Life of a Part-Timer

It's 9:10 am and no, I'm not at the office. I'm watching a World Vision infomercial hosted by Alex Trebek, wiping peanut butter off my keyboard and sitting lotus position in front of my coffee table. As a part-timer I’m feeling guilty about spending the money on a new computer table so instead I'm dragging my desktop onto the floor every morning. I'm feeling guilty about take-out coffee, lunch, a new winter scarf, taking taxis, TTC fare, long distance phone calls, cable, new eye make-up remover (is that really essential?), name brand everything. I even feel guilty typing out this blog right now because apparently I should be searching for job postings... constantly...

My lovely married couple friends had me over for dinner last night, shovelled me full of red wine and enlightened me with antidotes about when the husband was unemployed for four months after leaving the military for a civilian job. He lightheartedly recommended heading up to my local "job centre" to hobnob with the other unemployables in my low-income neighbourhood. Unfortunately, his saving grace, EI, is not an option for me since I worked overseas and haven't paid into the service in the last 20 weeks or whatever. So, I'm saving myself the walk up to that government office on this rainy, Tuesday morning.

I think I'm going to stay busy with Korean house guest preparations today. Wash the sheets, buy some rice, and memorize my friends' real Korean names so that I don't screw them over with the Visa office. I also downloaded some of my favourite Asian hip-hop for an appropriate ambience tomorrow night. Did I mention these girls don't drink? That's not going to sit well with my carried over summer binge-drinking. Who am I kidding, my Korea carried over drinking problem... oddly, this isn't creating alot of guilt. Vodka and 90210 are the only things bringing me joy these days.

Shine Up Those Apples...The Teacher's Back

The hunt for a new job isn't going so hot. In fact, it's painfully degrading and all around pitiful. It's the only time in my life when I'm forced to use lame words like leverage, radar, implement and synergy. It's probably blatantly obvious that they don't quite slip over my tongue properly. Anyway, as a diversion and to earn some cash I've turned back to ESL. For a few weeks I've been teaching Carlitos, a sweet Argentinean businessman. Today we spent 25 minutes going over the subtle differences between the pronunciation of "fact" and "fuck." And he's been enlightening me as well. Did you know that Vincent Fox is no longer the president of Mexico? Apparently Felipe Calderon has taken over. Where have I been? And tango not salsa is the national dance of Argentina. Hmmmm...

In an attempt to fill up my schedule I interviewed at another school today. For those of you who are unfamiliar with ESL, it's one of the easiest professions to get into. Basically anyone with a degree can get a job; I'm not saying you'd be any good at it, just that you'd get hired. Well, today this guy decided to "test" me by asking me to teach a mock business class on advertising to a group of four supervisors with five minutes prep time. Huh? He kept me sweating up there for almost 20 minutes! Jesus. I'll tell you how it pans out.

Oh, a Korean friend is coming to study TOEFL next week. She and her buddy are crashing at my place for four days and she has expressed a keen interest in going "clubbing." What exactly is clubbing?

Here's a pic of me and Claire (Jun Sook) my new hip-hop roomie.

I've added another one of the family over Thanksgiving: me on my off hours.