Shanghai VS.

So when I first got to Shanghai I made sure to hit the ground running in terms of finding some “meaningful employment” as my mass emailed cover letter described. One thing to learn about a city like Shanghai (not sure if there are others though), is that if you shake off your western cloak and dagger and throw caution to the wind, you’re sure to find some interesting opportunities. For example, my first brush with employment was to be with an online retailer of eyeglasses. Now first of all, I wear eyeglasses. I would never shop for them online. You gotta feel them out, let the sales girl tell you how good those glasses look on you. Or as the last time I bought glasses the lady told me my pair was boring and looked old. But anyways, the process is set in stone as far as I’m concerned. Try this out , its ridiculous I get this whole virtual world but come on people. So I was to work for this online glasses retailer. To test me out, I was given a task to prepare some sort of marketing landscape for online glasses retailers. I was stoked. I did it. Sent it back. Then nothing. Apparently the guy I was interviewing with had some visa trouble, had to book it back to Cali where he was from and that was pretty much that. For all I know he was living it up in Seaworld laughing at my persistent unanswered emails. By the way that place is awesome. Once he got back he sent me a message explaining they couldn’t take me on full time but offered me some sort of bullshit side deal. This is Shanghai.

The next job was to work in a financial planning firm. Have you ever called someone and asked them if they were interested in offshore investing? Apparently this process works as the company was booming, expanding, everyone was getting rich. It wasn’t for me. But the fact remains the opportunity was there.

During all this time, I probably had an interview/meeting a day. A couple weeks. Meanwhile my roommate Steve who goes by Oaks who I travelled here with was teaching English to young’ins. Seemed to be quite the life. I was in. I don’t know how I would do with 30 or so screaming Chinese kids. I chose adults. Which is money. I mostly just chat with them, their favourite topic of conversation is money. The Chinese love to talk about money. And with good reason, its seems everyone is getting some.

Tags: China, Money, Shanghai, Travel, Work

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 5:03 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.