in nature, in His church and in His sacraments, most specially in our relationships with other people.

Lord, help us all to learn how to give of ourselves freely and generously. Teach us how to love without counting, to love without ceasing, to accept every trial as an opportunity to perfect ourselves in your grace, to offer up every difficulty as an act of love for you. Help us to learn from the example of Your son, who gave of Himself that we might live. All this we ask in the mighty name of Your son, Jesus, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

Waking up early is still a daily battle for me. After that initial eye opens to peek at the clock, the temptation to lay back down is huge and often insurmountable. In fact, it’s led to a decline in productivity for me. You can translate that last sentence as: there have been a number of times in the recent past when I’ve come to the office late, to the detriment of my work output. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job as a marketing writer, and the company I work for is tops all around, so motivation is totally not the problem. Self-discipline is.

Sacred Heart statue

The truth is this: if I wake up early enough, I get to go to the 7 A.M. morning Mass at my church, Saint Joachim. And the day starts bright early by worshiping the God whom I love, the one who created me, the one who continually provides for me and my family. And He sustains me. I get to work early and cut through to-do tasks like a hot knife through a hot fudge sundae. At the end of the day, I am more relaxed, more content, more agreeable.

The opposite is true. If I go back to sleep and miss the mass, I end up late, panicked, bothered, unproductive. And at the end of the day, I am irritable, fussy, discontented.

There are a number of excellent blog posts on the web about waking up early, notably 24 tips to becoming an early riser, and How to become an early riser. And those tips are all great.

But the best motivation for me to hop out of bed early is the idea that I’m starting my day right by meeting up with the God whom I love and who loves all of us. And starting out with Him makes everything else brighter, easier, more wonderful.