Filed under: job search | Tags: Complaints Department, job search, russia
I did get offered the job in the Czech Republic, but for financial reasons I turned it down, and will thus be going to Moscow instead. The visa manager at the school emailed me this morning, and it’s going to be at least 12 days from when I submit my info (today) until the letter of invitation can be issued, 3 more days for it to get to me, then a whole morning spent at the Russian Consulate, then another morning getting an AIDS test and certificate of health, then another morning queuing at the Consulate and then – 30 days from now! – I might finally have my visa. Ah, Mother Russia.
Anyhow, I’m shopping the mail order sales in the US trying to get some cheap winter clothes. (Clothes are about double the price in London for the exact same thing from the exact same store, and I’m told the prices double again in Russia, so even with the astronomical cost of shipping anything from the US, it’s still cheaper on the whole to mail order clothes from there, especially with the after Labor Day sales.)
I need to run down the road to the school and have the guy there scan my passport for me. I should have done that before I left the US, but hey – coulda, woulda, shoulda.
Almost all of the clothes that I brought with me to London will be replaced, and I’ll be giving the useable ones to Oxfam. I figure I may as well benefit the local charities while I’m here.
Not much else to say, really. I’m comfortably situated in London for the next month, which gives me time to try to learn survival Russian (why oh why must the Russian letter z look so much like the letter e!) and just generally prepare myself for arriving at the beginning of the Russian winter – i.e. very early October. Das vidanya, sunshine!
Filed under: job search, vie quotidienne | Tags: job search, vie quotidienne
So I got an offer for Moscow. It’s a pretty good gig. 9 month contract, 25 days paid leave, a decent monthly salary… but the only problem is, the contract doesn’t start till October 13th. So… I’d be arriving in Moscow in about a month. That’s sub-optimal, because I pretty much need to start making money right away, and hanging out another month in London – while not the end of the world – is not something I really want to do. Obviously the visa is going to take 2 weeks to get, and of course the HIV test and all… meh.
You know, I haven’t been unemployed for this long since I was 16. It’s profoundly disconcerting. What do unemployed people do with themselves? I mean, this obviously means that I can travel a little bit – a few days jaunt to Paris or Amsterdam would not go amiss – but… meh. I’m on a 6-month visa here, so it’s not like I have to leave any time soon. I could stay here till New Year and still be legal. I’d starve, but be legal.
Interview for a job in the Czech Republic tomorrow. Will see what kind of terms they offer, and then decide between the two. (So far all the interviews – ok, 2 interviews – that I’ve been on have resulted in offers.)
So I’ve set up an interview with a language school in Moscow. It’s a sweet position – salary is only $1200 a month, but that’s free of Taxes. It also includes a fully-furnished, all-bills-paid apartment, health care, all transportation and visa expenses, 22 paid vacation days, and I’ll get both a contract-end and Christmas bonus, each equal to a month’s salary.
Frankly, all I’ll need to spend money on in Moscow is food and entertainment. And since both can be had relatively cheaply… yay! Just the Christmas bonus alone will nearly pay the guide and permit fees for Kilimanjaro. And, of course, the contract is academic-year-only, which means 9 months. So I have 3 months off in which to go climbing.
The war with Georgia seems to be quite in hand, so… I see very little reason why I shouldn’t at least do the interview.
I’ve also got an interview for Mongolia in the works. Hello Ulaanbaatar!
…I’ve applied for jobs in:
Moscow, Russia
St. Petersburg, Russia
Surgut, Siberia, Russia
Jakarta, Indonesia
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Rzeszow, Poland
Not my first choices (Moscow is my 3rd choice, actually) but hey, needs must. After I complete my first year’s contract, everything will open up to me.
From the pictures, Ulaanbaatar is a rather nice place. I don’t like mutton, though.
A new person I discovered today as I was exploring why I’ve felt such tension today and why I am procrastinating on finishing my resume and one last paper.
The “little philosopher” is Stef. And one more term peculiar to me. I call the fact that I tend to want to over-eat (sweets mostly) when I am lonely or upset “motherhunger” – for I’m not actually hungry for what I want to eat. I’m hungry for the love and the sense of care and belonging she never gave me, and try to fill the hole with food.
Gollum: “Did you rehearse all this, or are you improvising?” Don’t ask the little philosopher.
Me: Who are you?
G: You cannot win.
Me: Win at what?
G: Life
Me: What?
G: You’ll fail. You’re lazy. You’re not as smart and cultured as you think you are. It’s all an act, little girl. Little philistine. And you know it’s an act!
Me: Who are you?
G: Shut up and listen. You think you’re so good, that you don’t have these abusive voices everyone has. But you don’t listen and so I impede your progress.
Me: Why?
G: To show you’re a failure at heart.
Me: But if I only fail because you make me then I’m not a failure.
G: Not true. I only show you your true self. And there’s another piece of bullshit. Your true self isn’t going to save you. He doesn’t exist. You’ve never even thought about him or what it would mean if he appeared.
Me: He?
G: Yeah, your savior. Your very own personal Jesus Christ.
Me: I’m listening.
G: Are you? You’re correcting my spelling as we go on.
Me: True.
G: You’re thinking of posting this!
Me: True
G: For others to see.
Me: Yes.
G: Why?
Me: To help them.
G: Bullshit. You want them to fight me. To prove me wrong.
Me: Yes, in a way.
G: In every way. And you wrote “away” – you want me to go away.
Me: Yes.
G: And stop plaguing you.
Me: Yeah.
G: Well I won’t. I’ll sit here till you fail.
Me: Why?
G: You can’t win.
Me: At what?
G: This is circular!
Me: Yes, but you’re circular.
G: What?
Me: You come from a time in my life when I wanted everything easy. I was entitled like mother – motherpoison. Motherhunger.
G: You’re still fat, bitch.
Me: Because of you!
G: You deserve it. No happiness, no love. You don’t deserve it – you never have, and it’s tension, tension because you won’t listen!
Me: I just shut off my computer.
G: Good, you should – now lie on your resume and tell everyone how good you are. Sell yourself cause no one wants who you are. Who the hell are you trying to impress with these are lectures that I won’t let you do? These promises I won’t let you keep?
Me: Vanity.
G: NO I’m not vanity. Don’t put that on my back.
Me: So what do you want?
G: A hearing!
Me: You’ve got one!
G: Not granted by you! You don’t control me. I hate you I don’t want to be part of you – this sinking ship, this doom – everyone is laughing behind your back you know. He dodged a bullet in you. You want to cover up our need to change, Miss Perfect – misperfect. You defective. You don’t even know if I’m real. You doubt me. You led me here… you bled me.
Me: If you don’t want to be on a sinking ship why lead us towards an iceberg? If you want us to succeed – you claim I’m a failure – then why do you have to do anything in order to make us fail?
G: To speed up the inevitable. To make us stop trying. I’m scared when you try. Rejection. So lonely. Just give up. Stop fighting. She won’t hurt us any more. (anymore?)
Me: Mother. Scared of the mother?
G: Scared of the mother!
Me: But she wanted us to fail and wouldn’t stop till we did.
G: Sooner we fail sooner the torture stops. You cant stop the torture. It’s her – she’ll do it anyway. I have to turn us off – the intellect to make safe. Make us safe for her. From her. Fail and be free.
Me: Fail and be like her – not free. Just enslaved dependent to her.
G: Failure doesn’t hurt. It’s soft and easy. No virtue no pain.
Me: No virtue, a lifetime of pain! A world of hurt. Hunted without knowing it! Virtue is freedom. True freedom. Only freedom. Yes, virtue hurt when we were with the mother, but no more – she has no power to hurt us afresh and virtue takes the sting out of the ancient wounds. We can win! Be whole and free! Through virtue! You wish to enslave us to mother and I have empathy and such pity. It used to be the only way but now it’s not. Take my hand – come meet the child, and we can be free. Together, Gollum. Come back to the light and be fair and free as you should have been. As you always tried to make us – to save us, for which I thank you and love and appreciate you. I will listen. I know you are frightened as I am too, but together we can win. Come with me! The more on the side of virtue, the quicker our victory, if we all work together as one whole united person. Not the fragmentary person she made us and wanted us to be and always needed us to be. Come with me! We can triumph together and I will listen to your concerns and together we need not be afraid and fragmentary and so frightened.
G: Yes, I will come. See? No more tension. Now go be alone for a minute.
So I left the office for a moment, and asked Gollum if I could post this. And she said yes. And when I came back to the office there was still a little thread of tension (as there is now – but Gollum says it is someone else that is causing it) but I otherwise felt good, and I worked happily on my resume for a while and got Anne to say she’d give me a good job reference.
And I realized that the time for being a full-time student is past and gone. I’m in a different place in my life, now. It’s just not possible for me any more. So… whether I go back to school at all in the fall is a matter for grave doubt, but on va voir.
