I got an email marked "Urgent" yesterday morning f…
I got an email marked “Urgent” yesterday morning from a friend of mine who just moved to Hong Kong to take a job at a TV production company. I met her at the Oriented thing and made her promise to keep an eye out for me for potential jobs over there. In her email she expressed a desperate need to see my resume, since there was a 13-part series gearing up for production in mainland China. It was for a show focusing on Chinese athletes or something like that. That afternoon she even called me up to talk about it. It seems that it isn’t actually all that urgent, but they’re still looking for a Mandarin-speaking crew for the project. Oddly enough, most of the foreigners in Hong Kong don’t bother learning either Cantonese or Mandarin Chinese, presumably since they can “get by” pretty well in English. In Taiwan, most foreign residents attempt to speak at least rudimentary Mandarin.
In any case, it was a bit of a shock. I hadn’t expected her to get in touch with me about a potential gig so soon. I would need time to arrange a leave of absence from my company, of course, and I would also need to arrange a lot of other things, but it would be interesting. And if this particular one doesn’t work out, the company is trying to move into the mainland market more, so there could be more opportunities in the future. Something to think about, anyway.
We were warned yesterday morning that there was to be an air-raid drill from 1:30 to 2:30 or so that afternoon, so I struggled through the crowds of Computex suits to the Subway under the Mitsukoshi A8 building and managed to “accidentally” get stuck there for an extra hour at lunch. I talked a bit with the sandwich guy there, the American-born Chinese who is also a former Eva pilot, about the China Airlines crash. He thinks it was a meteor that caused the plane to crash. I hope it was, myself. I’d feel better about my chances if that’s all it was. A missile would be of slightly less comfort, but still better than a mechanical or maintenence failure. Shit, I’d be happy with flying reindeer getting caught in the engine, as long as it’s not something that is likely to happen again any time soon.
Dean called yesterday and said that our old sword instructor/drinking buddy Seamus was in town, so I rode over to Q Bar to meet up with them. As I walked up, however, I saw that the place was completely dark, although the door was open. I entered cautiously and managed to duck aside just as Seamus came flying out of the murk brandishing a hug for me. I’ll bet you didn’t know you could brandish a hug. Well, you can’t. But Seamus can. Seamus can brandish just about anything.
We decided to sit outside and chat over drinks as the sun set, but the kitchen was down without any electricity, so I left my motorcycle at Q Bar and we took a cab over to Dean’s place, where we watched a couple Enterprise episodes on tape and consumed a bottle of vodka along with a pizza. It was nice; we were all slurring our comments by the time Archer showed T’pol how anally retentive she was being. Seamus and I then took the MRT back to the Shi-da area, where I live and where he’s staying, and since it was only midnight, we went and had some Doujiang. Seamus, just like everyone else, thinks I should smile more. I’ve heard this more or less constantly since I was 12, when I decided that adults who went around wearing fake smiles all the time looked like dorks. I’m sorry, but telling me to smile more is just about the best way to stop me from smiling that I can think of. I don’t want to keep thinking “Am I smiling? I should be smiling, right? Is this a smile, or more of a smirk?” all the time. What fun is that?
Today has been rather uneventful, with the exception of the continuous and extremely annoying fire drills in our building this afternoon. Graham is having drinks and barbeque at the 70’s Airport Love Palace after work today, since today is his day off. Fresh, greasy meat and alcohol consumed to the sound of large jet engines; it just doesn’t get any better than that. Who knows? I might even smile.
