Well, since the last time I posted I have been to zero concerts and zero sporting events; heck, I haven’t even played a rugby game. The past week and a half might have been the least busy since I have been here, yet the most full because I actually started work! When I last posted, my understanding of my position(s) was not quite as clear as it would be become. It turns out that I am not working three days a week as I previously was told, but in reality, five days a week, in three different positions. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays I work in the Alternative Learning Center (ALC) with young people (they are not to called kids or children, but young people, ugh) who have been away from a formal school environment for several years and are now trying to get their academic/ vocational lives back on track. On Wednesdays I work at the local high school (Belmont City College or BCC) that the ALC young people would go to if they were not in our program. I am helping to coordinate a community service initiative for BCC’s students; the thinking behind it is interesting since the young people must complete 20 hours of community service or they will not be able to graduate. I don’t have a problem with community service in general, we had to do it at Burroughs and many high school students must do it as a part of their school’s set of beliefs, but here, it is a government requirement. At any rate, because it is such a firmly established fact that by law the students must complete the 20 hours, I hope that such a solid threat will make my work in that capacity fairly easy, but I’ll keep you posted. Finally, on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons I work in the Youth Centre in my most relaxed role by far. The job description for this position is pretty simple; engager of young people. We just play video games, foosball, ping pong, air hockey, pool, and whatever other activities a middle or high schooler might want to do with an older, cooler friend (me). So far my job(s) have been great, there is always a period of feeling out which I am still going through with the young people, at least the ones in the ALC because I actually have to be an authority figure in that role, whereas with the youth centre young people I can just hang out with the kids, be a big brother. As is always the case with young people, they say the darndest things.
Exchange 1; I had been playing table tennis/ interacting with this young man for ten minutes when the following things were said after we had already established that I was in fact American and not Jamaican.
Young Person A: You look Jamaican… But you sound American.
Jordan: I don’t know what to tell you, son.
YPA: Are you sure you aren’t Jamaican? There’s no Jamaicans in your family?
J: Uh, I’m pretty sure but I’ll let you know if I hear otherwise.
Exchange 2; I was walking through the youth centre with my supervisor who was showing me the emergency exits/ fire extinguishers when a young person I had never met engaged me as follows.
Young Person B: Hey! Can I touch your dreadlocks?
Jordan: Um, maybe some other time…
YPB: Well, what if I never see you again?
J: Then I guess you’ll never get to touch them.
YPB: You’re mean.
J: And you are an ignorant little brat.
Haha, oh children. Just for the record, I didn’t actually say that last line, I shrugged and kept it movin’.
But this really is the best case scenario I could have hoped and prayed for; I get to continue doing work that is very similar to what I was doing back at the Boys and Girls Club in St. Louis, but I also get to see many of the same issues present in St. Louis, that I studied at Columbia played out in a completely different social/ cultural context. I do not mean to make my experience here with these young people sound like an anthropological project, but ever since Cate and I started discussing issues with and within the indigenous peoples of Australia years ago, I have wanted to learn and try to do whatever I could to be a part of their lives and show them Christ’s love… and here I am with that opportunity!
Outside of work life has been a little unsettled. I finally moved out of the Mandurah house and into the Nedlands house. The Nedlands house has a pretty central location for Perth as a whole, is right down the street from our church, right down the street from my rugby club, but most importantly just a 15 minute drive from Cate’s house. This all sounds lovely, but because of some miscommunication and waffling on my part, I will only be living in the Nedlands house for the next week and half until the permanent roommate will move in. The other drawback to the Nedlands house is that my room is completely unfurnished and I thought it would be foolish to furnish it for two weeks, so I’m living out of my suitcases/ off the floor; good times. HOWEVER, I have managed to secure yet another living arrangement, this one will be set until August! One of Cate’s family friends and her roommate have been looking for a third roommate for a while because the two of them have been paying the rent that should have been split between three people. This house is also pretty centrally located, but the drive to Cate’s house is less than five minutes and it will certainly cut down on the drive to work, so yay!
Somehow, my little 1989 Ford Laser is still chugging along! I driven a little over 700 kilometers (435ish miles) in it and I haven’t had a single problem. In fact the other day, it was pretty warm, but I was on the highway so I didn’t want to let the windows down. I thought I would see if the car’s AC could at least blow a little air on me; the AC works perfectly and quickly! Honestly, this car has the best AC out of any car I have ever been in, haha, and one morning it was pretty chilly, so I tried out the heat, which also works perfectly. The only drawback is that the radio/cd player shorts out sometimes when I stop at a red light or when I put the car in reverse; the car is also very loosely sealed, meaning that with all of the doors and windows closed, if I drive above 60 or 70 km/h it sounds like the Leave it to Beaver theme song… you know, with all the whistling… Ha. Sometimes a horribly corny joke/metaphor/simile pops into my head and I just have to employ it, sorry.
I think that about covers it. If anyone is thinking about doing some serious travel soon, keep Australia in mind; my new house has two guest beds. Think about it…
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Ments
Disappointment.
a) I am in the midst of long job application process with Belmont City College (a high school in a lower income area of Perth) for a youth worker position. I have received lots of positive feedback from BCC, but no official word that I have been hired or of a start date; however with all that said, they checked my references and I am scheduled for a pre-employment medical screening, so there’s definitely optimism on my part. I just wish I could have heard something more definite from them.
a.5) Well! My disappointment has turned into joy! I wrote the rest of this entry yesterday but did not have time to post it and today I received a call from BCC informing me that I had been hired and I start on Wednesday! I am working in two part time positions, one which is two days a week as a youth worker and one other day as the community service liaison for the students at the high school! Haha, I really could not have been any happier about this position unless it was full time and they paid me more, but whatever ϑ Thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement!
b) I was debating whether to put my serious disappointment here or my funny one, but I chose to go out with a laugh… Tonight, Cate and I went to a music festival, which was great, but one of the food vendors, “American Fast Foods,” plastered the sign below above their booth.
In case you can’t tell, the flag on the left is the confederate flag. I have also seen multiple advertisements for a local car dealership called, “Southside Mitsubishi.”
Again, in case there is any confusion, the cavalryman is carrying the confederate flag. I am nearly certain that neither of these usages of the incendiary flag was meant to oppress or create fear and that they were both seen as general “American” images and used as such out of ignorance. However, I would have expected a little more tact out of the Australians; if your business is going to have a logo from another country’s set of images, one would think that you might, I don’t know, check the context of the image you are using. But, maybe the upside to all of my free time while waiting to be hired is that I have a wonderful opportunity to courteously express my vehement disgust with both of these fine establishments.
c) My favorite Australian fast food chain, Chicken Treat, has a combo meal called the, “Hawaiian Pack.” The pack includes a quarter chicken, French fries, a drink, and of course, to add Hawaiian authenticity, a couple of slices of Pineapple. Now, Chicken Treat is currently running a television promotion to drum up sales for the Hawaiian Pack by giving away a trip to Hawaii. In the commercial, a cartoon chicken talks in an unmistakably Jamaican accent about the wonders of a lush Hawaiian getaway. Hawaii is certainly tropical, as is Jamaica, but come on Aussie ad exec; really? There are SO many advertising teams who need to give me (as a fifth grader) their jobs because clearly, I (even at the tender age of 11) could do wonders for them. Ha.
Excitement.
*The following section (until the break) is also an addition since I wrote the bulk of this post. I am moving out of my Mandurah house this weekend! I’m moving into a house in Nedlands, about a ten minute walk from my rugby club, with two other guys for a couple weeks and then hopefully finding a new and permanent residence for the next nine or so months. I would have stayed in the Nedlands house, but I thought I would be able to find a cheaper place to live… this might have been a mistake, but I suppose you live and you learn; and then you get Luvs, haha, I couldn’t resist. At any rate, I am looking forward to settling into a real routine at last. I commented to Cate that over the past few weeks I have secured two out of the three things I needed while I was here, a home, a car, and a job, but never all three and never the same two. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Cate and I have just finished the last of our jam packed weekends for a while. Just to recap, last weekend, we saw Coldplay… COLDPLAY! It was a great show with awesome energy from the band and of course the crowd (Pictures below)
A couple of days ago, we saw The Cat Empire, another show with greatly enthused participants; except for me, but it was still a good time and I can appreciate the band for their musical worth. On Saturday, Cate coached her little kids in basketball, and then we rushed over to my first Aussie rugby game! After the rugby, Cate and I came home thinking we had several hours before we would leave to attend an Aussie Rules Football match between local rivals (Fremantle Dockers and the West Coast Eagles), but it turns out that we had about five minutes. So I sprayed on some deodorant (yikes, sorry mom) and changed clothes as we ran out the door. But this footy matchup was well worth my funkiness. The Eagles have traditionally beaten up on the Dockers, and the Dockers seemed to play with this knowledge casting a long shadow over their abilities. The Eagles were up by 25 points, but somehow the Dockers pulled off a furious come back to win the contest!
Finally, today, we joined one of Cate’s friends for a breakfast cookout before attending the aforementioned music festival featuring Kings of Leon. The KoL show featured wonderful emotion from the standing crowds that had been waiting around slogging through the average performances of filler acts before their heroes performed; yet KoL just didn’t really bring their A game in my opinion. At any rate, another excellent weekend, but I’m just looking forward to some down time with Cate next weekend as we celebrate our four year anniversary. ϑ
Statement.
1) I hate to brag, but I like to think that I made a bit of a statement during Saturday’s rugby matches. Our team played in three 7’s (seven on seven as opposed to standard rugby which is 15 on 15) matches, each lasting 14 minutes. In the first game, I just got to play for a couple of minutes, but we won handily; so resounding was our victory that our coach decided to rest all of the starters for the second game and play us second stringers. While definitely more than a little nervous, I was thrilled to finally get back into some competitive, physical sport after my three year hiatus. Somehow, I managed to make several big runs (including a try complete with me stiff-arming a would be tackler… in the face! FYI, a try is approximately the rugby equivalent of a touchdown in American football), a few tackles, and a great defensive play that would be too complicated for me to explain right now, but just know that it involved me sprinting nearly the length of the field, and I did it in impressive fashion. Our team has several weeks of trial matches coming up before our real season begins, but these next weeks are integral in deciding which players are established at the different levels called grades; 1,2,3,4, and 5 where 1 is the highest level). Of course, lest I get too cocky, our team was humbled in my final game of the day. I was just unable to keep up with the players on the other team, and to top it off, at some point in the game, an opponent stepped on my thigh and ripped my spandex shorts! But that last game really was a crucial one because it showed me just how far I have to go if I want to make it to the first grade team, let alone be successful if selected for it.
2) OBAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I saw this hat on the head of an Australian in front of us at the music festival today, haha. I have also seen t- shirts emblazoned with the face of the American president in the Australian equivalent of a forever 21. Small world.
ANYway. That’s enough out of me, hope all is well wherever you are. Please keep in touch; as busy as I am being unemployed and having a great time with Cate, it is always so refreshing to hear from a fellow Davis or Parker or Burroughs/ CU alum. Take care.
a) I am in the midst of long job application process with Belmont City College (a high school in a lower income area of Perth) for a youth worker position. I have received lots of positive feedback from BCC, but no official word that I have been hired or of a start date; however with all that said, they checked my references and I am scheduled for a pre-employment medical screening, so there’s definitely optimism on my part. I just wish I could have heard something more definite from them.
a.5) Well! My disappointment has turned into joy! I wrote the rest of this entry yesterday but did not have time to post it and today I received a call from BCC informing me that I had been hired and I start on Wednesday! I am working in two part time positions, one which is two days a week as a youth worker and one other day as the community service liaison for the students at the high school! Haha, I really could not have been any happier about this position unless it was full time and they paid me more, but whatever ϑ Thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement!
b) I was debating whether to put my serious disappointment here or my funny one, but I chose to go out with a laugh… Tonight, Cate and I went to a music festival, which was great, but one of the food vendors, “American Fast Foods,” plastered the sign below above their booth.
In case you can’t tell, the flag on the left is the confederate flag. I have also seen multiple advertisements for a local car dealership called, “Southside Mitsubishi.”
Again, in case there is any confusion, the cavalryman is carrying the confederate flag. I am nearly certain that neither of these usages of the incendiary flag was meant to oppress or create fear and that they were both seen as general “American” images and used as such out of ignorance. However, I would have expected a little more tact out of the Australians; if your business is going to have a logo from another country’s set of images, one would think that you might, I don’t know, check the context of the image you are using. But, maybe the upside to all of my free time while waiting to be hired is that I have a wonderful opportunity to courteously express my vehement disgust with both of these fine establishments.
c) My favorite Australian fast food chain, Chicken Treat, has a combo meal called the, “Hawaiian Pack.” The pack includes a quarter chicken, French fries, a drink, and of course, to add Hawaiian authenticity, a couple of slices of Pineapple. Now, Chicken Treat is currently running a television promotion to drum up sales for the Hawaiian Pack by giving away a trip to Hawaii. In the commercial, a cartoon chicken talks in an unmistakably Jamaican accent about the wonders of a lush Hawaiian getaway. Hawaii is certainly tropical, as is Jamaica, but come on Aussie ad exec; really? There are SO many advertising teams who need to give me (as a fifth grader) their jobs because clearly, I (even at the tender age of 11) could do wonders for them. Ha.
Excitement.
*The following section (until the break) is also an addition since I wrote the bulk of this post. I am moving out of my Mandurah house this weekend! I’m moving into a house in Nedlands, about a ten minute walk from my rugby club, with two other guys for a couple weeks and then hopefully finding a new and permanent residence for the next nine or so months. I would have stayed in the Nedlands house, but I thought I would be able to find a cheaper place to live… this might have been a mistake, but I suppose you live and you learn; and then you get Luvs, haha, I couldn’t resist. At any rate, I am looking forward to settling into a real routine at last. I commented to Cate that over the past few weeks I have secured two out of the three things I needed while I was here, a home, a car, and a job, but never all three and never the same two. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Cate and I have just finished the last of our jam packed weekends for a while. Just to recap, last weekend, we saw Coldplay… COLDPLAY! It was a great show with awesome energy from the band and of course the crowd (Pictures below)
A couple of days ago, we saw The Cat Empire, another show with greatly enthused participants; except for me, but it was still a good time and I can appreciate the band for their musical worth. On Saturday, Cate coached her little kids in basketball, and then we rushed over to my first Aussie rugby game! After the rugby, Cate and I came home thinking we had several hours before we would leave to attend an Aussie Rules Football match between local rivals (Fremantle Dockers and the West Coast Eagles), but it turns out that we had about five minutes. So I sprayed on some deodorant (yikes, sorry mom) and changed clothes as we ran out the door. But this footy matchup was well worth my funkiness. The Eagles have traditionally beaten up on the Dockers, and the Dockers seemed to play with this knowledge casting a long shadow over their abilities. The Eagles were up by 25 points, but somehow the Dockers pulled off a furious come back to win the contest!
Finally, today, we joined one of Cate’s friends for a breakfast cookout before attending the aforementioned music festival featuring Kings of Leon. The KoL show featured wonderful emotion from the standing crowds that had been waiting around slogging through the average performances of filler acts before their heroes performed; yet KoL just didn’t really bring their A game in my opinion. At any rate, another excellent weekend, but I’m just looking forward to some down time with Cate next weekend as we celebrate our four year anniversary. ϑ
Statement.
1) I hate to brag, but I like to think that I made a bit of a statement during Saturday’s rugby matches. Our team played in three 7’s (seven on seven as opposed to standard rugby which is 15 on 15) matches, each lasting 14 minutes. In the first game, I just got to play for a couple of minutes, but we won handily; so resounding was our victory that our coach decided to rest all of the starters for the second game and play us second stringers. While definitely more than a little nervous, I was thrilled to finally get back into some competitive, physical sport after my three year hiatus. Somehow, I managed to make several big runs (including a try complete with me stiff-arming a would be tackler… in the face! FYI, a try is approximately the rugby equivalent of a touchdown in American football), a few tackles, and a great defensive play that would be too complicated for me to explain right now, but just know that it involved me sprinting nearly the length of the field, and I did it in impressive fashion. Our team has several weeks of trial matches coming up before our real season begins, but these next weeks are integral in deciding which players are established at the different levels called grades; 1,2,3,4, and 5 where 1 is the highest level). Of course, lest I get too cocky, our team was humbled in my final game of the day. I was just unable to keep up with the players on the other team, and to top it off, at some point in the game, an opponent stepped on my thigh and ripped my spandex shorts! But that last game really was a crucial one because it showed me just how far I have to go if I want to make it to the first grade team, let alone be successful if selected for it.
2) OBAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I saw this hat on the head of an Australian in front of us at the music festival today, haha. I have also seen t- shirts emblazoned with the face of the American president in the Australian equivalent of a forever 21. Small world.
ANYway. That’s enough out of me, hope all is well wherever you are. Please keep in touch; as busy as I am being unemployed and having a great time with Cate, it is always so refreshing to hear from a fellow Davis or Parker or Burroughs/ CU alum. Take care.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
My Life is like a Whirlwind
That’s right. A whirlwind.
The kind that blows around for five minutes about ten feet off the ground in a dusty patch of Nebraska; in other words, utterly mundane.
Obviously, it has been wonderful to meet Cate in the city for her lunch hour and to spend time with her and the fam for dinners, but that’s about all I do these days. Since the disappointment of Fake-Sports-Marketing-Job-2.0 a couple of weeks ago I have entered mild crisis mode. After rebuffing the offer from the company which shall not be named (I feel kinda bad for belittling what they do/did so much in one of my previous entries, so I’ll just never mention them by name again), I applied for a series of jobs in cafes, restaurants, and retail establishments. One of my favorites (sarcasm) was for a management training position at Hungry Jack’s, or as American’s and Australian’s on the east coast of the country know it, Burger King. If accepted in this role I would be trained to manage a Hungry Jack’s franchise, certainly not an ideal way to spend my time here, but it would be better than operating the fry-o-lator. A couple days ago, a representative from the company called me and said he would email me the details for the interview; namely the location. Yet, the interview is meant to be tomorrow, and I have not heard from them, I also have no means of calling them back because the call was from a private line. Alas, so I sit and wait to hear back about other positions for which I have applied and continue looking for new opportunities.
Of course my life isn’t really as boring as I make it seem; just last Friday Cate and I joined her parents to see Roberta Flack accompanied by the West Australia Symphony Orchestra (WASO) in Kings Park. I’ll include some pictures of the event and the park itself, both exuding class and style. The WASO does a series of outdoor concerts every year with pop artists then charge an arm and a leg (I heard tickets were going for $100!). But no matter what the motivation of the WASO, the concert was handled very nicely. Roberta Flack only sang a couple of her own songs, but rather, opted to cover more well known contemporaries like Stevie Wonder. Cate and I splintered away from the business talk of her father and met an African- American man who had married an Australian woman! He and his wife have lived in three Australian cities over the past ten years and when prompted to give some advice to someone in a seemingly similar situation give this pithy reply, “hang in there.” Thanks, guy. ANYway, this chance encounter (only my second with another African-American male in Australia) was a reminder that I didn’t really need, but was and is good to keep in mind. Just because we are both African- American males does not mean that we would instantly hit it off or have all these points of connection. But that really is another topic for another time.
OH! Before I forget, happy birthday Nicole Patrice Davis, 20! Wow, so old, so mature, look at you go/ grow/ glow? I’m not sure when I will actually post this entry, but know that I was thinking about you on your birthday even if I did not call you (I was going to, but I figured you would not want a 6am wakeup from me J ) I love you and miss you!
Now, other than my quartet of lunch dates with Cate each week, Roberta Flack, and finding a job, there has been just one thing that has been consuming my mind. Rugby. It has come time to see whether or not rugby is just a new sport to add to my canon of those that I follow doggedly OR if it will become something much bigger than that, my new sporting passion. Football took hold of me the final couple years of high school and the first two of CU and in many ways, I gave a good deal of my life to it as well. I missed out on family vacations because I was so dedicated to my training schedule, not a drop of alcohol ever passed my lips until my football career ended, and to top it all off, my right shoulder, both knees, and my feet are not quite right (100% functional, but definitely well worn, haha, it’s an eBay ad for my body). To make a long story short, I’m diving in head first. Rugby is the next athletic summit I will attempt to climb and it’s going to be a slow process, but ultimately one which is already paying dividends. For starters, I belong to an athletic team again. Unless you have been a part of a sports team that takes itself seriously you really would not understand the significance of joining up again; and if you have, then you already know the thoughts of sacrifice, championships, and camaraderie that are dancing through my mind. Secondly, and very closely related to number one, I have a uniform again! I’ll be able to proudly don the Blue and Gold (again! J) of the Nedlands Rugby Union Football Club. Finally, and I’m not sure how high this actually ranks on my scale of importance, but it warrants mentioning; I will be in great physical shape again. I did a lot of work to get to this point, but the past few days of sprints with Cate got me pretty sore through the hamstrings and when paired with today’s first practice on grass it reminded me exactly why I loved and yet disliked football. In sport, there’s a constant tension of, “God gave me these tools, how can I best cultivate them and use them to His glory?” And, “God, do we really have to run eight more windsprints?” The soreness I’m feeling right now is the good kind, when you know that you’ve put in a hard workout and your body will be better for it in the end; but trust me I’ll keep you posted on my soreness quotient as the season picks up speed.
That’s pretty much all I’ve got… Except that Cate and I are going to see Coldplay live and in concert on Friday night! Yes! There will DEFINITELY be pictures from that show! Hope all is well with you in whatever corner of the globe you are reading this, and by the way. Thank you for taking the time to peer into the inner spewings of my brain, I really appreciate it. And if I ever get too narcissistic, please, please call me on it.
Zip it up.
And zip it out.
Oh, and just for fun, below is a picture of my house in Mandurah.
The kind that blows around for five minutes about ten feet off the ground in a dusty patch of Nebraska; in other words, utterly mundane.
Obviously, it has been wonderful to meet Cate in the city for her lunch hour and to spend time with her and the fam for dinners, but that’s about all I do these days. Since the disappointment of Fake-Sports-Marketing-Job-2.0 a couple of weeks ago I have entered mild crisis mode. After rebuffing the offer from the company which shall not be named (I feel kinda bad for belittling what they do/did so much in one of my previous entries, so I’ll just never mention them by name again), I applied for a series of jobs in cafes, restaurants, and retail establishments. One of my favorites (sarcasm) was for a management training position at Hungry Jack’s, or as American’s and Australian’s on the east coast of the country know it, Burger King. If accepted in this role I would be trained to manage a Hungry Jack’s franchise, certainly not an ideal way to spend my time here, but it would be better than operating the fry-o-lator. A couple days ago, a representative from the company called me and said he would email me the details for the interview; namely the location. Yet, the interview is meant to be tomorrow, and I have not heard from them, I also have no means of calling them back because the call was from a private line. Alas, so I sit and wait to hear back about other positions for which I have applied and continue looking for new opportunities.
Of course my life isn’t really as boring as I make it seem; just last Friday Cate and I joined her parents to see Roberta Flack accompanied by the West Australia Symphony Orchestra (WASO) in Kings Park. I’ll include some pictures of the event and the park itself, both exuding class and style. The WASO does a series of outdoor concerts every year with pop artists then charge an arm and a leg (I heard tickets were going for $100!). But no matter what the motivation of the WASO, the concert was handled very nicely. Roberta Flack only sang a couple of her own songs, but rather, opted to cover more well known contemporaries like Stevie Wonder. Cate and I splintered away from the business talk of her father and met an African- American man who had married an Australian woman! He and his wife have lived in three Australian cities over the past ten years and when prompted to give some advice to someone in a seemingly similar situation give this pithy reply, “hang in there.” Thanks, guy. ANYway, this chance encounter (only my second with another African-American male in Australia) was a reminder that I didn’t really need, but was and is good to keep in mind. Just because we are both African- American males does not mean that we would instantly hit it off or have all these points of connection. But that really is another topic for another time.
OH! Before I forget, happy birthday Nicole Patrice Davis, 20! Wow, so old, so mature, look at you go/ grow/ glow? I’m not sure when I will actually post this entry, but know that I was thinking about you on your birthday even if I did not call you (I was going to, but I figured you would not want a 6am wakeup from me J ) I love you and miss you!
Now, other than my quartet of lunch dates with Cate each week, Roberta Flack, and finding a job, there has been just one thing that has been consuming my mind. Rugby. It has come time to see whether or not rugby is just a new sport to add to my canon of those that I follow doggedly OR if it will become something much bigger than that, my new sporting passion. Football took hold of me the final couple years of high school and the first two of CU and in many ways, I gave a good deal of my life to it as well. I missed out on family vacations because I was so dedicated to my training schedule, not a drop of alcohol ever passed my lips until my football career ended, and to top it all off, my right shoulder, both knees, and my feet are not quite right (100% functional, but definitely well worn, haha, it’s an eBay ad for my body). To make a long story short, I’m diving in head first. Rugby is the next athletic summit I will attempt to climb and it’s going to be a slow process, but ultimately one which is already paying dividends. For starters, I belong to an athletic team again. Unless you have been a part of a sports team that takes itself seriously you really would not understand the significance of joining up again; and if you have, then you already know the thoughts of sacrifice, championships, and camaraderie that are dancing through my mind. Secondly, and very closely related to number one, I have a uniform again! I’ll be able to proudly don the Blue and Gold (again! J) of the Nedlands Rugby Union Football Club. Finally, and I’m not sure how high this actually ranks on my scale of importance, but it warrants mentioning; I will be in great physical shape again. I did a lot of work to get to this point, but the past few days of sprints with Cate got me pretty sore through the hamstrings and when paired with today’s first practice on grass it reminded me exactly why I loved and yet disliked football. In sport, there’s a constant tension of, “God gave me these tools, how can I best cultivate them and use them to His glory?” And, “God, do we really have to run eight more windsprints?” The soreness I’m feeling right now is the good kind, when you know that you’ve put in a hard workout and your body will be better for it in the end; but trust me I’ll keep you posted on my soreness quotient as the season picks up speed.
That’s pretty much all I’ve got… Except that Cate and I are going to see Coldplay live and in concert on Friday night! Yes! There will DEFINITELY be pictures from that show! Hope all is well with you in whatever corner of the globe you are reading this, and by the way. Thank you for taking the time to peer into the inner spewings of my brain, I really appreciate it. And if I ever get too narcissistic, please, please call me on it.
Zip it up.
And zip it out.
Oh, and just for fun, below is a picture of my house in Mandurah.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Picture Time
This is my first of many picture updates and naturally, this set is very "Cate/Jordan" heavy, but deal with it. Hm, these pictures are a lil bit out of order, but, this is the way I uploaded them and it would be a lot more trouble than it's worth to arrange them correctly so... enjoy! :) I'm including two captions under each photograph; "a)" matches the photo on the top and "b" corresponds with the bottom.
a) Australia Day fireworks at the Perth foreshore. b) Not really sure what, if any, particular significance this picture has, but it looks pretty nice.
a) Durty Nelly's? Wow. Impressive work for our boy from tha Lou. I know he spells it, "Derrty," and I also know that this is an Irish Pub in Perth, but it's still pretty awesome. b) This is one of the beautiful coastal/ sunset shots that was captured about five minutes from my house in Mandurah.
a) This is the interior of Greens and Co, an obviously cool place that we often frequent after church. b) Hanging out on the beach.
a) Uh, not really sure, but I like it. b) Gorgeous backdrop at the Emirates Western Force rugby game at the Subiaco Oval.
a) Proud force supporters! The force behind the Force. A sea of blue as powerful as the Indian Ocean. A congregation of believers worshipping at the altar of sport. The most dominant sporting entity in the worlds most isolated capital. I only made up about 40% of that stuff... b) More fireworks on Australia Day (January 26th).
a) Happy Australia Day! Ah yes, while I was wearing this outfit (Australian flag boardshorts and the Australian national soccer team jersey) I was harassed by a drunken fool who felt the need to inform me that, "It's Australia Day, not Jamaica Day!" Ugh. b) Rugby boots and ball; they just kinda fell like that... I didn't arrange them so perfectly, how big of a dork do you think I am?
a) Beach fun, mere days after Cate's wisdom teeth extraction (hence the puffy cheeks). b) "What part of Jamaica are you from?" "Right down by de beach, mon!"
a) I asked her permission before I took the photo and one could only assume that eventually any picture I take might end up on my blog... On second thought, she probably was still groggy from the anesthetic, but oh well, it's too late. b) :)
a) So cute! Pop Rocks! She loves em! b) This is the first picture we took together after being apart for seven months, flying to the other side of the world (both of us, she was in Austria), and not having showered for 24 and 16 hours respectively. Awesome. No, seriously, the best collection of moments in my life :)
Jampacked Weekend
Friday: Night; Western Force professional rugby. Awesome! My first live pro rugby match! Sadly, Western Australia, but mostly Perth let me down. Rugby isn’t really a big deal on this side of the country; over here they fancy sports like cricket and Aussie rules football. As a result of this apathetic feeling towards rugby the stadium was only about half full for the season opener! For those of you in America, I’m having a hard time trying to explain how shocking this was to me. The Western Force play in the “Super 14,” this league is comprised of 14 rugby clubs in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (arguably, three of the best rugby playing nations in the world, at least judging by the number of rugby world cups won between the three: five (there have only been six rugby world cups contested, the next will be held in New Zealand in 2011… but I digress)). Following the preceeding logic, the quality of play in the Super 14 should be just as good as, if not better than any other rugby league in the world, yet, the only professional rugby team in the western 80% of Australia cannot even fill up its stadium for their home opener? Take a walk into my imagination with me… let’s say there were only 14 teams in the NFL and these franchises were spread pretty evenly through the US, Canada, and Mexico, can you imagine EVER being able to find tickets to one of those games? OK, I know that such a comparison isn’t really fair since the sporting culture in America is, dare I say it, much stronger than it is in Australia; plus there are a lot more people in the state of California than all of Australia, so I guess I can let the seeming lack of fan support slide, I just expected more from you Perth. Anyway, the game was very exciting right down to finish, but sadly the Force weren’t able to pull out a victory.
Saturday: Morning; Cate and I helped to coach some little kids basketball teams and it was great! I miss all my children from the Boys and Girls Club so it was nice to get back into that groove again. My team was comprised of eight-ten year old boys and girls and after a heated discussion, we named ourselves the cheetahs. I had to leave my kiddies to referee another game, but apparently I had prepared them so well in the 15 minutes that I knew them before the contest began that they were able to soldier onward to victory. Afternoon; Cate was scheduled to play a basketball game with friends from church so we drove over to the gym, Cate in full uniform ready to go, only to find that her game had been forfeited due to a lack of players. On the upside, Cate and I got to play some three on three basketball with four random guys who were at the gym (this is good news because Cate, understandably, does not like playing pickup with just anyone since many of the pick-up players at CU were so out of control that she feared for her health. As a result of this general precaution we rarely actually get to play basketball together unless it’s one on one, which really is a limited amount of fun for both of us. Cate is a MUCH better basketball player (dribbling/shooting/ you know, basketball stuff) than I am, but I’m a really good faker so I can get by playing basketball because I’m faster and stronger; so we end up tweaking the rules for me to level the playing field and it’s a pretty good time, but we would both rather just go all out in a non- one on one setting. Night; Valentine’s Day? Oh yeah! Cate and I got moderately dressed up and headed out to a wonderful steakhouse near the docks in Fremantle (suburb of Perth) called Char Char Bull. The evening was really lovely and we were just finishing up our meals (surf and turf featuring prawns as the surf bit with lemon, lime, and bitters (llab for short) which is a delicious drink composed of bitters, lime juice, and lemon-lime soda) when a waiter brought us two more glasses of llab. He set the tasty beverages down on the table and said they were compliments of the two gentlemen sitting about 15 feet away from us. Now upon receiving our round of llab, two thoughts wrestled in my head 1) Um… guys don’t buy other guys drinks unless they are interested in said guys, however, I am clearly taken… by a woman. 2) Maybe they overheard me talking to Cate about how they seemed to be a little too playful with a female member of the waitstaff and they felt bad for presenting themselves in such a bad light and as such, felt compelled to buy us llab to make up for it. Cate and I just could not get over what these two guys might be trying to say/ do, so we asked our waitress (the one whom they were being overly- friendly with) what their deal might be and she just told us that they were two nice guys who came in the restaurant all the time. This lowered my guard enough that I thought we should go over to the table and thank them, but they were gone by the time I had actually decided to get up. So, we will never know the mystery of the llab, but instead will always be left with the question, “why us?” Sure, we are a fantastically cute couple… but it was Valentine’s… at a restaurant…there were plenty of cute couples that night, heck, one couple got engaged right next to our two drink buyers, but they chose us. Freaky. Oh well.
Sunday: Morning; Delicious eggs (with chilli powder)/ham/ OJ breakfast. Mid-Morning/Afternoon; Cate has invited three co-workers over for lunch so we frantically rush around the house and to the grocery store to prepare our lunch feast. Grilled chicken, nicely spiced, with roast potatoes, and a garden salad. Nothing really happened at lunch, just eating and talking. Evening; we were meant to go to church, but instead decided to just relax at home watching The Office (America), good times.
Saturday: Morning; Cate and I helped to coach some little kids basketball teams and it was great! I miss all my children from the Boys and Girls Club so it was nice to get back into that groove again. My team was comprised of eight-ten year old boys and girls and after a heated discussion, we named ourselves the cheetahs. I had to leave my kiddies to referee another game, but apparently I had prepared them so well in the 15 minutes that I knew them before the contest began that they were able to soldier onward to victory. Afternoon; Cate was scheduled to play a basketball game with friends from church so we drove over to the gym, Cate in full uniform ready to go, only to find that her game had been forfeited due to a lack of players. On the upside, Cate and I got to play some three on three basketball with four random guys who were at the gym (this is good news because Cate, understandably, does not like playing pickup with just anyone since many of the pick-up players at CU were so out of control that she feared for her health. As a result of this general precaution we rarely actually get to play basketball together unless it’s one on one, which really is a limited amount of fun for both of us. Cate is a MUCH better basketball player (dribbling/shooting/ you know, basketball stuff) than I am, but I’m a really good faker so I can get by playing basketball because I’m faster and stronger; so we end up tweaking the rules for me to level the playing field and it’s a pretty good time, but we would both rather just go all out in a non- one on one setting. Night; Valentine’s Day? Oh yeah! Cate and I got moderately dressed up and headed out to a wonderful steakhouse near the docks in Fremantle (suburb of Perth) called Char Char Bull. The evening was really lovely and we were just finishing up our meals (surf and turf featuring prawns as the surf bit with lemon, lime, and bitters (llab for short) which is a delicious drink composed of bitters, lime juice, and lemon-lime soda) when a waiter brought us two more glasses of llab. He set the tasty beverages down on the table and said they were compliments of the two gentlemen sitting about 15 feet away from us. Now upon receiving our round of llab, two thoughts wrestled in my head 1) Um… guys don’t buy other guys drinks unless they are interested in said guys, however, I am clearly taken… by a woman. 2) Maybe they overheard me talking to Cate about how they seemed to be a little too playful with a female member of the waitstaff and they felt bad for presenting themselves in such a bad light and as such, felt compelled to buy us llab to make up for it. Cate and I just could not get over what these two guys might be trying to say/ do, so we asked our waitress (the one whom they were being overly- friendly with) what their deal might be and she just told us that they were two nice guys who came in the restaurant all the time. This lowered my guard enough that I thought we should go over to the table and thank them, but they were gone by the time I had actually decided to get up. So, we will never know the mystery of the llab, but instead will always be left with the question, “why us?” Sure, we are a fantastically cute couple… but it was Valentine’s… at a restaurant…there were plenty of cute couples that night, heck, one couple got engaged right next to our two drink buyers, but they chose us. Freaky. Oh well.
Sunday: Morning; Delicious eggs (with chilli powder)/ham/ OJ breakfast. Mid-Morning/Afternoon; Cate has invited three co-workers over for lunch so we frantically rush around the house and to the grocery store to prepare our lunch feast. Grilled chicken, nicely spiced, with roast potatoes, and a garden salad. Nothing really happened at lunch, just eating and talking. Evening; we were meant to go to church, but instead decided to just relax at home watching The Office (America), good times.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Mini Update
Today is Friday, February 13th, 2009; the time is 7:35 in the am.
In an about face, I decided not to take the raffle-ticket-selling job, but of course there was no backup job waiting for me. Over the past several days I have redoubled my efforts and have resigned myself to the fact that some of the things I really wanted to get involved with (namely a bible study group at Cate's church (which I suppose is also my church now, haha) and rugby) might have to be tabled for a while because initially, I was just looking for 9-5 type jobs that would allow me to participate in those activities, but now I have to cast a wider net.
In less sombre news, this will be a BIG weekend! Tonight Cate and I are going to the Western Force (Super 14 rugby, some of the highest levels of rugby in the world) season opener! Tomorrow we are helping to recruit local kids to play basketball, then Cate has a game of her own, and then we have valentines day/night dinner at a restaurant with which Cate is surprising me! On Sunday morning I am watching the NBA All Star Game with some guys from church then rushing back to Cate's house to help her host a little bbq lunch, then church, and finally, I'll head back down to Mandurah.
I promise to try to get some pictures up on the blog at the beginning of next week!
Zip it up. And zip it out.
In an about face, I decided not to take the raffle-ticket-selling job, but of course there was no backup job waiting for me. Over the past several days I have redoubled my efforts and have resigned myself to the fact that some of the things I really wanted to get involved with (namely a bible study group at Cate's church (which I suppose is also my church now, haha) and rugby) might have to be tabled for a while because initially, I was just looking for 9-5 type jobs that would allow me to participate in those activities, but now I have to cast a wider net.
In less sombre news, this will be a BIG weekend! Tonight Cate and I are going to the Western Force (Super 14 rugby, some of the highest levels of rugby in the world) season opener! Tomorrow we are helping to recruit local kids to play basketball, then Cate has a game of her own, and then we have valentines day/night dinner at a restaurant with which Cate is surprising me! On Sunday morning I am watching the NBA All Star Game with some guys from church then rushing back to Cate's house to help her host a little bbq lunch, then church, and finally, I'll head back down to Mandurah.
I promise to try to get some pictures up on the blog at the beginning of next week!
Zip it up. And zip it out.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Here. We. Go.
At the request of my mother; I am not remotely in the path of the myriad Australian natural disasters. Rest assured.
The past week has been laid- back, to say the least. Because I was still unemployed I spent my days reading ("About a Boy" and now "The Best American Sports Writing of 2008") and then I would take the bus into the city and meet up with Cate for lunch. We would usually finish lunch around 1:30, she'd go back to work and I would have 2.5-3 hours to kill. These afternoons spent roaming the central business district of Perth were pretty fun, although, there really are just two or three long streets of shops to explore and within that number, there's a limited number of shops I would even want to enter. In the evenings, Cate and I have been spending out time running, cooking dinner (limiting our eating out, really and truly), and watching television shows... on DVD, haha.
This lifestyle has been pretty relaxing, and it has definitely been nice to have some time off work since I went straight from the Boys and Girls Club to The Container Store before I got to Australia, but it was/ is time to get back to work; Taylormade Sports agreed. I found this company on a job-seeking-website and they billed the position as a combination of sports marketing and retail which led me to believe that I would be working in some sort of Australian Sports Authority-esque environment, which is actually a pretty exciting prospect. The company gave me a call and we set up an interview for last Thursday. I arrived at the office building, which had an eerily similar feel to the set-up of the "sports marketing" job I got and then rejected immediately after I graduated from Columbia. I was even talking to Cate on the phone as I sat outside the place telling her that the layout of the office park that the interview was taking place in reminded me of that horrible experience, but she reassured me and I realized that, surely, Taylormade Sports would be a legitimate place for me to work.
As I walked into the actual office of Taylormade Sports, my fears reached new levels as the layout/ atmosphere ( two supposedly attractive female receptionists in their early twenties sitting in an alcove of sorts; neither of them actually appeared to be working as facebook, myspace, and/or some sort of internet chat program was displayed on their screens; their top 40 pop music station was playing way too loud for an office where any sort of meaningful work could possibly be done; blah blah blah...) nearly identically reflected that of my previous foray into this field; but again, I left these irrational comparisons at the wayside of my mind and focused on the interview. I impressed my interviewer (and owner of the company) enough that he invited me back for a second round interview, which would be more of an experience with some members of the company out in the real world (just like the aforementioned job I had to refuse).
So... the first interview was on Thursday. On Friday, I came into the city to have lunch with Cate, then we got a drink to celebrate the weekend. A few hours later we went to a friend's house for dinner, great food and company. On a related note, it is very interesting to be confronted with sheer naive ignorance. Let me say that this family was very outgoing and personable, as am I, so I think they perceived a comfort level that might not quite have been there for me; or maybe they are just SO outspoken that they would have said what they said at any rate. The middle daughter of the family, 20, asked to no one in particular (which was odd since I was sitting at the table), "why are they called Afro- Americans? I thought an Afro was a hairstyle?" A legitimate question, especially since no one calls us Afro- Americans anymore, for that very reason, haha. The father commented on the, "particular largeness of the Afro- Americans playing in the Super Bowl." I guess he missed all the particularly large white men also playing in the game, but I guess people see what they want to see. And finally, my favorite; the mother. She certainly takes the cake, but she is definitely one to say whatever is on her mind. The second thing she said to me after our introduction was, "Oh my! Do you work out?" At the protest of her daughter who saw how such a comment might make me a teensy bit uncomfortable, she retorted, "What? Look at him, he obviously does!" That was cute. Later in the evening a discussion broke out about the mother's lack of understanding of 50 Cent's "Candy Shop." Again, much to the chagrin of her daughters, she protested that, as a girl, she would go to the candy shop and get lollipops all the time. I politely told her that I was pretty sure that Fitty had something else in mind when he wrote that song and she replied, "So! You DO understand that ghetto slang! You knew what he was talking about! Say something from tha' hood! Talk ghetto!"
As is often the case in situations like these, I am reminded of a Dave Chappelle stand-up act. Once, Dave had just finished performing in the south and he went a Ponderosa-style restaurant where you order at the front and they bring your food to you at your table. He was looking up at the menu and prepared to order while still deciding saying, "I'll have..." And the white cashier interrupted him by interjecting, "The chicken!" Dave's response, "What the %$#@?" The clerk's retort, "Look here buddy, it's no secret around here that blacks... and chickens, are very fond of one another." Dave continued in his mind thinking, "Wow, that was really racist. I'm not even mad, just stunned that someone could be so blatantly racist." These are the things that churn through my mind in real life situations, haha. Hm, that's pretty interesting, three of the most blatantly racist things to ever happen in my life have a) all been in the last 2 years b) twice involved white Australian women asking me to speak ebonics and c) not happened in the US or involved white Americans at all (the third involved an Indian cab driver in Toronto)
ANYway. Saturday rolled around and Cate and I prepared a delicious feast of bacon and eggs. Just as we were sitting down to eat, the doorbell rang and guess who it was! The Jehovah's Witnesses! I'm going to keep THIS story short, but basically, these guys using the same Bible as protestant Christians came to the Taylor at 9am on a Saturday morning picking and choosing verses to support their outlandish claims. What they failed to do was, I don't know, read the verses in context? All I can say is that I hope our chat with them gave them some things to think about because they really would pluck three verses from the middle of a chapter to support a given point, but LITERALLY would not have read the verses before or after it to contextualize what they were saying; or maybe they did and were in denial about them? But, after we talked to them for a good 30-45 minutes, we finished breakfast and then walked around for a bit before Cate's basketball game (they lost, but she starred!). We then went our separate ways as I joined some friends from church to watch a professional Aussie Rules Football (AFL or footy, there will be more about this in a later post) game while Cate joined friends from work to say goodbye to a coworker. We reconvened late that night to catch a bit of the England/ Italy rugby match that was being broadcast live in a few pubs at midnight. Sunday. Beach. Church. Coffee/Tea/ Cake.
Monday, Monday, Monday! At last, the day of the interview had arrived (sorry for leaving you get-jordan-a-job people hanging for three paragraphs) and I prepared myself to dazzle my potential employers. I walked into the office and my heart dropped out of my chest and onto the floor, SMACK! It was 7:50am on Monday morning and the company from which I was hoping to secure employment was having a dance party to motivate their employees. Those of you to whom I have told the story will recall that this was EXACTLY how they started the day at the horrible job that I did not take back in St. Louis. At this point I was mired in the deepest denial, I think I was telling myself that these things must all be coincidences, they could not possibly be related. Maybe even worse than all of that, all the guys who worked in the office were somehow exact replicas of sleazy New Jersey guys who use way too much hair gel, have orange tans, diamond stud earrings, and workout too hard (basically, just imagine the guy from the "My New Haircut" youtube video, if you haven't already seen it, I might not recommend it because of some coarse language, but I cannot control what you do on the internet...). Thankfully, I was teamed up with a guy who seemed pretty normal. He asked me if I drove and I told him that I did, so then he asked me if I could drive us to the site where we would set up, I told him I could (for those of you who do not know, nearly this exact same thing happened with the freakishly similar job before. Granted, in St. Louis, I was asked to drive because my interviewer's car broke down, whereas, yesterday I was asked to drive because I would need to drive back to the office by myself while they stayed at the site for the rest of the day). We arrived at the mall and set up our post. Keep in mind that this is a sports marketing job, and to be fair, we were dealing with sports and marketing, but not in the way that a rational person might think. Their task, and mine if I were to be hired, was to sell raffle tickets in a cross promotion with a local AFL team. Proceeds from the ten dollar raffle tickets went to youth sports foundations (and to us as the marketing company of course) and there are some pretty swanky prizes. My interviewer goes to different malls, airports, sporting events, and grocery store from day to day and sells the same raffle tickets. But here's the huge double whammy. He, and all the other associates at Taylormade Sports, sell the tickets between 9am-5:30pm, when most people are at work, (but then again, malls close at 5:30pm everyday but Thursday when they close at 8pm or 9pm for late night shopping). The second half of the whammy is that my interviewer, his assistant, pretty much everyone else in the company, and myself if hired all work on commission. 20% of each ticket goes into my pocket as commission... and that's my only salary. At this point I was internally beside myself because I could not believe that I had managed to get myself into nearly the same situation, but at least I would not be selling car wax at gas stations this time! Almost immediately after I had that thought, my interviewer took out a booklet with the company's structure/ business plan. They are a part of an international corporation called The Cobra Group (TCG). TCG has several different arms, one is Allsport, Taylormade Sports falls under that umbrella. As I was looking through the description of TCG, for the second time in two hours my heart stopped beating. None of the "coincidences" that I had been dismissing existed at all, they were not accidents. One of the five arms of TCG was "Fastwax," the EXACT company that I was given a job with nearly nine months ago! How could I have been so stupid?
I was freaking out pretty hard at this point, but I had to finish up the day. I went back to the office, had a little chat, was offered a position with Taylormade Sports, but told him that I would need some time to think about it. Thus commenced the longest several hours of deliberation. Clearly, this was a crappy job, but equally as obvious was the fact that I didn't exactly have people knocking down my door to hire me. So after all of this thinking through the different scenarios, Cate and I came to the conclusion that I should take the job for a few weeks, frantically look for a legitimate position, and by legitimate I mean one with at least an hourly wage, preferably a salary, but beggars with Ivy League degrees can't be choosers.
So there you have it. I have a job and I start bright and early tomorrow morning. 7:30am with a techno dance party; yes, this is actually my life. I'm off to enjoy my last day of freedom.
Peace
The past week has been laid- back, to say the least. Because I was still unemployed I spent my days reading ("About a Boy" and now "The Best American Sports Writing of 2008") and then I would take the bus into the city and meet up with Cate for lunch. We would usually finish lunch around 1:30, she'd go back to work and I would have 2.5-3 hours to kill. These afternoons spent roaming the central business district of Perth were pretty fun, although, there really are just two or three long streets of shops to explore and within that number, there's a limited number of shops I would even want to enter. In the evenings, Cate and I have been spending out time running, cooking dinner (limiting our eating out, really and truly), and watching television shows... on DVD, haha.
This lifestyle has been pretty relaxing, and it has definitely been nice to have some time off work since I went straight from the Boys and Girls Club to The Container Store before I got to Australia, but it was/ is time to get back to work; Taylormade Sports agreed. I found this company on a job-seeking-website and they billed the position as a combination of sports marketing and retail which led me to believe that I would be working in some sort of Australian Sports Authority-esque environment, which is actually a pretty exciting prospect. The company gave me a call and we set up an interview for last Thursday. I arrived at the office building, which had an eerily similar feel to the set-up of the "sports marketing" job I got and then rejected immediately after I graduated from Columbia. I was even talking to Cate on the phone as I sat outside the place telling her that the layout of the office park that the interview was taking place in reminded me of that horrible experience, but she reassured me and I realized that, surely, Taylormade Sports would be a legitimate place for me to work.
As I walked into the actual office of Taylormade Sports, my fears reached new levels as the layout/ atmosphere ( two supposedly attractive female receptionists in their early twenties sitting in an alcove of sorts; neither of them actually appeared to be working as facebook, myspace, and/or some sort of internet chat program was displayed on their screens; their top 40 pop music station was playing way too loud for an office where any sort of meaningful work could possibly be done; blah blah blah...) nearly identically reflected that of my previous foray into this field; but again, I left these irrational comparisons at the wayside of my mind and focused on the interview. I impressed my interviewer (and owner of the company) enough that he invited me back for a second round interview, which would be more of an experience with some members of the company out in the real world (just like the aforementioned job I had to refuse).
So... the first interview was on Thursday. On Friday, I came into the city to have lunch with Cate, then we got a drink to celebrate the weekend. A few hours later we went to a friend's house for dinner, great food and company. On a related note, it is very interesting to be confronted with sheer naive ignorance. Let me say that this family was very outgoing and personable, as am I, so I think they perceived a comfort level that might not quite have been there for me; or maybe they are just SO outspoken that they would have said what they said at any rate. The middle daughter of the family, 20, asked to no one in particular (which was odd since I was sitting at the table), "why are they called Afro- Americans? I thought an Afro was a hairstyle?" A legitimate question, especially since no one calls us Afro- Americans anymore, for that very reason, haha. The father commented on the, "particular largeness of the Afro- Americans playing in the Super Bowl." I guess he missed all the particularly large white men also playing in the game, but I guess people see what they want to see. And finally, my favorite; the mother. She certainly takes the cake, but she is definitely one to say whatever is on her mind. The second thing she said to me after our introduction was, "Oh my! Do you work out?" At the protest of her daughter who saw how such a comment might make me a teensy bit uncomfortable, she retorted, "What? Look at him, he obviously does!" That was cute. Later in the evening a discussion broke out about the mother's lack of understanding of 50 Cent's "Candy Shop." Again, much to the chagrin of her daughters, she protested that, as a girl, she would go to the candy shop and get lollipops all the time. I politely told her that I was pretty sure that Fitty had something else in mind when he wrote that song and she replied, "So! You DO understand that ghetto slang! You knew what he was talking about! Say something from tha' hood! Talk ghetto!"
As is often the case in situations like these, I am reminded of a Dave Chappelle stand-up act. Once, Dave had just finished performing in the south and he went a Ponderosa-style restaurant where you order at the front and they bring your food to you at your table. He was looking up at the menu and prepared to order while still deciding saying, "I'll have..." And the white cashier interrupted him by interjecting, "The chicken!" Dave's response, "What the %$#@?" The clerk's retort, "Look here buddy, it's no secret around here that blacks... and chickens, are very fond of one another." Dave continued in his mind thinking, "Wow, that was really racist. I'm not even mad, just stunned that someone could be so blatantly racist." These are the things that churn through my mind in real life situations, haha. Hm, that's pretty interesting, three of the most blatantly racist things to ever happen in my life have a) all been in the last 2 years b) twice involved white Australian women asking me to speak ebonics and c) not happened in the US or involved white Americans at all (the third involved an Indian cab driver in Toronto)
ANYway. Saturday rolled around and Cate and I prepared a delicious feast of bacon and eggs. Just as we were sitting down to eat, the doorbell rang and guess who it was! The Jehovah's Witnesses! I'm going to keep THIS story short, but basically, these guys using the same Bible as protestant Christians came to the Taylor at 9am on a Saturday morning picking and choosing verses to support their outlandish claims. What they failed to do was, I don't know, read the verses in context? All I can say is that I hope our chat with them gave them some things to think about because they really would pluck three verses from the middle of a chapter to support a given point, but LITERALLY would not have read the verses before or after it to contextualize what they were saying; or maybe they did and were in denial about them? But, after we talked to them for a good 30-45 minutes, we finished breakfast and then walked around for a bit before Cate's basketball game (they lost, but she starred!). We then went our separate ways as I joined some friends from church to watch a professional Aussie Rules Football (AFL or footy, there will be more about this in a later post) game while Cate joined friends from work to say goodbye to a coworker. We reconvened late that night to catch a bit of the England/ Italy rugby match that was being broadcast live in a few pubs at midnight. Sunday. Beach. Church. Coffee/Tea/ Cake.
Monday, Monday, Monday! At last, the day of the interview had arrived (sorry for leaving you get-jordan-a-job people hanging for three paragraphs) and I prepared myself to dazzle my potential employers. I walked into the office and my heart dropped out of my chest and onto the floor, SMACK! It was 7:50am on Monday morning and the company from which I was hoping to secure employment was having a dance party to motivate their employees. Those of you to whom I have told the story will recall that this was EXACTLY how they started the day at the horrible job that I did not take back in St. Louis. At this point I was mired in the deepest denial, I think I was telling myself that these things must all be coincidences, they could not possibly be related. Maybe even worse than all of that, all the guys who worked in the office were somehow exact replicas of sleazy New Jersey guys who use way too much hair gel, have orange tans, diamond stud earrings, and workout too hard (basically, just imagine the guy from the "My New Haircut" youtube video, if you haven't already seen it, I might not recommend it because of some coarse language, but I cannot control what you do on the internet...). Thankfully, I was teamed up with a guy who seemed pretty normal. He asked me if I drove and I told him that I did, so then he asked me if I could drive us to the site where we would set up, I told him I could (for those of you who do not know, nearly this exact same thing happened with the freakishly similar job before. Granted, in St. Louis, I was asked to drive because my interviewer's car broke down, whereas, yesterday I was asked to drive because I would need to drive back to the office by myself while they stayed at the site for the rest of the day). We arrived at the mall and set up our post. Keep in mind that this is a sports marketing job, and to be fair, we were dealing with sports and marketing, but not in the way that a rational person might think. Their task, and mine if I were to be hired, was to sell raffle tickets in a cross promotion with a local AFL team. Proceeds from the ten dollar raffle tickets went to youth sports foundations (and to us as the marketing company of course) and there are some pretty swanky prizes. My interviewer goes to different malls, airports, sporting events, and grocery store from day to day and sells the same raffle tickets. But here's the huge double whammy. He, and all the other associates at Taylormade Sports, sell the tickets between 9am-5:30pm, when most people are at work, (but then again, malls close at 5:30pm everyday but Thursday when they close at 8pm or 9pm for late night shopping). The second half of the whammy is that my interviewer, his assistant, pretty much everyone else in the company, and myself if hired all work on commission. 20% of each ticket goes into my pocket as commission... and that's my only salary. At this point I was internally beside myself because I could not believe that I had managed to get myself into nearly the same situation, but at least I would not be selling car wax at gas stations this time! Almost immediately after I had that thought, my interviewer took out a booklet with the company's structure/ business plan. They are a part of an international corporation called The Cobra Group (TCG). TCG has several different arms, one is Allsport, Taylormade Sports falls under that umbrella. As I was looking through the description of TCG, for the second time in two hours my heart stopped beating. None of the "coincidences" that I had been dismissing existed at all, they were not accidents. One of the five arms of TCG was "Fastwax," the EXACT company that I was given a job with nearly nine months ago! How could I have been so stupid?
I was freaking out pretty hard at this point, but I had to finish up the day. I went back to the office, had a little chat, was offered a position with Taylormade Sports, but told him that I would need some time to think about it. Thus commenced the longest several hours of deliberation. Clearly, this was a crappy job, but equally as obvious was the fact that I didn't exactly have people knocking down my door to hire me. So after all of this thinking through the different scenarios, Cate and I came to the conclusion that I should take the job for a few weeks, frantically look for a legitimate position, and by legitimate I mean one with at least an hourly wage, preferably a salary, but beggars with Ivy League degrees can't be choosers.
So there you have it. I have a job and I start bright and early tomorrow morning. 7:30am with a techno dance party; yes, this is actually my life. I'm off to enjoy my last day of freedom.
Peace
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