Where should I go next? – Job woes and an alternate (better?) CV

July 25, 2008 at 8:50 am (Thoughts)
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My boyfriend says I’m steadily becoming a nun. But who cares when this spiritual path is the closest I can come to the reality of life without taking any oaths. What else this good comes with out any paperwork or contracts to sign? Not much I find as I’m being inundated by job contracts and eager recruiters. I guess it’s the season for being hunted in the teaching world. I’m the poor gazelle leaping through the exotic Asian banana plants and bamboo shoots darting English schools right and left. I’ve managed to only sign one contract in the last year and that was for ten days in Bangkok (hope no recruiters read that). My travel legs have grown long and nimble as I’ve gotten further and further East to more exotic pastures. But alas, I’m also getting out of breath from my constant running around the globe in a quest to see and experience every single place on my list. But I’m also practically grasping for air under the heavy weight of school profiles and contracts that span for months and months. Ten months in the Czech Republic? or nine months in Spain? or a whopping year in Taiwan? This is what I’m trying to decide now. I really have to make up my mind about what I’m going to do when I get hurled out of Thailand in September.

You see I haven’t spent more than three months in any one location since Slovenia ‘05-06. That summer two years ago I was sitting at home on a farm in Oregon waiting for the application replies and follow-up calls which never came. So that’s when I decided to forget traditional work and head to Australia and New Zealand. This turned out to be a whole other adventure in itself where classrooms of naughty teenagers were replaced by rows and rows of hydroponic strawberry fields for me to pick, eat and/or hurtle back at my bare-footed kiwi co-worker and smoking buddy Kaleb. Since that sweet unthinking sun-soaked labor I think I’ve had difficult dedicating myself to anything for very long, especially anything which requires mental strain and a tidy appearance. It’s just been far more fun to travel around. Still, I’ve convinced myself I need to start setting some long-term goals. First off, I need or I think I should have somewhere to call home. Somewhere that is all mine where I can hang up my backpack and file away unsigned contract letters. Where is this place? I’m not sure yet, but I have an idea.

Now, for a little fun. Let’s see if this will get me that dream job…

My Alternative ResuméMy Alternative New Zealand Resumé:

 

  • Worked as a Carny. This position required giving spray-on tattoos to children and adults alike. I also gained experience sleeping in a leaky tent in a dodgy park full of Maori gangsters and drug-dealers. I got acquainted with the travelling lifestlyle of the carnies who surrounded me in their beat-up trailers and spent a few nights in a gypsy fortune-teller’s bus to hide from a customer who was very satisfied with the product – 8/12/06-29/12/06.

 

 

  • WWOOFER. Worked as a slave/trench digger and weeder for a commune. Learned how to effectively chase chickens with a pick fork – 21/1/07-2/02/07

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Strawberry-Picker. Learned how to perfectly pluck them and choose when to toss a bad one in the bucket or at a fellow employee. Also, translated these and other complex techniques into Spanish for a Chilean employee – 02/07-03/07

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please let me know if you have any further questions about my work experience. I would be willing to consider any job, especially fire dancing.

To view me and a co-worker in a job-related interview (except English jobs), please refer here.

Keep the job offers a comin’ folks!

Sincerely,

Vesna

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Drugs or Meditation?

July 19, 2008 at 9:36 am (Spirituality)
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“Infinite power and knowledge and blessedness are ours, and we have not to acquire them; they are our own; we have only got to manifest them.” ~Swami Vivekananda

Drugs are completely unnecessary when you’ve got meditation. I’m living in Thailand, in a city that is practically the temple capital of the world. There are over 300 temples here (called wat in Thai) and meditation, particularly vipassana, or insight meditation, which Buddha used to reach enlightenment. So I supposed, since I’m stuck in this southeast asian buddhist enclave, I might as well give meditation a go.

Today I meditated just a little longer than usual and I had a drug-like experience. After spending some time practicing techniques to shoo excess thoughts away, like envisioning all the random thoughts in my over-active mind as clouds floating by, they began to evaporate and suddenly I was left silently focusing on my breathing (prana) and on the eternal soul – my topic of meditation for the session. Suddenly I felt a hazy, unaffected feeling, a feeling of bliss, simplicity of everything and a complete lack of concern or worry for anything: The exact feeling that one looks for in a joint or in a few pints down at the pub. No wonder everyone whose spiritual doesn’t need drugs! Yoga and meditation could be the best drug there is.

Osho in A New Man For a New Millenium writes:

“From the Vedas, the ancientmost book in the world, to Timothy Leary, man has always been attracted by drugs – alcohol, marijuana, opium. Why this attraction? All the moralists have been against it, all the puritans have been against it and all the governments have tried to curb and control but it seems beyond any government to control it. What has been the cause of it? It gives something – it gives a glimpse into the innocent mind of the child again [...] And unless meditation becomes available to millions of people, drugs cannot be prevented.”

I’m not sure if I’m ever going to reach samadhi, or enlightenment in this life, but it’s always possible. It supposedly can take just three years to complete the spiritual evolution and merge into the Infinite Person, or the Superconciousness or kundalini rising; all different names to call what Jesus, Buddha, Shiva and numerous others have attained. Anyway, that’s my first spiritual blog. I’m going to be going to weekly meditation sessions so I’ll report on the results.

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Laos Trip

July 16, 2008 at 8:10 am (Trips)
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Laos is an amazing country. I have to say I agree with the travellers who say they prefer it to Thailand. It had so many rivers, which I discovered is one of my hidden joys, as I floated down the river in a homemade bamboo raft, with the help of my boyfriend; It has great food, less spicy and more sweet and salty flavoured curries; and it is communist! No, that’s not really a reason, but somehow there is more of a renegade atmosphere there, a little less conformist and more traditional. And certainly less westernized. I came to the East to escape the West so I don’t want the burger kings and the 7-elevens and minivans stalking me!

Anyway, I went to Vang Vieng (the inner-tubing capital) and Vientiane (the capital). I also can’t forget to mention that the food and drinks were superb. We found this little local spot that served free Lao Lao shots (hand made rice whisky) along with escargot, banana chips and sausages and sticky rice. It was the best welcome ever after an all-night bus trip. Beer Laos is also up there just beneath Belgian brew.

Into the Song River

Into the Song River

Vang Vieng took my breath away with its limestone cliffs and its clean accessible river. I decided I want to buy a little peice of property right there on the banks. But, alas I realized I’d never be fully accepted as a southeast asian so I’m going to have to find a place identical to it in Spain. Here’s a pic of some bloke jumping off one of the bazillion bamboo ledges outside the makeshift bars of Laos. Pure Paradise. Note: I turned a blind eye to the expanding flocks of package tourists and endulged in the wonders of nature.

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Intro to a new world

July 16, 2008 at 7:53 am (Thoughts)

I remember the first time I moved to a new country. I don’t mean to visit or sightsee, but to actually get an apartment, a job and settle down, kind of.

I was 23, a west coast girl living in New York City. It had taken me seven strenuous months to find a decent job somewhat related to my field – magazine journalism. Don’t steer away yet, I’m not part of the media and never was. I found myself working long hours in a rustic building in Chelsea as a traffic assistant for an ad agency. Don’t get me wrong, with clients like DKNY and Ralph Lauren to name a few, it all seemed quite glamorous. But, my life was winding away with 60 hour work-weeks and it was becoming an industrial-era monotonous ritual of a job peppered with food and sleep. Nothing much else. After a few months of this, I wondered if my degree from a prestigious college had played a trick on me and this was the life I was supposed to accept for the next thirty-plus years.

So I found the TEFL program on the web and quickly applied and got a quick response. I don’t know if being fired from this job was one of my biggest blessings ever, but it certainly made the decision to accept Spain’s allure a whole lot easier. I made a conscious decision before I stepped on that flight – well the second one after I missed the first – that I would make this a four-year learning experience. Just until the current evil administration steps out of the white house, I would be prancing around Europe and wherever else I happened to land, thus expanding my horizons like no university ever could.

Thus begun my around the world adventure,beginning with two capitol European cities for a year each and then travelling around Europe, the South Pacific and Asia stopping just long enough to acquire more funds to move on.

As I’m writing this it has been officially one month over four years and I’m still loose in the world, even further afield than I ever could have expected. The travel bug has got her seething venemous stinger deep in me and wont let go – A bit like that bug on my first overnight sleeper bus in India – and I continue on this trip, or pot, in Slovenian.

So far I have learned Spanish, French, Slovenian, Thai, Hindi and kiwi slang to various degrees. I practice yoga on a daily basis (a remnant from India), eat lots of olive oil drenched salads from my Mediteranean experience and can cook a mean pasta or rice dish on a miniature gas burner from spending so much time in a tent. These are skills I could have never acquired while remaining in a shared flat in Brooklyn.

But now I have to decide where to go and what to do next. Over six months in Asia and I’m ready for a little, just a little familiarity. I’m spending the summer in a small city in the North of Thailand and then…well, I don’t know yet. The constant surprise that comes with travelling can be both a thrill and a source of anxiety. á donde voy ahora, á donde…I ask myself continually.

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