texnat

new address. again... sigh...

2009-08-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

http://texnat.twoifiplay.com/

Subbing: First Day

2009-02-01T17:56:00.000-08:00

My first day of subbing was at a middle school on Austin’s east side. Later I found out from Annette's mom, it was the worst part of the city in which to sub. It was far out of town in the middle of nowhere with only factories, strip-malls and pawnshops to dot the countryside. When I arrived I was told that there were 17 subs requested for the school that day. Partly it was because there was a teacher in-service that day but mostly it was because someone had shot at the police with an AK47 and now neighborhood was on lockdown and teachers were having trouble getting to work.

The teacher I was subbing for was doing the in-service onsite she told that she would be back at the end of the day. She also told me that they were great kids and that if they misbehaved to use the suspension forms. This should have given me a hint as to what was going to happen. Every teacher tells the sub that their class is good. She is the only one who ever told me to use suspension forms. All I had to do was hand out some tests and then an assignment. Easy.

First period was tired and they just tested me out a bit. They were loud and out of their chairs and screaming. The class talked, shouted, was rude, used foul language, etc. Second period was worse. They’d learned from the first period that I was unprepared. The kids thought the funniest thing was to ask for pencils and then break them, to ask for a test or handout and destroy it. I didn't get a single test even handed back to me at the end.

In middle school teachers have little leverage because far and away the most important thing to most students is what their peers think of them. Every moment is an opportunity to be awesome or stupid in the eyes of their classmates. Cute girls who're just becoming sexual and learning that they can command attention by getting boys to act out. In every class boys said and did all kinds of imbecilic things for the sexual bones that the girls threw their way: a smile here, a piece of eye contact there. While mysterious and seductive to their male peers, to someone twice their age their flirting was as subtle as a caveman dance. One 13 year old in first period left me a paper neatly folded on her desk: “My name is _____ _____. My number is ______. Please call me.” It was shocking.

Paper was thrown; kids hit each other. When I got hit in the head with a rubber band I finally called school security. Without asking anything the man said "I'll be right there'. Just before he arrived the kids shut up. They began working away quietly and when the security officer showed up at the door he asked what the problem was. I sheepishly told him that the kids had been out of control but they were fine now. He looked at the little angels and asked: “Are you guys being out of control?” That was all they needed and the room erupted in front of him in a blaze of insanity probably designed to show off how completely in control they were. “I wasn’t being disruptive. He was!!” said one. “It wasn’t me,” shouted his friend, hitting him. All hell broke loose. The security man made some brief threats about calling their parents and then he left and with him any semblance of authority. Looking back, it was all screwball comedy. This Asian kid who hardly spoke English came to me almost in tears. In a despairing voice: "Don’t call my parents! I’ve been working so hard!!!" As if there was any accountability at all.

The class’s reputation was so bad that by the last period, eight kids who wanted to do their work immediately abandoned ship and left for neighboring classrooms. "This sucks, is said one kid who stayed. Now it's going to be all quiet in here.” And it was. Quiet and controllable. There was a conversation that went on and on... But that was ok. A cute girl flirting with her cute boys, an annoyance, not a threat.

While it felt like I was trying to stand in a cold rushing river for a few hours, for me the hardest part of the day was leaving. I tried to clean up the floor on which her class had used to store the contents of their backpacks. I wanted to let her know how the day had gone.

“It went ok.” I lied. “Nothing too bad.”
“Yeah, I heard they were out of control,” she said.
“Well, thanks.” I said.
“Thank you,” she said. And it was over.

She was stacking books and never looked at me during the exchange. The office told me I didn't have to sign out. I left; feeling cheap, a call girl hired to keep the class busy while the girlfriend was away. Somehow I had misunderstood my role in the educational process and it stung. It was the toughest 75 bucks I’ve EVER earned.

the move ends

2009-01-30T16:22:00.001-08:00

Change is stressful and requires a lot of attention. There are so many new things to learn and do that it’s easy to lose oneself in the muddle. The emotions you experience are more intense and you see things as if for the first time. Until now it’s been impossible for me to write to an audience about coming to Austin. Writing about things in the moment, as they are happening takes more self awareness and multitasking skill than I currently have.

But, like every other move I’ve made, the dust clears and you no longer need to find an apartment, get furniture, look for a job, etc. Well, perhaps I still do need to do a lot of those things but the urgency is gone. I have all those essential slots temporarily filled and I can concentrate on exploring where I have landed.

I want to start writing more about Austin, especially through the eyes of someone who is just returning to the United States after three years of being abroad and who has never before had pretensions of living in Texas. Austin is a really amazing and I can’t wait to start writing.

austin house hunt and alori property managers

2008-10-16T14:29:00.001-07:00

I should warn you that this post is just a bunch of whining. Mostly about a really bad property management company. Coming to a new place is tough in a lot of ways. If one were all settled. One of the toughest is getting started (housing and job) while not having either of the two. Here's a story of Alori Property Management and how they made the process a little harder.

The first job is housing. It's hard to apply to jobs without a home so it's good to get that first. The last I looked for housing in the States was four years ago and craigslist was the way. Now, however, while there are lots of advertisements for places, it seems to have been co-opted by property managers or agents, both of which take their cut. Our experience was probably typical. In our first day looking we saw maybe 7 different places. There were a few nice ones and at the end of the day we decided on one we liked a lot.

The apartment was run by a property manager called Alori Apartments. We went to the place and filled out the application and put a deposit down. The first bad sign was that they seemed to have called it a day at 5:30 and were already drinking in the office. Everything seemed in order but it was odd because they didn't seem excited about renting to us.

We both have impeccable credit but they were only interested in our rental history (we had none from the USA, only Buenos Aires) and if we had jobs (we just got into town). So they asked for a two guarantors. This was fine but when I asked if one would be ok, they got snippity. I asked for a few other questions like how the deposit worked, what happened in case of breaking the lease, and if we could look at the lease. They didn't like answering any of them. I assume it was the alcohol.

My dad agreed to guarantee us they faxed him a blank form saying basically he guaranteed us. He asked for a copy of the lease (or something saying how much we were paying in rent, etc.) and they refused to provide it. He said he'd like to know what he was guaranteeing.

When I called at 11am the next day, they said that there'd been a terrible mistake and apparently they'd rented the apartment to someone else who had put in a deposit before us. I asked them why they'd accepted our deposit and he said it was a clerical error. He refused to say anything more or explain how it had happened. I asked him if it was usually their policy to accept deposits on a property while not telling applicants that they were considering other people. The man refused to answer.

It makes no sense why they did any of that. I really doubt someone was actually in front of us. Someone else just probably arrived after us but had a rental history and a job and so after taking our deposit they decided on someone else.

It was frustrating and emotionally draining because we had really like the apartment. It was strange too because Alori never actually told us that they preferred the other people, just that we weren't fast enough in getting all our information in, something that they had been holding up.

So not a big deal, but it is really indicative of our experience here. It's weird that a company like this could be so cavalier and unprofessional but it's something that's been coming up a lot. From the temp agency who doesn't answer their phone to the tutoring agency who wanted me to sign a contract saying I wouldn't tutor for any other company for two years.

It's Texas and people here seem to make their own law.

set up

2008-09-14T15:11:00.001-07:00

More learning how to program in Python. More information crammed in my brain. It feels good to get prepared for a new project. Lots of things I can learn how to do on my own. Like learning guitar, etc. My brother installed a few Firefox plugins (Firebug and Web Developer) for me so now I can doodle around with CSS and Javascript, playing with pages and making them look nice. I'm looking forward to making a blog and a personal website. I want to figure out how to install wordpress on my old/new site, twoifiplay.com, which right now has nothing at all.

So things are trundling along. It's scary to go to a new place, especially after what happened last time. But things are different. I'm not drifting and purposeless. I'm excited about learning new web stuff and learning a new skill that's transferable and transportable. Once I get good at web stuff again, that's something I can do wherever so it doesn't matter if I'm in Austin or Australasia.

e-learning

2008-09-12T00:40:00.001-07:00

It’s ironic. I do so little but feel like things are moving so fast. Life is a whirl of meeting up with old friends and family who I haven’t seen in years.

Now that I have a nice new computer I can actually use it to do something. I’m taking full advantage of being in San Francisco to have my brother teach me what I need to know about creating interactive web apps (python, django, plone, etc.). My head is bursting with new information and my brain is craving more and more knowledge. Getting back in touch with this isde of my personality makes me feel stable and at home, an old friend I’d missed.

While I was away in Buenos Aires, I dropped all things computer. It’s interesting because while I was working in an e-learning company, I was shunted away from programming. Management didn’t like groups to interact or share each other's skills. Not unlike the learning it instills, the job was an information production line, nothing more nor less. It’s exciting to think about another job where, like previous jobs, I will be encouraged to bring all my skills to the table.

I can hardly wait.

Reverse Culture Shock: Energy Drain

2008-09-09T22:43:00.001-07:00

I’ve been back for about three weeks and shock is just about setting in. It’s as total as it is indescribable. I know it only by its symptoms. I am exhausted all the time. The actual tasks I need to do are easy: going to the mechanic, calling a friend, driving to the bank. It’s ironic because both the bureaucracy and the language is easier for me to navigate than it was in Buenos Aires.

The feeling is like having ice skated or roller bladed for a few hours, on taking the skates off you feel like you’re walking on air. You feel like you can run faster than a cheetah, nothing can stop you, your shoes have never been more comfy. But then you don’t know why you’ve walked just a few blocks and you’re out of breath already. The answer? Reverse culture shock.

Things seem like they should be easy, after all, I’ve done all this stuff and I didn’t even speak the language, I didn’t know anyone, I had fewer resources. I have none of these problems here in the States. It is not the difficulty of the tasks that is overwhelming, it’s that neurons in my brain are firing after having gone years without being accessed. My body is reconstructing relationships that it hasn’t considered in years.

Transport

2008-09-03T23:57:00.000-07:00

"In my country there's a problem, and that problem is transport." -Borat

For my first year in Argentina my car (an 89 Camry) sat unused in my parents' garage, so I gave it to a friend of mine who needed it. Now that I've returned she kindly fixed it up and handed it over. The car made it from Seattle to Portland just fine but then, on the way to Sacramento, the engine overheated and died.

It's frightening to have your car die on the highway. When I started driving I used to imagine situations in which I'd imagine what I'd do in case I lost control of the vehicle. In this case the engine died and I lost power steering and brakes. Armed only with an unwhieldly wheel, an ebrake and some emergency blinkers for luck we somehow were able to coast into an Arco station. I poured in a $12 jug of coolant and it poured right out the bottom of the car. After some cajoling a guy working at the neighboring Subway came out and promptly disappeared under the car. He emerged, pronounced a leak in the water pump and recommended us a hotel where he and his girlfriend had spent the night the previous weekend.

We stayed at the Motel 6 slept hard. We'd spent so much time sitting and waiting for the car to cool, I'd eaten only some yogurt, a sandwich and some trailmix. Luckily we were just blocks away from Perry's Automotive Service so we showed up bright and early with our broken car. They quoted us $460 to fix it (4 hours of labor at $80/hour) and, though it's probably more than the price of the car, I decided to do the deed.

In Argentina I hardly ever used cars and never for long distance transportation as the interior of an Argentine bus looks more like an airplane than something you'd expect to have wheels. While I miss the freedom of the open road, it's been wonderful to avoid the tragedy of a roadside breakdown. At least when you're the one paying for it.

2 Girls, 1 Worldview

2008-07-16T07:55:00.001-07:00

Today was my first day where I wasn't formally employed while in Buenos Aires. It felt good not to have anywhere special to be and it brought back this conversation I'd overheard about a week ago while standing at the bus stop. There were two blond American girls. You can tell Americans by their hair, their clothes, and that they speak English loudly in American accents. I sidled closer to try hear if they were speaking English. Finding people who speak English thinking that no one around them understands is an amazing voyeuristic pleasure. When we got on the bus I was able to get closer and overhear. One was telling her friend about her plans now that she had been living here in Buenos Aires for about 6 months.

"Why would I work for $10 an hour. In a few years I'll make ten times that. Why not enjoy my time here? It's a once in a lifetime opportunity."

"Yeah," her friend said, "You don't want to waste it."

And here we have a whole worldview. You see, there is this idea in the states that during your adult life (called Real World) if you're not contributing to corporate America then you're shirking your duty. Children, the senile, the mentally handicapped, and students are generally excepted from this. But on graduation, every student knows what they're in for. These girls, I assumed from looking at them, had just graduated. Many new graduates take a parentally funded trip abroad to “experience the world” before heading on to the Real World.

Now you may think I'm about to judge them for thinking that they are immature and lazy. On the contrary, traveling is an amazing way to find yourself. However, working in another country enhances the experience you'd have and does not diminish it. There are tons of jobs you can get in other countries which you would never be qualified to do back home. But in a worldview where you work for money, work can be seen as a chore rather than an opportunity. These girls were trying to avoid the Real World (which is a pretty terrible place) by putting off working, but work isn't the issue.

If you do it right, most fun things are lots of work. The only thing is that because you enjoy what you're doing, you don't call it “work”. Getting paid for doing what you want to do is the goal, but apparently these girls seemed to have such a dreary idea of work that they were willing to pass up the experience of getting out into the community in order to avoid it.

texnat?

2008-03-28T18:42:00.000-07:00

Let me just briefly explain the title of the blog:

It started with EXNAT, my blog about being an expatriate in buenos aires (expat+nathan=exnat). Now, after what will be three years abroad, I'm moving to Texas. Yes, Texas.

I once drove around the country for 3 months visiting 36 of our 50 fine states but when I never messed with Texas. My friend and I drove over 20 hours across the state to avoid sleeping there. Texas has always been a bit of a scary place to me. It was the mythical place that cowboys came from. Not cowboys from Westerns, the cowboys in my high school who chewed tobacco and always looked like if they ever actually noticed me they would beat me up. I'm from Sacramento and the "cowboys" from Sacramento are just working class white idiots who dress that way for the image. They're not idiots because of dressing that way. They're idiots for the chewing tobacco, among other things.

But anyways, it's time for me to ride off into the sunset towards Texas country. Why Texas? A girl. Her name is Annette.

ANNETTE