Me. Writing.

Blank page. Pen. Tea with three sugars. Mahogany desk by the window. Faint smell of fresh, cheap varnish, and white tiles mopped with bleach. Chair facing the door, then the window, then the door. Orange sun beaming though the blinds. Room tinted with a pale, yellow glow. Sepia effect. Like an old, dusty photograph. Beautiful. Beautiful but blinding. Blinds pulled. Quiet room. Blank page. Stare at the walls. The bare, white walls. Bare. Boring. Blank. Take some tea. Wait. Look at the tea. Hot tea. Hot, thin smoke slithering out of the cup. Dances for a second, stretches out like a yawning spider web, and then swirls into nothingness. Touch the cup. Hot. Hot, sharp, piercing heat. Brief, needling pain. Heart beat picks up for a moment, starts to rat-tat-tat-tat-tat, and then slows. Falls to a heavy thump, thump, thump, thump. Sip the tea....

Read the rest of the story in the latest issue of Tongues of the Ocean, an online literary journal which is based in the Bahamas and focuses on Caribbean prose and poetry.

Reflections on the Program II - Bonjour Laziness

 The Ten Commandments for the Idle

1.  You are a modern day slave. There is no scope for personal fulfillment. You work for your pay-check at the end of the month, full stop.
2. It's pointless to try to change the system. Opposing it simply makes it stronger.
3.  What you do is pointless. You can be replaced from one day to the next by any cretin sitting next to you. So work as little as possible and spend time (not too much, if you can help it) cultivating your personal network so that you're untouchable when the next restructuring comes around.
4.  You're not judged on merit, but whether you look and sound the part. Speak lots of leaden jargon: people will suspect you have an inside track. 
5. Never accept a position of responsibility for any reason. You'll only work harder for what amounts to peanuts.
6.  Make a beeline for the most useless positions (research, strategy, and business developments), where it is impossible to assess your 'contribution to the wealth of the firm'. Avoid 'on the ground' operational roles like the plague.
7. Once you've found one of these 'plum jobs', never move. It is only the most exposed who get fired.
8. Learn to identify kindred spirits who, like you, believe the system is absurd through discreet signs (quirks in clothing, peculiar jokes, warm smiles).
9. Be nice to people on short-term contracts. They are the only people who do any real work.
10. Tell yourself that the absurd ideology underpinning this corporate bullshit cannot last forever. It will go the same way as the dialectical materialism of the communist system. The problem is knowing when...  

The commandments above are taken from a French bestseller called Bonjour Paresse (Hello Laziness), which caused quite the stir when it was released in 2004. The book, written by Corinne Maier (a young, disillusioned ex-corporate star), is an entertaining critique of the French corporate system and of the absurdity of the corporate world in general.

I stumbled across the commandments yesterday morning on the train while reading one of those free metro papers. The weather was particularly beautiful, the temperature surprisingly warm, and I was in an all round fabulous mood. Remembering the old adage 'be grateful when you're feeling good, and graceful when you're feeling bad', I thought that it was probably a good a time as ever to pull out the old notebook and start scribbling down some of my mid-point reflections on the assistantship program. The article had tweaked my interest and seemed to speak to me on a very personal level. I felt like I should share it on my blog.

Now any one who knows me knows that I have always been slightly weary of the corporate world. Not in an extreme anarchist, death to capitalism, let's all be hippies again kind of way, but just in a, 'umm that's not really what I want to do with my life' kind of way. I don't know, it's just that the idea of spending my life working for a corporation whose sole goal is to convince people to buy crap that they really don't need just never really sat well with me. A couple of 9-5 cubicle jobs only helped to reinforce this feeling of mistrust.

It seemed like most of what I was doing in these big companies was just a big waste of time. True talks.

Anyways, that slight feeling of rebelliousness (if that's what you want to call it) is probably the main reason why I now find myself twenty four years old, university degree in pocket, singing nursery rhymes for twelve hours a week, and feeling much the happier for it. I don't know what system will eventually replace capitalism but I don't see how this sort of heartless system could go on forever.

Listen peeps, I'm not going to beat around the bush, I only officially work for twelve hours a week (not including time spent giving private lessons), and I feel like this is the most productive I have been in my short lived professional life. Surely that says something. Or then again, maybe it's just me...

Anyways I'm not trying to push people's buttons here. All I'm saying, is that for those who are interested, I think I have discovered one way to escape this system, this so called 'real world' (yeah, right) at least for a while. Like me, you can 'escape' through programs such as the French assistantship, and the JET program (the Japanese version of what I am doing). Clearly this sort of program is not for everyone, but for those of you who are now starting off your careers and are looking to travel, I highly, highly recommend that you give them a look.

 JET Program - http://www.jetprogramme.org/

French Assistantship - http://www.ciep.fr/en/assistantetr/

Other opportunities to teach English abroad - http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/work/esl/index.shtml


A plus!