Replies

Theravada philosophy takes the concept of personal self control to such a high level, that it even puts the onus of controlling immature people on the mature ones, just as an adult is responsible for a child's behavior.

It's interesting to study and learn about other concepts for living in serenity.

I was not practicing what they call "mindfulness" (the wise, or would-be wise, must monitor all things around them), then in effect it is my education, combined with my making it seem vulnerable when drinking, which, in fact, causes the other person to act badly, on the basis that they are too mean and nasty to control themselves.

In my view, the guy you encountered yesterday is a jerk, always will be a jerk, ergo, the only one who can change is you. Personally, I would not knock myself out trying to figure out this guy's motives.
Of course, that's my perspective from living a life time in the good old USA!

It's always interesting to read your thoughts, thanks much.

What a long post I've written! I certainly have become verbose lately. But I will probably be offline altogether for the next couple weeks as I settle in back in good old Taiwan, so I'll make up for lost time now! Cheers, talk to you all in a while!

Well, I'm all set to get back to Taipei tomorrow morning. I was expecting to be in Thailand until April! Isn't it interesting how life is unpredictable?

My new employers are meeting me at the airport! They said they'll have one of those big signs you signal passengers with! Hopefully it will be a pleasant experience this year!

What a change from that referral service. They say they'll set up several interviews, then they get you there and start giving you directions for going by bus and train all over Taiwan (at your expense) and set the interviews up one by one, making you wait for a response plus pressuring you to take it at any one which says yes. I guess that's to maximize their "successful placements", or maybe Chinese aren't used to the applicant having the right to make a selection. The last job I had I went to two interviews, they both offered me the job, but when I called one back and said I'd accepted a different offer they were incensed! A lot of what I saw said to me that Chinese are way behind us in the ideas that anyone in society should be equally important.

For that matter, I went into a pharmacy (and they are not run by the well educated professionals you'd expect in our country. they're not stupid either, but generally anyone can buy over the counter drugs and sell them, and that kind of shows). The woman in the pharmacy was being polite, but when I said I didn't want anything she sneered angrily, then immediately covered it up, like this was something she hadn't seen before, and was polite again. So there's a definite "EFFE YOU TOO!" reflex if they sometimes don't get what they want.

Anyway, this job I found myself. You might wonder why I would even want to work with the referral service again. Well they know many small places, and I told them specifically I wanted a job just in the capital city. However this creepy guy there, who I've never liked, immediately tried to play games with me. Like I told him I was going to get a hotel in the capital city, so that he would know I don't need to take his crap, and hopefully he would just make the placement and get his little fee. But instead he asked me how much the hotels were. Well, you see, he works in that city and everyone goes past the train station where the hotels are, and all hotels in Taiwan paint their prices on the front window in big huge letters. So he already knows the price himself, he was either asking to see if he could snow me in some way, or just to feel like the big boss, which is something many Chinese can never get enough of. Even standing up, sitting down, picking which plates to eat off of, I've seen them show attraction to being bossy in things we would not even care about!

I would guess it's, again, that big group culture, your always supported, and always competing, against a group of people, so whoever gets to say what dishes we'll be eating off of, gets to be boss for five seconds. It's understandable given how they live.

But then he also suggested a job that's, again, outside the capital city. I went to their website and found lots of jobs posted, some closer to the city, and many which paid more, so I used the website email to embarrass him, sending "contact us" messages saying "Hey, Lin, how about this one? Pays more", or "This message is for Lin, please send it to him, Lin, this one is closer".

It was pretty funny if you understand how prissy they are about being bossy. Anyway he responded with an ice cold "Hello starbase(used my real name of course), I am sending your resume to this job. I will let you know what I hear."

Hah! See they have this control thing, make me tell him hotel prices he already knows, select jobs that are precisely NOT what I said, fail to respond to my questions and "give me the marching orders". Pretty pathetic, and he's 10 years younger than me too, which I've come to learn is electrifyingly exciting to younger Asians, because their societies really keep them as "too young" to do things well into their thirties, things we do for ourselves when we're 16.

So I realized I couldn't work with him and just sent out two of my own resumes, slam bam, a week later I have a job offer. I think that adds yet more appeal to his behavior, that he knows his services are not really valuable anyway, so messing with me (and I'm sure others) to the point we quit using him is just more fun, because it was never worth anything anyway. I ,of course, would make the calculation that if something I'm doing isn't worth that much, I'll do a perfect job of it and hope my customers send more to me, but that's just me.

Whew! I think I'll use this post as a chapter in some future book, I'm glad I documented it here!

Well goodbye everyone, see you again soon (I'm only flying 3 hours tomorrow! It's so close).

Cheers, and take care,

starbase