Dear Reader:
I have not forgotten about you.
I have just been really really busy, and some really important things have happened, like the first two weekends at CTN (and all of the grand messes that came with) and the showcase with my students at Cambodian Living Arts, which I've only been working towards for my entire stay here.
Those things have happened and happened in spite of a lot of things, and inside them every second was full and filled and I could have written about it, but didn't dare get language involved in the very delicate matter of walking creations from my head to reality.
Writing would have also required thinking, and thinking about something besides what was in front of my eyes and pasted on the inside of my eyelids.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to go back and write about it. I'm currently in the middle of a 4-concert, 15-song weekend that is being compounded by the GM watching and serious music issues, and my ability to think about anything besides putting something halfway decent onstage (which was a bit touchy today, and my biggest priority for Wednesday's rehearsal is getting the dancers to dance like human beings and not robots) is quite limited.
In any case. I've decided that instead of spamming the heck out of everyone on Facebook with my misadventures at CTN, I'm moving all of that to Twitter, where I can invent hashtags and whine all I like, and will fit in just fine. My handle is @pixiedustdance. I'll attempt to keep the tweets up, live-tweet a concert or two, and generally report on all the various madness I can possibly spot (I don't have to work too hard currently...).
And whenever I come out of haze of obsession and focus that is keeping me going right now, we'll talk.
Showing posts with label jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jobs. Show all posts
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Monday, July 16, 2012
Monday: And so it begins
The first half of this post was written on Monday morning, when my Facebook feed was filled with happy statuses about a great Sunday, or somewhat less happy about the upcoming return to reality when Monday rolled around.
I have been to the future, my friends, and Monday is not so terrible.
It started with a meeting; or rather, with a phone call as I was about to leave for the meeting. My mad e-mailing seems to be going somewhere, as I was asked for an interview for an assitant teaching position at a nearby international school. Then it was off to the University of Fine Arts, and I didn't really know what I was planning to ask about. The pretext for my meeting, I found out later, was something about wanting to do research on the Royal Ballet, but we soon got past that. As a matter of fact, I just wanted to know them, and be known, and both turned out splendidly.
The meeting took place in the administrative and admissions office, which was simply a large room in one of the long buildings that make up the university. Next door was the music department, its doors wide open and some very lovely music spilling out, and on its other side "Choreographic Arts", though apparently they just teach the theory.
In the middle of the room was a wood table with a teapot, and surrounding it about five or six old desks, retro 70s style, clunky and somewhat gray. One had a slab of rock under one foot to keep it stable. Two of the desks had enormous desktop computers, the kind that look like old TVs. The floor, tiled red and white, was very dusty. Here and there a few pieces of scenery or decorations lay on the floor. It was cool, though, shaded and a couple ceiling fans gently keeping the air circulated.
I guess that's what counts for high tech here. Nonetheless, the man I was meeting was very friendly, passed off a few phone numbers and suggested I meet the teachers at their Secondary School. Exams, he said, are tomorrow, and then vacation, so you should go tomorrow.
Guess where I'm going tomorrow then? Somewhere way up in the north of the city, though really it's maybe 5 km, to a campus that they didn't really know the street address of but knew roughly how to find it and pointed it out on my handy Phnom Penh map. Interview, then secondary school. Sounds like a good day to me...
In any case, I also started my workshops -- due to the Secondary Fine Arts school having their exams, as I had just learned this morning, 11 of my students were not present, leaving me to try and ingratiate myself to the 4 who were present. They were all very nice, don't get me wrong, it's just that the long and the short of it is:
They have never done anything at all like this. I don't speak Khmer, though I do have a translator. They don't even know what 'choreography' is, as with a lot of people; I say it means making dances and they want to slap movement together. But there's more to it, and it's my job to get them to trust me enough to try it this new, strange, and decidedly different way. I'm trying to let them stay in their comfort zone by using movement they are comfortable with, but we are approaching it in a vastly different way than they know and -- well, that's why I'm here, to give them a new way of looking at things.
It was a long three hours, but that's okay; if this is going to work, it's going to take a lot of patience and a lot of attention from me. I bet you anything that the more we go along, the better it will be -- mostly because I'll have a better idea of how to approach it, introduce it, etc. I already do, and looking forward to restarting with the full 15 tomorrow.
Tonight my friend is taking me to a popular expat biweekly event called "Nerd Night," in which people present on something they're a nerd about, from tea drinking to barefoot running, by talking about 20 slides for 20 seconds each.
In the mean time I'm having a quiet dinner at home -- some veggies, some rice cooked with olive oil and salt, and bread. For dessert I decided to have half of what I suspected was a mango, and having never cut a mango before was unsure how to proceed, having somehow gotten into my head I should cut it like an avocado.
It was certainly a mango, but you most certainly do not cut it like an avocado, but juice everwhere aside, it is perfectly ripe and very, very yummy.
Not a bad life at all...
I have been to the future, my friends, and Monday is not so terrible.
It started with a meeting; or rather, with a phone call as I was about to leave for the meeting. My mad e-mailing seems to be going somewhere, as I was asked for an interview for an assitant teaching position at a nearby international school. Then it was off to the University of Fine Arts, and I didn't really know what I was planning to ask about. The pretext for my meeting, I found out later, was something about wanting to do research on the Royal Ballet, but we soon got past that. As a matter of fact, I just wanted to know them, and be known, and both turned out splendidly.
The meeting took place in the administrative and admissions office, which was simply a large room in one of the long buildings that make up the university. Next door was the music department, its doors wide open and some very lovely music spilling out, and on its other side "Choreographic Arts", though apparently they just teach the theory.
In the middle of the room was a wood table with a teapot, and surrounding it about five or six old desks, retro 70s style, clunky and somewhat gray. One had a slab of rock under one foot to keep it stable. Two of the desks had enormous desktop computers, the kind that look like old TVs. The floor, tiled red and white, was very dusty. Here and there a few pieces of scenery or decorations lay on the floor. It was cool, though, shaded and a couple ceiling fans gently keeping the air circulated.
I guess that's what counts for high tech here. Nonetheless, the man I was meeting was very friendly, passed off a few phone numbers and suggested I meet the teachers at their Secondary School. Exams, he said, are tomorrow, and then vacation, so you should go tomorrow.
Guess where I'm going tomorrow then? Somewhere way up in the north of the city, though really it's maybe 5 km, to a campus that they didn't really know the street address of but knew roughly how to find it and pointed it out on my handy Phnom Penh map. Interview, then secondary school. Sounds like a good day to me...
In any case, I also started my workshops -- due to the Secondary Fine Arts school having their exams, as I had just learned this morning, 11 of my students were not present, leaving me to try and ingratiate myself to the 4 who were present. They were all very nice, don't get me wrong, it's just that the long and the short of it is:
They have never done anything at all like this. I don't speak Khmer, though I do have a translator. They don't even know what 'choreography' is, as with a lot of people; I say it means making dances and they want to slap movement together. But there's more to it, and it's my job to get them to trust me enough to try it this new, strange, and decidedly different way. I'm trying to let them stay in their comfort zone by using movement they are comfortable with, but we are approaching it in a vastly different way than they know and -- well, that's why I'm here, to give them a new way of looking at things.
It was a long three hours, but that's okay; if this is going to work, it's going to take a lot of patience and a lot of attention from me. I bet you anything that the more we go along, the better it will be -- mostly because I'll have a better idea of how to approach it, introduce it, etc. I already do, and looking forward to restarting with the full 15 tomorrow.
Tonight my friend is taking me to a popular expat biweekly event called "Nerd Night," in which people present on something they're a nerd about, from tea drinking to barefoot running, by talking about 20 slides for 20 seconds each.
In the mean time I'm having a quiet dinner at home -- some veggies, some rice cooked with olive oil and salt, and bread. For dessert I decided to have half of what I suspected was a mango, and having never cut a mango before was unsure how to proceed, having somehow gotten into my head I should cut it like an avocado.
It was certainly a mango, but you most certainly do not cut it like an avocado, but juice everwhere aside, it is perfectly ripe and very, very yummy.
Not a bad life at all...
Thursday, June 3, 2010
June 2nd, 2010
The air is sticky here, not like the dry clean air of Colorado, or the sea level smog of New York City. But only sticky after it rains, as it does like clockwork right around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. According to my boss at the Pack Place, Asheville qualifies as a tropical rainforest. I can see why that would be the case; today on a long walk down to Carrier Park (during which Hilary and I bickered the entire time about which direction we were going) I think we saw more green than exists in the entire state of Colorado. It's beautiful -- in an attempt to find the promised bike path from Hominy Creek, we walked across a bridge that said "Bridge Closed" (I figured it didn't mention pedestrians, and thus was free for our feet), and looking down the river with the incredible masses of green on the sides -- wow.
I wanted to sit outside and watch it rain -- we barely beat the rain on our way home from the walk -- but got distracted (damn the internet!). I caught the tail end of it; something about sitting on the porch and watch the rain fall, quietly safe under the eave of the house with a steaming mug of tea (with milk and sugar), maybe with a book to read --- my hopelessly romantic soul finds that incredibly attractive. Anyway, it's no longer raining, and the tea was drunk already, so there you have it and that's that.
(The generic brand cheerios from the grocery store are impossibly addicting. I will have to exercise an incredible amount of self-control to keep from eating the entire box.)
Very good news: we finally have a move in date for the apartment, Sunday. I believe Janet (the woman we are staying with) will be able to take us there, along with our luggage. Hopefully our other Asheville friend will be able to drop off our boxes as well, because not only does she have all of my cooking supplies, but she is giving us a futon and a card table. With those pieces, we will have exactly two pieces of furniture. (Hint: If you know people in Asheville, tell them we want their unused furniture!!!) Hilary gets the futon, I get the air mattress. The rest of the time, we camp. It's not ideal, but such is life until we can cobble together enough money to get something else, or get our friend to drive us to the Habitat for Humanity and buy a cheap couch or something. We have yet to discover if we'll have internet, somehow managing to forget to ask anytime we have the landlady on the phone.
Hilary just got a second job, and I have an interview tomorrow morning for a second job myself. Things progress, move on, somehow we seem to find things when we stop looking. I wouldn't say things have fallen into our laps; we've beat the pavement like anyone else, but at least some of those seeds have sprouted, a bit.
Speaking of jobs, yesterday was my first day at one of those jobs, doing ticketing/box office work for the theatre complex downtown. It's not a lot of hours and it doesn't pay particularly well, but it's all good training and at least it's something, so I can't complain. Besides, I need to know it all for when I'm running my Dad's as-of-yet-in-the-works production company, so I don't mind. First day on jobs are always slightly stressful, because it's all new and you don't want to screw up, especially considering the sole reason I got this gig is because I go to Columbia and my boss is a Columbia alum and couldn't say no to helping out a fellow Columbian. I never filled out an application or anything like that, so I'm running on the good name of the Core curriculum and an Ivy League education, and really hope I don't screw it up.
(I can't see any reason why I would. But still.)
(My god, no wonder I can never blog. I think I've been working on this entry for at least an hour. But I have an excuse, I've been chatting with a friend on facebook. Have to keep up connections ya know, especially since I'm disappearing off the face of the planet for a year. Okay, it's just across the pond, not another planet, but you know what I mean).
Anyway, I did go contra dancing on Monday night, despite my hemming and hawing the contrary, and yes, it was a lot of fun. I didn't sit down for a single dance, managed to attract a few creepers, convince several people I was actually experienced at this, get a LOT of raised eyebrows and people searching for nice ways to ask "Why are you here?" upon hearing that I go to school in NYC, and get walked home by an incredibly good dancer and southern gentleman. No one will ever accuse me of having a boring life, I guess.
More updates to come; for now I will go find new and spectacular ways of killing time.
I wanted to sit outside and watch it rain -- we barely beat the rain on our way home from the walk -- but got distracted (damn the internet!). I caught the tail end of it; something about sitting on the porch and watch the rain fall, quietly safe under the eave of the house with a steaming mug of tea (with milk and sugar), maybe with a book to read --- my hopelessly romantic soul finds that incredibly attractive. Anyway, it's no longer raining, and the tea was drunk already, so there you have it and that's that.
(The generic brand cheerios from the grocery store are impossibly addicting. I will have to exercise an incredible amount of self-control to keep from eating the entire box.)
Very good news: we finally have a move in date for the apartment, Sunday. I believe Janet (the woman we are staying with) will be able to take us there, along with our luggage. Hopefully our other Asheville friend will be able to drop off our boxes as well, because not only does she have all of my cooking supplies, but she is giving us a futon and a card table. With those pieces, we will have exactly two pieces of furniture. (Hint: If you know people in Asheville, tell them we want their unused furniture!!!) Hilary gets the futon, I get the air mattress. The rest of the time, we camp. It's not ideal, but such is life until we can cobble together enough money to get something else, or get our friend to drive us to the Habitat for Humanity and buy a cheap couch or something. We have yet to discover if we'll have internet, somehow managing to forget to ask anytime we have the landlady on the phone.
Hilary just got a second job, and I have an interview tomorrow morning for a second job myself. Things progress, move on, somehow we seem to find things when we stop looking. I wouldn't say things have fallen into our laps; we've beat the pavement like anyone else, but at least some of those seeds have sprouted, a bit.
Speaking of jobs, yesterday was my first day at one of those jobs, doing ticketing/box office work for the theatre complex downtown. It's not a lot of hours and it doesn't pay particularly well, but it's all good training and at least it's something, so I can't complain. Besides, I need to know it all for when I'm running my Dad's as-of-yet-in-the-works production company, so I don't mind. First day on jobs are always slightly stressful, because it's all new and you don't want to screw up, especially considering the sole reason I got this gig is because I go to Columbia and my boss is a Columbia alum and couldn't say no to helping out a fellow Columbian. I never filled out an application or anything like that, so I'm running on the good name of the Core curriculum and an Ivy League education, and really hope I don't screw it up.
(I can't see any reason why I would. But still.)
(My god, no wonder I can never blog. I think I've been working on this entry for at least an hour. But I have an excuse, I've been chatting with a friend on facebook. Have to keep up connections ya know, especially since I'm disappearing off the face of the planet for a year. Okay, it's just across the pond, not another planet, but you know what I mean).
Anyway, I did go contra dancing on Monday night, despite my hemming and hawing the contrary, and yes, it was a lot of fun. I didn't sit down for a single dance, managed to attract a few creepers, convince several people I was actually experienced at this, get a LOT of raised eyebrows and people searching for nice ways to ask "Why are you here?" upon hearing that I go to school in NYC, and get walked home by an incredibly good dancer and southern gentleman. No one will ever accuse me of having a boring life, I guess.
More updates to come; for now I will go find new and spectacular ways of killing time.
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