Job – Traveling Mark

Job After Suicide

While I could say my mission to make a suicidal girl feel better so hopefully she’ll never consider killing herself again was successful, I found out two days later that both her and her sister were fired from the ice factory. Because of her suicide attempt, she was unable to show up for work and when their boss found out that she attempted suicide, he fired them both. Hard to blame him – who wants to have to deal with people with suicidal tendencies? Tough for the girls, though.

Suicidal girl went back home to the village, while her sister stayed to try to look for a different job. She was gonna start to learn English so she has a wider field of possibilities but needed to fill the gap while she was jobless and came knocking at my door the following day. My English class student who introduced me to her came along as an interpreter and it all ended up being one embarrassing ordeal.

She came to me to make some money and was ready to do anything to “deserve” it. My student explained to me that her father is still ill and needs money but now that both sisters are out of work, I was her only option, because I was the only foreigner she knew. Then he just got up and said he was gonna leave us alone and started walking towards the door. I had to vehemently halt him and explain to him that this is not gonna work and neither her nor him should have considered this an option. I asked him to translate this to her:

“I understand you need money for your father, but you will have to earn it with real work. And you have all you need to do it. Don’t give up, it’s just one job lost and that job sucked anyway. It was wearing you out too much and paid very little. It’s good you’re out of it, but now you need to collect yourself and get out there to find yourself a better job. In the meantime, I won’t give you any money because I follow a strict policy on hand-outs, and I want you to walk out of this door the same strong and proud woman you were when you walked in. But I don’t want you to be hungry or have nowhere to sleep. When I go to eat, you are welcome to join me and I will pay for food you eat. If you can’t afford to pay for an accommodation, I will pay for your room until your first salary. If your new job requires you to purchase certain clothes, we will go out and I will pay for what is suitable and fits you. But every day you will have to show me where you went to apply for a job and what the outcome was. You will also have to show me the plan for the following day so I know which other places you are going to apply for a job with.”

I do not do handouts. There are way too many Cambodians out there already who are used to getting handouts and as a result – do not do anything to even try to get a job and improve their lives. They make the skill of asking for handouts their lifetime profession. I follow an example from the bible. Instead of giving the needy free fish, I will teach them how to fish. Encouraging the culture of handouts does Cambodians a great disservice. What they need is someone to teach them how to be responsible for their actions and pro active about their future.

The girl who came to sell herself out – quite possibly for the first time in her life – was saved from her own mistake and sent to become more successful than she’s ever been before. She scored a well paying job the very next day and I hooked her up with an English class for beginners. All this was possible without losing her dignity, she only needed someone to kick her in the right direction, instead of making her used to getting money the easy way… no matter the cost.

Unlike her sister who went back to the village, this girl stayed in Siem Reap so I got a chance to meet with her on a few occasions again. We had this common understanding which went without saying that we will never talk about the day she came to me and will treat it is if it never happened. I’m positive that she has a good future ahead of herself and I wish her the best of luck.

From Normal Job to Working for the Government

Given that I had master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, my first job was related. I worked as a computer analyst and the only thing that kept me there was the location. We had our offices within large textile factory where 90% of workers were young females. I hated my job, but I loved being surrounded by young girls at all times. We had some kind of arrangements with owners of the factory so we did all the electrical maintenance and repairs and since there was a lot of computerized machinery in use, things were often breaking down in which case we’d step in to make it work again. I didn’t mind fixing these machines since it involved talking to girls who were at a complete loss when these machines broke down since it kept happening often, they saw me as their savior. In spite of frequent interactions with young girls, I hated the job and was gone out of there after a year.

The artist in me eventually prevailed and I started playing with a video camera I had bough. I got so into videotaping, I started observing how pros do it and polished my own style. This has eventually lead me to my second job which I actually enjoyed to the fullest – I became a videographer. From the beginning I would do crappy video jobs including weddings and parties, but eventually stepped myself up to working on TV commercials and music video clips for bands. It was quite awesome, but I was still part of the corporate madness and felt something was missing in my life.

From videography there was only a small step towards photography. I still looked at the worked through the glass of a lens, I have only swapped moving pictures with stills. While the principal idea was the same, photography offered whole different fields to discover. I enjoyed it well enough to eventually take a big step in my life and start my own photography business (previous jobs all involved working for the man).

My photography business went all right from the beginning but times were getting tougher by the day. With introduction of digital cameras, people were able to print their own photos at home so photo development market dwindled. Furthermore, prices of quality cameras dropped to a level affordable by virtually anyone, so 90% of all people you meet on the street became your potential competition, since they all owned good enough equipment. Add to it the ever expanding big box stores with primary philosophy to eliminate small business owner and you have the situation in which it was rather impossible to remain afloat. I have abandoned the business and got employed once more.

This time I scored a job with the government. There are many things to like about working for the government – the pay is not much (unless you’re in top management), however government pays half of your medical and personal insurance installments and after you have worked for them for a year, you get your full dental paid for by them too. That’s a nice cut down on your expenses right there.

Another good thing about working for the government is that come 4pm, you get off and you’re heading home. I have not known this in any of my previous jobs. Ever since I started working for the government, I was basically done with work for the day at 4pm and had the rest of the day for myself. Not to mention that fact that I’d get whole weekends off – 2 consecutive days off work. Unheard of! But that’s not all – if it’s a long weekend, I get entire long weekend off. Wow! That’s right, working for the government has its perks. With most other jobs you get one day off a week. It matters little whether it’s long weekend or not, the employer will expect you at work. However when you get a job with the government, you’ll have yourself three days off in a row on a long weekend. Sweet.

After I have scored that government job, I felt like this was the terminal destination for me as far as jobs are involved. I was gonna sit quietly in my cubicle, perform my tasks to the best of my knowledge, write annual performance reports and do it over and over for many years until I retire. You always get paid when you work for the government and you always get paid on time. It bothered me not that the pay was nothing stellar. I had a steady and secure income with the job that left me enough spare time for myself. This job was a keeper and I intended to keep it.

From Fun Times in the University to Living for Work

I was brought up the wrong way. As I was growing up I was being repeatedly told that one has to work hard to make money and that I will end up living a miserable life if I don’t. Many a time I would achieve results by working smart, instead of hard, but in each such case I was immediately put in place and had my self confidence destroyed. In a long run, this treatment has taken its toll.

When I started the university, I sliced myself away from my parents which allowed me to think for myself and do what’s right for me. It was during my university years when I traveled a lot, it was those years I still consider the best years of my life. Many of my peers couldn’t wait to finish high school so they can go to work and start making money. Money for them was the means to obtain items they all dreamed about – such as their own car. While that was a tempting scenario, I saw job as something that ends one’s youth and with it everything that’s fun in life. You get stuck in a 9 to 5 corporate lifestyle, you come home from work, read the paper while you’re munching on a giant slice of bacon, then turn on the TV to watch stupid soap operas with your feet up on a sofa, and go to bed to do the same thing over the following day.

I saw university as extension of youth. Sure, I would not be able to drive around in my own car, but I would not get stuck in the corporate lifestyle which once you start, typically lasts until retirement. Those extra years of not being able to buy anything cause I wouldn’t be making money was worth it, because it meant that I would be able to do things I care about, things that bring excitement into my life, things that impart new vigor to the mind. Life was good. I hitch-hiked through most of Europe, met amazing people, took part in monumental activities and it lasted until I got my university degree five years later.

End of university marked return to parents house. I didn’t stay long cause it was killing me to have to stay with my folks whose frame of mind was somewhere back in the industrial revolution. I escaped this torture quickly, but as much as I wanted to continue traveling, I was instantly told to look for a job and reminded how badly I was gonna end up if I neglect it. My mind gave in, I applied, attended an interview, got hired and the nightmare of corporate lifestyle become my life.

Important Quote That Makes Life Exciting

During the best years of my life, when I spent my time traveling and every day was exciting, I used to use this Wise Man’s Quote very often:

“The feeling I experience when I resist temptation is really nice. But the feeling I experience when I yield to it is hundred times nicer.”

It is a variation of a famous quote which says that “I would rather regret things I have done than the things I have not“. Granted, I have modified the quote to make it more usable on girls. I was young and felt attracted to girls the same way any other teenage boy is. And even though I primarily used the quote as unfailing pick up line to help me score with a girl, the quote worked in my every day life as well. For as long as I kept repeating it to myself, my life was exciting and I enjoyed every minute of it.

As I have dwindled from travelling and living an exciting life into getting a job and living a mundane life aimed at collecting possessions, I have forgotten all about the quote. As a matter of fact, even though I used to live by this quote every day, after I had switched my life around and started living the corporate lifestyle, I had not thought of it once in almost a decade.

It was not until I awakened, pulled a plug and realized I have been living in a dark for almost 10 years that the quote jumped back at me. It pushed the tears into my eyes. I did have encounters with girls during my dark days, but never once has this quote popped back into my mind. Corporate lifestyle blinded me to a point that my mind did not see what was happening around me. The moment this quote came back to me was the moment I realized that this new path I am choosing is the right path.

There’s a lot of uncertainty accompanying any major lifestyle decision, especially if it involves an extremely brave step of quitting a job in which you are well established. Not many people find this type of courage as it entails losing everything you have worked for during long years of employment. What comes after it is unclear and can go either way, but it takes brave steps to achieve big things in life and I’ve had enough mediocrity in my life for 10 years.

So here I come again. I may regret this major change in my life and the fact that I am leaving everything I have worked for behind in order to step into the unknown and travel the world, but I’d rather regret what I have done, than what I could have done but didn’t.