I realize that my life has been fast forwarded ever since I met my current boy friend. His life at work is fabulous; his work life is busy not to mention that his work social life has occupied nearly 80% of his personal times. I got introduced to a lot of his co-workers and we got invited to plenty of their social events, personal events, parties, celebrations and etc etc. Good thing is most of them are from different cultural, different backgrounds. South Americans are the majority in the group.
I know nothing about Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Romania, Israel and etc until I met the group. I listened to their accents, I learn their party styles (which is dancing non-stop, mostly salsa), their drinking habit, their friendliness, their affection towards love ones. I realize how less I know about the world after mingling with the group. This has actually open up my mind.
I am more open to listen and learn from others after knowing that there are so much that I don’t know about out there. There are so many countries, peoples, foods, cultures in the other side of the world that I didn’t even know they exist. Then, the more I learn about them, the more I want to see the world. I started to value the importance of life. I started to realize that living the fullness is not just about climbing up the ladder or getting a great impressive job with good pay to pursue my future. What is the point of working long hours but do not get to enjoy the beautiful weather in a nice summer day?
For sure I have to admit that majority of the Asian parents are very practical. To them, in order to get a good life; you would have to study hard, excel in school in order to get into a good college in order to land a good job. Climbing step by step will make you a better person, make big bucks then you will achieve success from there on. This includes the pressures of those parents on their children to become doctors, lawyers, politicians etc. Asian parents like to compare their children’s success among each other’s. In their dictionaries, a person’s career determines the pride of that family; bachelor degree is not good enough, they are pushing their children all the way to PHD. WHY? Because this will make them proud and it will be the family’s history. I personally think that part of the reasons is because Asia countries do not generally accept higher educations than any of the Westerner countries, therefore getting a higher education achievement is considered very scarce in the society. This theory might apply to some lower income countries as well.
Here comes the debate between working for a job that pay you well but you don’t like and working for your dream job but don’t pay you well. Unfortunately I get caught in this scenario. I have a decent job which pays me above average than what other company would’ve paid for a similar position. However I don’t like my job, I don’t like the environment, the company, the industry, the distance to work, the ….. the … the everything that I do for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I so looking forward to weekends because I hated my job so much. I shop around, looking for a better opportunity that attract me more, looking for a more creditable company, looking for a higher pay job, looking for a better working environment….looking for something that make my happy. I realize working for money is really torturing but working for passion is what makes me happy and is what leads to a person’s success.
I look at job offers almost every day. I join some professional clubs in the city to expose to more opportunities and get better connections within the city. Some opportunities did surface, but I didn’t get any of them. Of course I am blaming on the America legal working system; I need to have a legal working document to work in this country. There are too many competitors out there who don’t need this kind of paperwork to be hired. Why me??? Why hire me to go through all those immigration problems? As an employer, I wouldn’t want to choose me either. Primary reason is because I don’t have the skills that they couldn’t get elsewhere. I am not an aerospace engineer, I am not a mad scientist, I am not any doctors or Chinese teacher! I am just a regular person who can TALK! That’s what I can do. But when it comes down to talk, there are many restrictions too. I can’t TALK flawless English; I am not a native speaker. I can’t talk flawless, accent less Mandarin, I am not a mainlain China Mandarin freak speaker. I don’t know any cultures about China! I can communicate in Cantonese but who the hell cares about Cantonese speaker in business stand point, in Cleveland, in United States? Oh yah, forgot to mention about 3 other awesome languages that I speak – Hokkien, TeoChew and Malay! Yayaya!!! Those are garbage when it comes to business world/international trading. In a nutshell, I DON’T have solid skills to back me up. I am screwed!
The more I write about this, the more depressed I get. Why can’t I just do what I like and still be able make decent money? I want to be a public speaker, I want to write books, publish books, I want to be a tour guide or do some travel related business, I want to travel, I want to do sports business, I want to organize events, plan for activities, I want to be an actress, I want to perform………. Can you see the trend now? If I want to do what I want to do, I won’t be able to get them here in US easily. I really NEED a GREEN CARD!!!!! I want to be able to get a job freely without considering the fact if I am alien or not!!!
No matter how, I am still going to try! Try hard to achieve what I want, at the same time to obtain happiness as well. I get very agitated when I see people love their jobs. I am jealous!! I am sick! I am not psychologically normal because I envy and jealous at people who have better lives than I do. This is so wrong……I am discouraged….I am disgusting….. I am a criminal…..
AMEN…….
