Mary Poppins and Other Suspicious Foreign Drifters

The majority of this week has been spent on my CV, hopelessly shuffling and rejigging its items, like some pathetic greengrocer trying to hide rotten apples behind mouldy tomatoes. Huh. Having moved approximately one bajillion times in the last eight years (typing that, I begin counting on my fingers the actual number of moves, which for some reason greatly amuses Dr Strangename; it's ten times, and therefore we cannot move anywhere ever again because I just can't bear to start on toes) my work history is as long as each job is short. Since the ten moves have spanned four countries, anyone examining my full CV can come to no logical conclusion other than that I am a) on the run from the law, b) irretrievably feckless, or c) Mary Poppins.

Midway through trying to fit all of this onto one side of A4 (utilizing the same size font they use to write your name on a grain of rice down at the pier) I have a wonderful revelation: this isn't a research paper or a court transcript or my letter to Santa. It doesn't have to include everything. So I start the CV again, editing my messy life history into a Lifetime movie -- easy to grasp, nice-looking and with a compelling but not too alarming plot. I have cut most jobs that didn't involve Microsoft Office -- because, really, if you weren't logged onto a PC, what productive POWER VERBS could you possibly be using? -- and especially highlighted positions where I spent much of the day staring into the middle distance, because these usually have the safest-sounding titles (Information Assistant, Billing Clerk). The story ends with me skipping along the shores of California, waving my work permit and trilling I'm Jolly Glad to be Seeking a New and Challenging Position in the American Workforce. Fade to credits, commercial break.

Yippee.

The only thing that's really getting me down now (I mean, apart from: the job for which I spent two days drafting the perfect covering letter, only to notice that its posted date was several weeks ago, and then they didn't even deign to answer my email asking if the position was still available. Or the morning I spent trying to input my inconveniently foreign qualifications and work history into a recruitment agency's website, which was not designed to countenance anything existing outside the borders of America and thus awarded me a GPA of 0.0 and a list of jobs in LOCATION NOT FOUND. Or the number of job ads which specify I must have a car, except I can't afford a car until I get a job. Or that I have degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge and am applying to 'clerical/administrative' positions where the main duties are making coffee, making sure we never run low on paperclips, and being shouted at by everyone else,)... the only thing that's really getting me down now is that American CVs all seem to have a little tagline or motto or what-have-you underneath your name. Like,

Ped Xing

Twenty-five years' dynamic experience in sales, with PROVEN RECORD of TRIPLING TURNOVER by 800%, implementing DYNAMIC SERVICE-IMPLEMENTATION, and REDUCING COMPETITION TO ASHES AND SOWING THOSE ASHES WITH SALT. 

or simply

Ped Xing  

LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR

Naturally, as a British Citizen, I might occasionally hint that I am a rather wonderful and accomplished person (did you see the bit above, where I mentioned Oxford and Cambridge? Weren't you impressed? I'll be very self-deprecating about it from now on, as per Michael Milton: 'Once he knew that you knew he had gone to Yale, he tended to play that down.') but I don't like having to spell it out, especially in sentence fragments all dressed up in italics. But I try.

Foreign Socialist seeks Westside position in order to buy a car. Moderately proficient in photocopying and answering the phone (no complex switchboards; will not wear a headset). Types with two or more fingers. Enjoys tea-breaks and passive aggression. Work permit expires 2012.

Cinderella-complex waif seeks Evil Stepmother boss. Will do crappy job for low pay and silently resent you for it. Don’t you know she’s a special little princess?

Mary Poppins type with ten addresses in four countries over the last decade requires employment in Los Angeles. Intrigued? Send letter via chimney. No childcare, please.
.
.

Return of the Blue Busrider

The Blue Busrider had English visitors.

That's not a euphemism -- there were two visitors, and they rented a car.

[pause for reverent silence]

Yes, a car. I've been cruising around LA in a car, betraying the very ideals that founded this blog. We went to Venice and Malibu and Westwood -- on the same day. We drove out to Pasadena. We got lost on the freeway, confusing east with west and the 101 with the 110 and the 10. It was splendid.

It was also like being on holiday in another city. Our local area -- of which I know every pavement crack, fig tree and psychic readings sign -- suddenly shrank to nothing more than a convenient junction. Left or right? We're already gone. Instead of viewing the LA metropolis as a tangled, fraying circuit-board of bus lines, it was long straight roads and freeways and parking lots. 

I didn't hoard dollar bills for busfare, although I was expected to remember that we were parked in level p4, area B, space 313. Certain things faded from vision, somehow filtered by our windscreen -- homeless people, crazy people, anyone waiting on a street corner in the rain. The bus itself was no longer a glorious steamship, bearing down and rescuing us from the desert island bus stops; it was more like a dangerously decrepit old supertanker, edging up the road in a tide of traffic, foundering over to the sidewalk every block to disgorge sloppy passengers. We drove past, thought no more about it.

On Saturday, our visitors returned to England, and our Honda to Alamo. They are all greatly missed.

- We really have to get a car,

remarks Dr Strangename, a sage observation we have only made a couple of thousand times in the last six months. I nod. But not too emphatically -- we're on dangerous ground. 

Contrary to the tagline on this blog, I am now in possession of a work permit. Oh, yes. It says DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY on it, and it's very useful when I'm being IDed buying liquor. Since the cashier at Vons often has doubts about the validity of my namby pink EU driving license, and I don't want to carry around my passport, I feel that this function of the work permit is very nearly worth the $400 application fee. Dr Strangename has more traditional views, i.e. that it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a legal alien in possession of a work permit must be in want of a job.

Frequency of blog posts will increase in direct proportion to the amount of time I should be spending on my CV, which needs to be translated into American. Power verbs! Superlatives! Give me a job so I can buy a car!

.

.

Conversations With My Husband

In honour of Dr Strangename's recent departure to San Francisco:

5 Conversational Gambits to be Avoided with my Husband

- Amusing anecdotes relating to the cats.

[=  husband is bored; feels increased desire to have affairs with sorority girls]

- The Calvin Klein dress in a Macy's garment bag hidden in the vacuum cupboard.

[= ever read Little Women/Good Wives? Remember when Meg rashly spent $50 on a violet silk and told her husband John Brooke she was tired of being poor, and then he couldn't afford to buy a winter coat? Like that, but with more cussing, and it doesn't end with me returning the dress]

- Comments about the Large Hadron Collider, as gleaned from magazine articles.

[= husband laughs long enough for me to take offense]

- Questions like 'why is the Predator attacking Arnold Schwarzenegger?'

[= husband laughs long enough for me to take offense, and won't acknowledge that having missed the first 90 minutes of the film makes this a valid question]

- What I did today.

[=  husband reacts with pity or other unfavourable judgements when the answer turns out to be 'posted a letter', 'nothing', or 'rose at noon and then read Tennessee Williams plays aloud in hopes of perfecting Southern Belle accent']

Topics of Conversation my Husband Prefers

- What he ate for lunch.

- Someone knows someone whose wife's work permit application took just 6 weeks.

- The precise degree and nature of his tiredness and other maladies.

- Cake is on $1 sale at Vons.

- The BlackHat collaboration.

Conversation We Can Both Enjoy

- Any beginning "When we have a car..."

.

.