Written on January 29th in Chicago, IL. Published until now for unknown reasons:
Days and weeks have gone past my eyes like money goes by in a casino. When I came from Guatemala to Chicago to visit my family, I was planning a productive trip, in which I would visit colleges, get a part-time job, earn some quick money, and mostly spend time with my immigrant family. I had much unfinished business at the time - my applications for Ph.D. programs had just been sent off, I was waiting for a Taiwan scholarship program to open in Guatemala, and I had just finished my thesis paper and handed it in to the Computer Science Department. My life seemed to be on hold until further notice.
My first few days in Chicago, right before Christmas, I focused on settling down. I found 4 drawers to hold my clothes, a bed to sleep upon, and a corner beside the bed to hold my clothes pile. I unpacked the rest of my few material possessions, and spent my time eating and dozing.
Then along came Christmas Eve, and with it, the family dinner parties with relatives we don't really want to visit, but are glad to partake food from. During that time, my schedule consisted in dressing up, being driven to and from the dinner parties, eating and drinking as much as I could ingest, getting hugged by every person at the dinner party, and then impatiently waiting for the old people to stop talking and take us home. (I don't want to be cynical, but that was basically it). This routine lasted two or three days, after which even I felt a little overconscious about my weight and my belly.
During the last week before New Year's, I again came into a period of intense lethargy. It was common for me to wake up unconcerned at 2 in the afternoon, and to spend my waking hours playing Sudoku and nibbling on loaves of bread and peanuts. Web browsing was also high on my "To Do" list, but since my three internet-addicted siblings (or my parents’ residual offspring, as I call them) were on vacation, I had to find alternative forms of entertainment.
However, this time was not a complete waste. Having no true (or even apparent) evidence of being busy with something, I was often obliged to help my parents go shopping and laundering. During these little trips, I opened my first US bank account with $150 (a loan from my mom; I had nil at the time), and with it, the financial possibilities in this country.
Then New Year's Eve came too, and with it, its corresponding dinner party. As with Christmas, I can't say I had a blast in the social sense, but my digestion was certainly satisfied again. My aunt surprised us with Pizza, Cheese Sticks, and Nachos as a special treat of Holiday Goodness. It was also during this time that my mom learned about Skype, and in view that my sister was wasting about $100/month with the cellphone, she decided to use technology to lower her phone bills. It was quite a big step; I had never seen my mom do anything on the internet except check her email, and that was already asking too much. There was an offer for unlimited calls to the US and Canada for $15, and my mom decided to purchase it. Sending her credit card number ONLINE. BIG step.
Since my mom is not exactly a VoIP expert, I served as instructor and guide to her while she learned the knacks of the system. What with all the possible combinations between phones, internet, skype accounts, phone lines, and international calls, it was a long task to explain the possibilities and consequences of each. However, she ended up purchasing it, and now we have a dedicated costless "Skype phone server" at home, available for one whole year.
Then along came the new year 2007, and with it, new activities. Jan 2nd, my dad took me to a near public library branch. I was casually browsing its shelves, when I read a catching phrase on a book’s cover: "I was born in one of those loving families that fail to prepare one for real life...", and beside it was a picture of a girl's legs. "Wow", I thought, "this girl was raised up just like me!" So I picked it up and began reading. Easy reading, medium-sized font, first-person perspective of a homeschooled girl's life. I'm usually averse to doing anything which might suggest initiative in front of my parents, but the way I identified with the initial phrase was just too much. I had to take it, and I asked my dad to borrow it for me.
I gobbled up the little 400-page story, "Alice, I think", in less than 24 hours. The story was about a socially handicapped teenage girl, homeschooled until age fourteen, and it focused on that one year of her life, during which she gets a counselor with low self-esteem, makes a list of her "Life Goals" (which included writing an essay describing the striking similarities between the behaviors of people and chickens), and makes her first few friends. The book was hilarious, and besides, it gave me a whole other view over an outcast life. At the end of the book was a small excerpt from the SEQUEL, titled "Miss Smithers", which I ate up as well. Hungry for more, I woke up early next day to look for the sequel on the Public Library site, and found the book "Miss Smithers" listed. I walked to the nearest library branch that very day to find it, but I was redirected to another branch, about 3 miles away. I didn't care - I walked the whole way there and back just to get the sought book.
The second book lasted no more than the first. I enjoyed it thrillingly, and had me imagining what the third book would be like. I liked the book so much, that I looked up the author's email on the net and sent her a hearty congratulations from a well-earned fan. After she answered my first email, we exchanged a couple more. When I told her how her books had "sparked the desire to write in me again", she supportively agreed, but said nothing else, and then we had nothing else to talk about. Her last email was a little dismissive, so I decided not to write again. I guess she has more important things to do than write back to a random fan.
After reading her stories, I was left with an urge for reading, so I went to the library again. Hoping to scrub some cultural/literary goodness on myself, I borrowed old classics - "Sherlock Holmes", "Great Expectations", "The Count of Montecristo", and even attached a french course in CD to pump up my linguistics. So thanks to Susan Juby, writer extraordinaire, my literary side woke up again, and I'm glad to say I've already finished the first two books on the list.
One of my goals while I was in Chicago was to find a job, and I didn't forget it during all this time. Sometimes I found an abandoned newspaper lying around, and I browsed over the "jobs" section to search for a suitable position for me. I made a small list of positions that I liked, described under titles as diverse as "Bartender", "Office assistant", and "Medical Research Subject", along with their phones and emails. It was too bad I don't have my own serial truck, or I would've definitely rocked as an "interstate truck driver" - that position was all the rage all over the "jobs" section.
It turned out that I had to PAY the Bartending job so as to get hired, so that one was the first off the list. The Office Assistant jobs were always taken (even if I called the very same day in the morning), and the hospital claimed they had posted no such ad in the newspaper. Duh! It was your phone and logo on the ad, weirdos! After all the failures, I would've gladly taken the Dunkin Donuts position at half of the minimum-wage. I asked, but there were no positions available.
One of the jobs, titled "ACT Teacher", emailed me back. I wrote to them like a complete suck-up, saying things like "Yes, I can be available at whichever date, time, and place you tell me to", so desperate was I to get the job. So I was called to present a five-minute audition about a "non-academic topic" at a certain time and place to show off my teacher skills, and I was just too glad to comply.
The audition being a week away, I had to come up with a topic. Then the dilemma struck me. What was I going to teach? I don't know anything non-academic! I'm a no-life, techie geeky social retard! I tried to think exotic, and geography came to mind. I tried to think cool, and I thought about hard drives and the Internet. After them came Music, Math, Physics, Chemistry... every one of them definitely belonged to the academic club. I was giving up, already planning a dissertation over Mayan numerals, when I remembered a conversation I had with a fellow geek back at college - about Photography! He had taken two photography courses to fill up the art requirements, and he had told me how the camera works, along with some cool effects to do with light and moving objects. Certainly not academic... I had found a topic!
I had spent five days deciding what to teach, so I was left with two to prepare for the audition. I know it sounds like a whole lot of time, but with all the shopping-with-parents and sleeping in my schedule, I had hardly any time left to prepare. I wrote down what I remembered, browsed Wikipedia, and made up a speech. I even printed out some example photographs I found on the Internet to use on the audition. I even practiced my speech... twice! I was going to get that job no matter what. So on the appointed day, I left an hour early and found my way - by bus, train, and foot - to the address they gave me. It was only my luck for the very train station at that address to have been closed that day. I still got there ten minutes early, so I began to look around.
The first room inside the glass door had white-washed walls and a gray-tiled floor. There was a small whiteboard hanging on the left side, announcing the appointments for the day. LSAT Practice Test 10:00, GMAT Lesson with Mandy 11:30, and ACT Auditions with Laura, 3:00, Room 5. I pushed the second glass door and came up to a long carpeted passageway, very clean and professional-looking. Even the air smelled fresh, and I felt guilty of polluting it with my mere breath. The doors on the sides all came up to clean carpeted classrooms, each one with about a dozen wooden student desks and a big white board. However, there was nothing or no one besides all the neat furniture. Somewhat uncomfortable by the whole place, I obediently went into room 5 and waited for my audition, while I read "Sherlock Holmes", hoping to impress my future boss with my erudition.
A couple of minutes later my “future boss” entered and confirmed my name, while introducing herself as Laura. I was shocked, and my face gave it all away. She was gorgeous - slim and tall, golden hair, long and flowing. She had dressy black pants and a blue dressy shirt unbuttoned down to her upper torso, showing off the bare V-section below her neck. The skin she showed off was flawlessly white and perfect, not a freckle, not a spot. Her face was sharp and long, harmonious with her slim body and her long, thin hands.
It's a good thing I practiced my presentation before - this way I just repeated whatever I had memorized while I was actually savoring her gorgeous body. When I was finished, she said she liked my presentation and that I had qualified to take the training sessions. While she spoke, she walked about the room comfortably, very much like a model, crossing her legs by and by and all the time unconsciously showing off her fascinating physical form. She continued talking about the company, wages, and other details concerning the job I was applying to, but I was too busy looking at her and nodding to pay attention.
When I left the building, my feet seemed lighter and the air sweeter. I went back with a big smile on my face, wondering all the time why did Laura choose to be a teacher, when she would've obviously made a much better Pepsi Supermodel. That day was a Thursday, and my training sessions would take place during the next two weekends, from 9am to 6pm. Good thing I could squeeze it in my very hectic schedule. When I got back home, the complete information regarding the training sessions was in my gmail. I went over the details of the training, and what surprised me the most of the whole training thing was we were getting paid for it. $8/hour. I was getting paid to get trained! What kind of company does that? It's like, "Thank you SO much for letting us train you, training random people to be ACT teachers is a real asset to our company, here's your check". Of course I didn't complain.
I spent the next 10 days focusing on my training experience. I attended class, did my homework, and met my seven classmates-slash-"teacher trainees". I have to say the sessions were fun. Chris, our trainer, was a cool guy in his late twenties, who really knew what he was doing. He taught us what the ACT test was about, and how to help kids with "below-average performance" to get better grades on it. All the time it seemed he was just leading an amusing conversation. It was obvious he had given many training sessions before; he knew the book by heart: questions, answers, numbers, everything. Gosh, I wondered what would spending an entire life as a teacher be like.
During the sessions, we were supposed to learn math, reading, and grammar from Chris, and then teach it back to him in the same way. It was not exactly a thrill ride, but with Chris as trainer, I can't say I was bored. I also got to meet my classmates-slash-“teacher trainees”, which were a pretty diverse crowd. There was a tall friendly Serbian man who always leaned when he taught the class, like he had to get close to speak to us. There was this tall, quiet, friendly Kenyan guy, who would surely have a hard time handling a tough class. There were also two US-bred "African-American" women, clearly experienced in the teaching business, a blonde white woman in her late thirties with a southern accent, a short brown guy with a face of business upon him, and a white kid called Charley, pretty good at handling a class. My Hispanic role contributed nicely to the class’s diverse gene pool.
Besides the training, I was given a lot of paperwork to fill out - forms like a W-something and an I-something. I was supposed to write down my tax return amount for the last year... I was so confused. After I made sure there was no checkbox with the label "Unemployed bum" beside it, I consulted with the accounting expert alias “mom”. She just took the sheet away from me, drew a couple of scribbles on the form, and told me “Sign here”. I ended up writing my exact same name like 8 times on different sheets of paper, I signed forms like they were autographs, and wrote down details about myself even I didn't know I had.
A bank account was necessary to get paid. That was when I realized that the bank account was important. If it got me paid at a job, what else could it do? I remembered PayPal and how I could never get a darn account because I lived in third-world underdeveloped Guatemala, where it's still 1995. So after waiting in line to get a turn at the computer, I went online and opened up a PayPal account. I told them I lived in Chicago, and DONE! That was it... I had an account. "OK", I thought, "I got a PayPal account, now I need to have money to pay WITH". So I tried transferring 16 cents from my bank account to my PayPal account, as what I thought should be an "easy fast transaction". Wrong. It took the system 6 days to transfer the darn 16 cents.
After PayPal, the next obvious choice was eBay. I already had an account at the site, which I made when DDR was all the rage and I badly wanted a DDR pad. So I logged in as "ddrfan16" and began bidding on some computer stuff I wanted. OK, DVD burner for $4.00, no problem. External USB hard drive $6.00, cool. Cardbus WiFi adapter $2.00, I was really getting the hang of it! Several days later, hours before the bids ended, I was massively outbid on all of them, and they ended up being more expensive than the retail price at stores. Darn eBay freaks.
Coming back to the paperwork, they also gave me some schedules and addresses for the schools we were supposed to teach in. The courses lasted all the way from February to April, and there were about 16 hours a month worth of teaching. The schools were all far away, so I made a little expedition to the nearest school on the list to simulate the trip I'd have to take each day, in case I got the job. It took me almost 3 hours to get there! And 3 more to get back! And the classes were supposed to last like only 2 hours each - not reasonable at all to travel 6 hours each day to do only 2 hours of actual work. That’s when I realized "Oops. Probably the job doesn't work for me after all." I'd be better off working as the train driver during all that time. And the problem was really all my fault - the job advertisement did specify the locations of the schools as "South and Southwest suburbs". It just so happened that I had no idea where that was at the time. So I began looking for reasonable excuses to slide my way out of the job.
Finding a valid reason was very important. I couldn't put it in my conscience to lie to supermodel Laura and just take away her training money. (It wasn't really hers, but I still felt guilty). It was just around this time that I conveniently remembered about the Taiwan scholarships. I began searching online for the details, and there they were. The deadlines for the paperwork were due by March. And they required signatures, recent photos. Yes! I had found a very valid excuse. Let's just add an interview to the requirements so I have to be back in Guatemala personally during those days. I couldn't take the job because a Master's scholarship in Taiwan is more important than a seasonal part-time job. How obvious. Now I only had to tell Laura, and an email was just the right way to do it.
"Dear Laura:
This past week I was informed of a big opportunity for a master's degree in Asia that I can apply to. One of the main requirements is to hand in all paperwork and to be interviewed on a date to be determined during March or April in Guatemala, and I'm sorry to say, this interferes with the currently available teaching schedules you gave to me.
My main concern is whether you would prefer me to finish the ACT training or not, in case you would want to have me as a possible teacher for future opportunities.
Regards,
Antonio"
She replied immediately, asking me how many classes would this interview interfere with. Since I planned on getting NO classes, I told her I'd probably have to be there at least three weeks. Just as I thought, this forced Laura to let me go for now, and just keep me as a candidate for future openings. And that was it - I was again officially unemployed. However, I got an email a few days later saying I had succesfully completed the training and become a certified ACT teacher for the company. It also gave me online access to their system with my email address as my username and - SHOCK - my own personal secret password as password. How - on - Earth - did - they - know - my password??? I'm POSITIVE I never gave it to them. I still don't know what the heck happened. It seems my secret is out, and it could be dangerous. If someone impersonates me, I could lose the uniqueness of my social identity, my privacy, and the 16 cents from my PayPal account!! Hmmm, when I think about it, it's not that much to lose.
The online access to the system turned out to be quite a good deal, though. It seems they just began using this new system where the practice ACT essays are graded by online teachers who want to earn a buck per essay on their free time. It was a perfect match! No one could possibly have more free time than me, I was 100% unsolicited! So I started using this new system and grading essays, ruthlessly pointing out incorrect grammar and penalizing disorganized ideas. I also gave them pointers and slap-on-the-shoulder kind of comments for their good points, so I think I'm doing a good job. The system says it owes me about $60 by now and rising, which is totally fine by me. Checks are mailed every month or so, which means I just missed payday. There's always February though, and I hope to pay some ugly debts to my mom by then.
Speaking of money, I'm also hoping to get a little extra cash when I get back to my dear home country. Being a techie kind of guy, I know many other techie weirdos, and all of them are always more or less interested in getting fancy techie stuff. USB flash memory being all the rage these days, I've pointed out some nice memory deals at the nearest Microcenter, and plan on reselling them to my friends when I get back. Memory's almost twice as expensive in Guatemala as it is here, and I plan on using that to my advantage. I already have a couple of confirmed buyers and I already have the merchandise for them. 30% gain over cost is a reasonable deal, right?
And speaking of techie stuff, I am now the owner of one Toshiba 1805-S204 laptop, 20GB hard drive, CD/DVD reader, 990 MHz processor, 240MB RAM. Isn't that just awesome? I'm typing on it right now. Can you believe some teacher just gave it away to my sister because the screen flickered? Well, little generous sister learned from her teacher and gave it to me. Oh, I love her. It's not exactly cutting-edge technology, mind you, but it gets the job done. It didn't have WiFi access, so I bought it an SMC WiFi cardbus adapter yesterday for $29.99 + 9% tax, and now I can do just about everything on it. My sister is definitely getting a birthday present this year.
So I've passed from being an unemployed bum to being an unemployed, online essay-grading freelancer who works on a gift laptop. Definitely an improvement, and I'm still looking forward to more stuff. All of the things I left "on hold" when I came here are still on hold, and may very well change the way my life will go. And there's the Taiwan scholarship to apply to, but since I'm not back in my tropical country, my older sister is acting as my proxy, getting information and filling out paperwork. I'm helping her with what I can, but she's the one who has to go to places and talk to people. She's also offered to help me with my graduation process at the university, and she's emailing me my scanned correspondence every time it gets home. Good old sis. She's getting a present too.
Speaking of correspondence, my TOEFL and GRE results arrived back home in Guatemala. I got a 800/800 Quantitative, 620/800 Verbal, 4.0/6.0 analytical Writing on the GRE General, 850/900 94th percentile in the GRE Computer Science Specific Subject Test, and 30/30 Reading, 30/30 Listening, 22/30 Speaking, 22/30 Writing, 104/120 Total on my TOEFL. I seem to perceive English much better than I express it. I'd probably make a good psychologist.
Believe it or not, I'm also going to the gym. I love swimming, and the gym has a pool. And a jacuzzi and a sauna. Yippee! So I paid $42 and now I own a 1-month membership with the Chicago YMCA. My uncle offers to take us to the gym three times a week, and I'm only too glad to oblige. It was about time I did something with my muscles besides breathing and chewing. Since the residual offspring goes too, I'm teaching them to swim. I feel like the brotherly old brother in the Barney show.
It's always a good experience to go swimming to the YMCA. The pool water is warm, the jacuzzi's DE-liciously relaxing, and it's all clean and nice. I still feel uncomfortable with all the men walking around the lockers like it was the garden of Eden, but I guess it's a matter of getting used to it. However, one of these particular sessions was special. Lap time had just begun, and I was the only one around. I got in the second lane, and started swimming. There I was, thinking about water and Bernoulli's law, that I saw an asTOUNding sight. Right next to me, in the first lane, were the legs and thighs of the most AMAZING woman's body I have ever seen from that angle. I could see her feet and the two pieces of her black bikini, but couldn't quite make out her face. I was immediately reminded of certain Maxim magazine publications I glance at in gas stations. Her bottom black swimsuit was actually held together by a single shoelace knot, and the knot-ends were just beside my hands. Only common sense stopped me from pulling the delicate knot apart. It wouldn't have made the view THAT much different – it was practically a single string that was covering her well-sculpt behind. And her legs were just SO PERFECT - and her body SO SLIM! I was just about as mesmerized as I was with Laura, only this time I had a slightly different view.
My caveman instincts were on fire, and all I wanted was an excuse to talk to her. But she didn't stop swimming, so neither did I. All I did was follow her up all the way on her laps, even though I had to swim slower than before. She eventually did come up, just to get her towel and go back to the girls lockers. Her face was not that young, and it somehow suggested to me that she was already a mother. I thanked her internally for the gorgeous view she gave me, and went back to swimming. I'm hoping on actually meeting girls with bodies like that while I'm still here in Chicago. They seem to be much more in stock here than they are in Guatemala.
Probably the most singular negative event that has happened to me in Chicago was an encounter with criminals. It was Friday night, and my friend Marcelo from high school was casually in Chicago for the weekend, so we arranged a meeting downtown. I had just left the house and was standing at the bus stop, when an "African-American" 1.85m (6 foot 1 for you English-system freaks) kid began asking me for money. He had a really nice coat on, and was well-dressed for the winter time – didn’t seem like a beggar at all. And he wasn’t really begging, because he hunched over me with a nasty, threatening look on his face. I told him no, but he just stayed there and kept asking. I kept saying no, but every time the kid came closer to me and talked louder. So after about a minute of fake negotiation, I offered him two dollars if he would leave me alone, and he agreed. In a display of blatant stupidity, I took out my wallet and began taking out the two bills. The kid then grabbed my wallet and tried to run off with it. But my right hand had a grip on it, and didn't let go. Heck, I had $35 and my debit card in there, I wasn't about to let him take it!
So we struggled with the poor wallet for a while, and when he saw my resistance, he began punching me on the head. It's a good thing I turned my face, or that's where the punches would've ended. He was looking all around him all the time, like he was scared and looking out for the police, or maybe for his buddies, while all I did during the struggle was hold on to my wallet. After about 10 seconds of struggling, he let go, and I fell on the street upon my knees. I got up and briskly walked away, hoping to catch the bus on the next bus stop on the way.
But it was too soon yet, and the guy got into a car and followed me along with 3 other "African-American" black kids. They drove past me while they yelled stuff I couldn’t understand, so I went back, and there I saw my bus. I got into the front door as fast as I could, but the first kid got in behind me. "OK", I thought, "time to flee". I launched from the bus back exit and ran back as fast as I could. The kids followed me for about a block and then gave up. Paranoid, I took a different path home and made several unexpected crossings. Finally, making sure no one was following me, I took the real path back home and got in, wallet and all, not precisely happy, but at least satisfied with the results. They ruined my Friday night out, but at least they didn't ruin my fragile finances.
After the incident, I've preferred to stay at home and socialize online. I enjoy chatting with friends and meeting new ones on the Net. Through the SharedTalk website, I recently met a European girl who speaks German and wants to practice her Spanish. And since I'm a native Spanish speaker and still need to practice my German, bingo! We’re a perfect match. I really want to get up to date with language learning, and German's a good way to start. I even borrowed a German novel out of the library: "Ein Wunsch bleibt immer" (A wish lasts forever). So far two men, a Filipino and Donaldson, just broke into a hotel room to kill a German guy called Peter Stolberg. Stolberg got back to the hotel at two in the morning, and started talking with an old bell-guy called Steve. Then Stolberg thinks something about a naked girl in a bed, and how she had light brown skin - and that's what I’ve read so far, up to the third page. It's slow reading, but I'm learning German, and that's the important part. I want the MSN girl to help me with reading this book, in case we run out of topics to chat about.
Thus has been spent my time in Chicago. I'm not really into anything these days except grading essays online, but I have no idea what's going to happen. Between waiting for Ph.D. results, the Taiwan program and my graduation, I have a lot to think about. Chance happens all the time, and when it happens to me (probably soon), I'll have more memories to write.
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